TRAVELS WITH CHARLEY By John Steinbeck

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.