OF A GOLDEN AGE

We passed the 106th anniversary of John Steinbeck’s birth this February 27. In 1960, Steinbeck had an eventually-fatal heart condition and, inspired by the “virus of restlessness,” took a roadtrip around the continental U.S. His resulting travelogue is Travels with Charley, published in 1962, the same year Steinbeck won the Nobel Prize for Literature.

This is a delightful little book, fast-reading and observational. Steinbeck’s only companion is his French poodle Charles le Chien (“Charles the dog”), who competes with Steinbeck for best character in the book. As Steinbeck realizes, having an “exotic” dog like Charley is a shortcut to benevolent conversation with strangers, as he creates the perfect opening to say hello: “What manner of dog is that?”

At one point Steinbeck discusses the Russians with a Minnesota shopkeeper who, Steinbeck says, “remembered humor when it was not against the law.” After a pleasant-yet-provocative bit of dialogue, the shopkeeper says to Steinbeck, “You’ve give me something to think about in a sneaking kind of way.”

“I thought you gave it to me,” Steinbeck says back.

When I finished reading my copy, a 1968 Bantam paperback, the back cover fell off.

Steinbeck died very late in 1968, which means:

1. He lived eight years after learning that he had a fatal heart condition, which is, as they say, nothing to shake a stick at; and
2. His predictions as to the escalating racial strife in America came to life before his eyes after all. He even lived through the 1968 Democratic National Convention.

In 2002, the same year Steinbeck would have turned 100, the Writer ran a feature on author homes and haunts* with several spots in the Monterey, California area, “which has become something of a literary Disneyland.” I can’t help but wonder how this might embarrass Steinbeck, who, in Travels with Charley, is nearly fisticuffed out of Monterey by old friends who resent his leaving for New York.

* including a Hemingway home I’d never heard of, in Idaho; aren’t his homes in Oak Park and Key West more widely known? Maybe Idaho is grasping at touristical straws.

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