This is the first Steinbeck work I’ve ever read. No, never read Grapes of Wrath in High School or similar, no, never watched any of the films based on his work—East of Eden, Lifeboat, or others.
That said, this work intrigued me more than others likely for the topic—a solo trip in a camper around the country just to see what can been seen and learned.
And learn and travel he does. From Long Island through Vermont to Maine, all the way across the top of the country through the Wisconsin Dells, Minnesota, the Badlands, out to his birthplace in Northern California, down through Texas and out into New Orleans and then back home to NY.
Yes that skips large portions of the country with the mid-Atlantic and center of the country untraveled and much of the midwest unmentioned as he traveled through them quickly or ignored them after what is the finish of the work in New Orleans. Still, he hits on the huge changes that were going on in the US at the time (very early 60’s during Kennedy-Nixon election) and the themes he carries through are oh so relevant today.
Now I have a bit of bias in liking this tale he weaves as virtually every location he visits is one I have as well. Admittedly not in the same trip but over the years I’ve been to New Orleans, crossed Texas multiple times, spent time on the West Coast, in the Badlands, at Niagra Falls, along the coast of Maine, in Montauk…So I can compare my experiences to his.
I end up coming away with similar feelings as he did…albeit 50 years later. I feel, as he did, that America is struggling. That it is out of sorts, lost its way and at conflict with itself. Maybe everyone feels that way in such a big country where ideas and feelings are rarely in alignment with one’s neighbor. Certainly his feelings that Americans are a mix of people that changes in culture from locale to locale and not at all a homogenous group carries to today. As do other ideas including what was a recent, for him, development of the trailer home and trailer parks, march of technology, fear of global annihilation. No dilatant however as I might have thought him to be, he carries very non-current day liberal attitudes towards many things including gun ownership, hunting, self reliance, etc. that have now become an anathema of the Left. I’m not sure Steinbeck would be welcome in today’s Montauk or San Francisco societies. He finds too much in understanding with the Southerners who fear the changes racial integrations are bringing.
Which is really the core of the work. While his time through Texas is the funniest of his anecdotes—never have Texans been described more accurately and more incisively than here, it is his time in New Orleans that you feel his emotions at the fore. Completely portraying the fat, useless, Southern white hags who would show up on a daily basis to scream obscenities at the African Americans simply trying to go to school, Steinbeck spares no punches in exhibiting the backwards nature of these people. Visiting New Orleans today I can’t imagine such attitudes and behavior being condoned but in the backwoods of LA and MS….its clear such thinking exists to the current. The book is worth it for his supposed first hand account of these early school integrations in the South and the bitterness that existed on one side and the distrust on the other. The book will raise real questions in the reader’s mind in the conversations that follow—with an virulent racist Steinbeck gives a ride to after breakfast one day, an African American student who is terrified of Steinbeck’s whiteness and attempts at conversation, and an “everyman” who tries to rationalize the situation—not to forgive it or condone it…but to explain why it came to be.
Steinbeck is great here in producing a bit of a travelogue, a bit of an adventure, a bit of reportage, a bit of social commentary. As a peek at what the state of the US was in the early 60s just prior to so much social upheaval it is well worth the time and as a look at issues that we continue to struggle with today, it is timeless.
The only thing I can’t forgive in the work? His traveling companion. A Poodle? Disgusting. Get a real dog or get a cat. Anything but a poodle…I honestly think its because of the poodle that I had not read this to date. I’ll ding it and him slightly for that…