Travels with Charley
First published 1962 · English · 254 pages
- Novels
- Biography and memoir
- Travel
A travel memoir in which Steinbeck, in his late fifties, sets out in 1960 to rediscover the United States, driving around the country in a pickup truck fitted with a camper, accompanied by his old poodle Charley. Moving from New England across the northern states to the West Coast, then through the South and home, he talks to farmers, truckers and strangers he meets along the way. The book is a thoughtful, humorous account of a changing nation and of a writer reflecting on age, home and the American character. Some details are thought to have been shaped for storytelling.
Quotes
A journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it.
Four hoarse blasts of a ship’s whistle still raise the hair on my neck and set my feet to tapping.
The sound of a jet, an engine warming up, even the clopping of shod hooves on pavement brings on the ancient shudder, the dry mouth and vacant eye, the hot palms and the churn of stomach high up under the rib cage.
When the virus of restlessness begins to take possession of a wayward man, and the road away from Here seems broad and straight and sweet, the victim must first find himself a good and sufficient reason for going.