'Travels with Charley - in search for America' by John Steinbeck
I can’t remember who recommended ‘Travels with Charley in search of America’ by John Steinbeck; it arrived with a swathe of others books I had ordered from gathered recommendations. I was drawn to the idea of reading about America as it was 60 years ago. That the author traveled with a French poodle appealed too.
It’s a book I read slowly, and with a pen. To underline passages I felt are still valid today, and beautifully worded. It’s a book that has its own entry into Wikipedia; it’s been on the bestseller list, it was highly criticised yet it’s still available, still published, and, I think, still relevant and interesting.
In 2020, a chaotic American election year, a year of increasing polarisation, this book reveals that many of today’s challenges were as present sixty years ago.
Steinbeck observes the the people and the landscape, reflects on the environment, shares reflections on whatever he sees, or who he encountered, on a particular day.
The book has been criticised as invented rather than true, yet I don’t mind if the route Steinbeck travelled was recounted correctly. I enjoyed the observations and the language, and underlined numerous passages that are as apt today as they were 60 years ago, only more pronounced.
Some observations are timeless. I loved the opening lines
‘When I was very young and the urge to be someplace else was on me, I was assured by mature people that maturity would cure this itch. When years described me as mature, the remedy prescribed was middle age. In middle age I was assured that greater age would calm my fever and now that I am fifty-eight perhaps senility will do the job. Nothing has worked. …’
Loved the writing, the slow pace, the observations. A book to dip into on any chapter, to share that particular part of the journey. Yes I read it beginning to end, but each chapter stands on its own.
I enjoyed the book, as an insight in America in the 1960, and how things have, or have not changed, since.
Recommended