Abstract
Published just a year after The Winter of Our Discontent, this book receives universally good reviews. The planning of the truck and its compartment, Steinbeck’s dialogues with the large French poodle who accompanies him, the ranging commentary about the forty states where he and the dog travel take the better part of a year. Candor is a surprising addition to the commentary. The reception of this book may have led to the 1962 awarding of the Nobel Prize for Literature.
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Notes
- 1.
He wrote a few days later to thank Elizabeth for helping with Elaine, who worried about Steinbeck’s health in connection with the journey. He told Elizabeth then that “The thing isn’t really Quixotic. It undoubtedly is selfish but there are times for that too” (SLL 670).
- 2.
Speaking of the quest journey suggests the more religiously oriented pilgrimage. Many of Steinbeck’s phrases link Travels with a sort of pilgrimage: the “spirituality” of travel in the context of traditional pilgrimage long held sacred by centuries of pilgrims. Knowledge is a kind of quest fulfillment, especially within the social-gospel Protestantism of Steinbeck’s youth, when he was baptized and confirmed in the Episcopalian Church (where he also sang in the choir). See Stoneback 457–59.
- 3.
Because Steinbeck’s novel was already in print, the author’s use of this talisman creates the circularity that unites all his writing into a meaningful continuum.
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Wagner-Martin, L. (2017). Travels with Charley. In: John Steinbeck. Literary Lives. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55382-9_11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55382-9_11
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