Travels with Charley - In search of America

I finished Steinbeck's travelogue last weekend.. The book is called "Travels with Charley - In search of America" and describes his experiences during his later years when he felt he needed to rediscover America again. Charley is his French poodle of advanced years who gives him company during this trip which he undertakes on a custom built camper. The camper is called "Rocinante" and the name is emblazoned in a Spanish font on its side. Actually, Steinbeck considered this trip to be some sort of adventure/quest and styled it on Cervantes' Don Quixote. So Rocinante, his camper is his new world steed while Charley is supposed to be his serf, Sancho Panza. Interesting right ?

Digressing from Steinbeck, have you ever noticed how people name their vehicles when they are making life altering trips. Che covered South America in "La Ponderosa" while Steinbeck drives the "Rocinante". I wonder what I will ride on when I make mine :) . It can be anything as long as it sounds cool..

Anyway, the book is more than just a simple travelogue of his journey. Maybe because Steinbeck never goes to any of the regular places.. He wants to meet the America which is never in the news. A place which has been forgotten and out of the regular way, a place which has not been cast out of a regular plastic and concrete mould, a place which still breathes, though fitfully as it is slowly strangled by the ever increasing reach of the big cities.

Actually, I think that Steinbeck was kinda intimidated by the big megapolises. He races through them with Charley as if he is afraid of losing his identity out there and deliberately plots routes which tend to avoid them.. Invariably he gets lost and he actually likes getting lost. In this sense he lets you on to his secret.. You see, the best way to start a conversation with someone is to approach the person and ask for directions. I don't know how it is with human psychology but if you ask a person for directions, he/she will usually go out of the way to help you out. And once you have an opening, it is usually up to you how you want to proceed further..

So in this repect, the book is more more about the people he meets along this trip. There are Maine cops who are taciturn and believe that brevity of speech shows character, and there are people who are so open that you feel that you know them intimately though you have met them just some moments ago. Then there are those lifeless people who are the very worst. Steinbeck calls them people who "Suck the life out of a room once they enter" and whom you should avoid as much as possible.

The trip happens during the hunting season. A season, when the regular American alpha-male gets his kicks out of killing deer or any animal resembling a deer using his latest high powered hunting weapon. Though Steinbeck doesn't disapprove of hunting in principle, he gets downright angry with the average hunter who is so pumped up on booze, the latest gadgetry and his buddies that he fails to realize the tremendous killing power in his hands. We hear stories where a farmer tired of these annual nimrods, paints the word "COW" on the sides of his animals but is still disadvantaged.. Things take a comic turn when Steinbeck actually proceeds to tie a white flag on Charley's tail when he has to make his usual rounds..

Steinbeck covers a lot of other topics in this book including the deep rooted racism down south and his Monterey/Salinas homecoming among other things.. I wanted to put something along those lines but this post is becoming too verbose for my own liking.. I think I will just end it here.. Hopefully you can get your hands on the book and enjoy it yourselves..