Review: Travels with Charley
I had all the time in the world over winter break to write this review. Instead, I spent it hanging out with my kids and doing some more work on my Spotlight on Civics posts (more on that soon). After reading Travels with Charley, I think John Steinbeck would approve of both of those things.
Travels with Charley is Steinbeck’s quest to re-discover America, this time in 1962. He starts in Maine and travels west, then heads from his home in California eastward through Texas and the Deep South before returning to his New York residence. I found myself homesick for places I had been, deeply jealous of places I haven’t, and wishing I could travel those roads in that time and see America as he saw us, straddling the promise and pitfalls of a rising global power.
I can’t help but wonder how different this story would have been if he had gone in ’64 or in ’68 instead. But the national innocence shattered in Dallas in November of 1963 was already cracking by the time Charley and his chauffeur made their way around.
Steinbeck, prescient as always, captures the beautiful dichotomies of the American people. As we homogenized everything into a bland sameness and embraced consumerism (and its twin wastefulness) as a unifying force, we became intellectually, emotionally, and mentally strangers to each other and ourselves. The people, he finds, have a harder and harder time talking to each other about real issues, like the USSR and unemployment. There is kindness, hospitality, people who know how to be human to each other, but also aloofness, anger, and bitterness.
His elegy on looming de-industrialization in the Midwest, speculation about the restlessness of the American spirit, and observations on overcrowding and the strangling of both our rural and urban areas are conversations that could make relevant social media posts today. His notes on the natural taciturnity of New Englanders was probably as practical a traveler’s guide today as it was then. We just don’t know what to do with strangers, but we probably like you.
His chapter on Texas would have bluebonnets springing up in the heart of anyone who’s ever set foot in the Lone Star State. He captures what is still true about Texas and what will always live in my heart about Texans: the boundless and beautiful energy, the uniqueness of the Texan identity, the genuine hospitality, and the down-to-earth nature and closeness to the land of so many Texans. Interspersed with Texas’ best, he also notes the dramatic conspicuous capitalism, concentration of wealth into a few hands, and classism that also mark the state.
Since Of Mice and Men and The Grapes of Wrath both topped the banned book list for so long, it should not surprise you that Travels with Charley has some definite ban-bait in our clearly irrational age.
His description of police would surely set “concerned” parents running for the challenge forms: “Like most Americans I am no lover of cops, and the consistent investigation of city forced for bribery brutality and a long and picturesque list of malfeasances is not designed to reassure me.”
But it is in his description of the so-called cheerleaders of segregation in New Orleans that Steinbeck made his most relevant comments to today. He describes the way white supremacist Leander Perez helped rile up the crowd and the small group of white, middle-class housewives who took it upon themselves to terrorize children.
Like the Moms of Liberty today, these were people who reveled not in justice but in rage. It makes me wonder how pathetic their lives must have been that they felt the need to publicly punch down on children.
He describes the scene:
“Their words written down are dirty, carefully and selectedly filthy. But there was something far worse here than dirt, a kind of frightening witches’ Sabbath. Here was no spontaneous cry of anger, of insane rage.
Perhaps that is what made me sick with weary nausea. Here was no principle good or bad, no direction. These blowzy women, with their little hats and their clippings, hungered for attention. They wanted to be admired. They simpered in happy, almost innocent triumph when they were applauded. Theirs was the demented cruelty of egocentric children, and somehow this made their insensate beastliness much more heart-breaking. These were not mothers, or even women. They were crazy actors playing to a crazy audience” (258).
As schools today continue to ban the teaching of certain books or slavery or desegregation, we would do well to remember that while Steinbeck is no longer here to share his version of the story, Ruby Bridges, the little girl just trying to go to school isn’t even 70.
School segregation, public for-entertainment race-based rage machines, and white supremacy are not just history’s ugly scars. They are the present.
And that’s why Travels with Charley still stands on its own despite some language that today would be considered problematic. Steinbeck did what he always does: he looked at America in a mirror so we could see ourselves.
If we don’t like what we see, we can hardly blame him. He’s been warning us for almost a hundred years.
