Travels with Charley in Search of America
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.20 (805 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0140053204 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 288 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2015-06-16 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
An intimate journey across America, as told by one of its most beloved writers To hear the speech of the real America, to smell the grass and the trees, to see the colors and the light—these were John Steinbeck's goals as he set out, at the age of fifty-eight, to rediscover the country he had been writing about for so many years.With Charley, his French poodle, Steinbeck drives the interstates and the country roads, dines with truckers, encounters bears at Yellowstone and old friends in San Francisco. Along the way he reflects on the American character, racial hostility, the particular form of American loneliness he finds almost everywhere, and the unexpected kindness of strangers.
“Pure delight, a pungent potpourri of places and people interspersed with bittersweet essays on everything from the emotional difficulties of growing old to the reasons why giant sequoias arouse such awe.” The New York Times Book Review“Profound, sympathetic, often angry an honest moving book by one of our great writers.” The San Francisco Examiner“This is superior Steinbecka muscular, evocative report of a journey of rediscovery.” John Barkham, Saturday Review Syndicate“The eager, sensuous pages in which he writes about what he found and whom he encountered frame a picture of our human nature in the twentieth century which will not soon be surpassed.” Edward Weeks, The Atlantic Monthly
"Spot On" according to William J. Higgins,III. In 1960, at the age of fifty-eight, John Steinbeck decides to search for America’s identity. What unfolds in his travels across the United States at that particular time in space is so indicative to the present dayactually for the majority of times past, present and future.While not in the same vein as a Bill Bryson, Tony Horwitz and other travel writers, it does depict how times change over the years and yet some components never do.Deep thoughts on survival while traveling through the Mohave Desert; why progress looks so much like destruction“a carcinomatous growth” as he says when appro. Good read, but also overrated Amazon Customer This was a reread for me. I read it first thirty years ago. I loved it then.With the perspective of age, experience, and having done this sort of trip a few times, I can more fully appreciate his perspective now. But there were also annoying gaps in the narrative, and characters he obviously fabricated, that I didn't see on the first read. Guess I've become jaded. But I can't help but feel Steinbeck could have made so much more of this narrative. Especially given the era when he did this journey.. Good but not great Jeff C* The book definitely had its moments where the writing was both capitaving and amazing, in true Steinbeck style. Then there were other parts of the book where things dragged and got off on a tangent from the stated premise of the book. Overall I enjoyed it since I am a huge fan of Steinbeck, but I don't think I would read it again in the future.
Three powerful novels of the late 1930s focused on the California laboring class: In Dubious Battle (1936), Of Mice and Men (1937), and the book considered by many his finest, The Grapes of Wrath (1939). In 1919 he went to Stanford University, where he intermittently enrolled in literature and writing courses until he left in 1925 wit