John Steinbeck is one of USA’s
literary giants. Yet I’ve never read any of his works. I know, I know. My only
excuse is that Singapore is an ex-colony of Britain and my own reading tastes
tend to veer towards British writers. Another reason is that I tend to be
sceptical of American claims which tend to be larger than life.
I read about this book
somewhere on some website and out of idle curiosity, while I was in the Jurong
East Regional Library one day, I decided to check to see if the library had a
copy and they did. I checked the book out, out of the same idle curiosity.
Right from the start,
Steinbeck’s writing blew me away. His writing was brilliantly original, witty
and sharp, and deeply American, which I realise is not a bad thing when done
properly — it adds an authentic flavour to the book.
Travels
With Charley was published in 1962, the same year in which
Steinbeck was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. It was based on his
four-month journey around the States in the late fall and early winter of 1960.
He travelled in a mobile home — a truck with an attached cabin that contained
the comforts of home — that he christened Rocinante after the hero’s horse in Don Quixote. Although his wife joined
him at certain short segments of the trip, his only constant companion was his
dog, Charley, hence the title of the book.
At the start of the book,
Steinbeck explained that he embarked on the trip because of travel lust, a
restlessness that had plagued him since he was young. He kept putting it off, think
that age would temper the urge, but upon realising that even at the grand old
age of 58, he was still possessed by this compulsion, he decided to give in to
it. He set off with the intention of learning the truth about his country,
though he cautioned the reader that truth is always subjective, focused through
the lens of the person experiencing it.
The book is divided into four
parts. Part 1 is the introduction in which he explains his rationale for the
trip as well as his plan and preparations.
Part 2 plunges into the start
of his trip. He set off from his home in Sag Harbour, New York, and travelled
north to Massachusetts, Vermont and New Hampshire. He stopped in Maine before
heading north to Canada briefly and then returning to USA, passing through
Ohio, Michigan and Illinois at high speed. He stopped briefly in Chicago where
he was joined by his wife. And that
concluded Part 2.
In Part 3, Steinbeck describes
his journey through Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, Montana,
Washington, and Oregon before he reached California, where he had spent his
childhood. After spending some days there, he left for New Mexico and that
concludes the third part of the book.
The last part of the book
covers Steinbeck’s journey to Texas (where he again met up with his wife) and
New Orleans before he finally turned round and headed for home.
What makes the book
interesting is Steinbeck’s detailed observations of his country’s landscape and
his keen insights on his countrymen. Some of his observations remain relevant,
and are even prophetic, some fifty years after he had penned his sojourn. There
are many reasons to read this book: to gain a better understanding of that vast
and complex superpower, the USA (USA is too complex to be succinctly described
in a thin book, but Steinbeck’s travels give us a relevant perspective); it’s a
good way to pass time (his wicked humour is highly entertaining); Steinbeck’s
sharp understanding of human nature is enlightening; and to see how the English
language is wielded by a master.
As a teacher, during
writing lessons, I would explain to my students that to describe a place, they
need to use their five senses as much as possible. And because humans are
highly visual creatures, the most important sense that needs to be described is
sight. If they should be stumped about what to describe, they can always fall
back on colours.
There is no better way to
illustrate this than to see how a master wordsmith does it. A couple of
examples here:
In the Bad Lands
Steinbeck initially found the
Bad Lands foreboding and unwelcoming. But he discovered that as day turned into
night, the passage of time drastically transformed the Bad Lands into the ‘Good
Lands’.
[…]
And then the late afternoon changed everything. As the sun angled, the buttes
and coulees, the cliffs and sculptured hills and ravines lost their burned and
dreadful look and glowed with yellow and
rich browns and a hundred variations of red and silver grey, all picked out by
streaks of coal black. It was so beautiful that I stopped near a thicket of
dwarfed and wind-warped cedars and junipers, and once stopped I was caught, trapped in colour and dazzled by the
clarity of the light. Against the descending sun the battlements were dark and
clean-lined, while to the east, where the uninhibited sunlight poured
slantwise, the strange landscape shouted
with colour.
In Oregon where he visited
redwood country to pay homage to the ancient trees
The
trees rise straight up to zenith; there is no horizon. The dawn comes early and
remains dawn until the sun is high up. Then the green fernlike foliage so far up strains the sunlight to a gold green and distributes it in shafts or
rather in stripes of light and shade.
The middle segment of the book
lags a little, so some readers may find it dreary, and all the place names can
be confusing for a non-American. But as an introduction to Steinbeck’s writing,
it is a superb initiation and I can’t wait to start reading his famous works of
fiction, The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden.
