Travels with Charley

Another book read…
 
How have I not known the existence of this book until now? Why haven’t so called good friends and acquaintances told me about it? What else are they hiding from me?
 
Steinbeck’s Travels with Charlie was a Christmas gift from brother and sister in law Jon and Amanda who now have favoured relative status.
 
Yonks ago I remember reading a Thomas Hardy novel and being a bit overcome by the genius of his use of words to paint a landscape or a character, so much so that several times I needed to re-read a few pages to appreciate it all over again. From time to time in the intervening years I’ve been caught with the same wonder, but for a while it hasn’t struck me like that, maybe I thought I was getting too old and cynical, but then out of the blue with this Steinbeck travel story, the word craft itself quickened my pulse, and made me smile and be glad that there was still wonder in this world for me to discover.
 
So the author and Charlie his distinguished French poodle set off in a a bespoke camper van to travel America and discover the heartbeat of the nation in the fall of 1960, the camper is christened Rocinante (after Don Quixote’s horse), all these elements caused me to sit as I read with dog at my feet and gaze wistfully into the imagined half distance.
 
We find a nation in turmoil, the beauty of the landscape, an insatiable drive for progress, and deep seated fear (of progress), laugh out loud moments, beautiful people, hateful people, a wistfulness, a generosity to others and closed fear of otherness, profound loss and discovery.
 
One of the things that struck me afresh and will stay with me I think was how journeys outwardly so often become ones inwardly. Here for the reader, but obviously so for the writer. As well as his profound use of words, he presents a occasionally grumpy, generous hearted and deeply thoughtful person who like so many of us is disturbed by “progress” (even welcome progress) by fear in others, especially when it surfaces as distrust of others or when something in us dies. He also was at his most joyful when surprised by beauty both in place and the heart of people.
 
   
A great Steinbeck book? Not quite, his legacy is elsewhere, but this was a surprise thing of beauty to me these last few nights and for that I’m grateful.