It appears much of Travels with Charley, fiction writer John Steinbeck's romantic, solo-across-the-country travelogue, wasn't that at all. It was, in fact, a lot of fiction.
Travels with Charley was a book I read young (a gift from my mother) and it is what put the travel bug in me. Because of Steinbeck, I have always been a tad disappointed in my wanderings across the US. The romantic in me hopes to find similar characters and places, yet never I quite seem to have the experience. Now I know why - they don't exist.
UPDATE: I know, I know, if I want to experience characters nowadays I should stop at this store when I travel. Is it really that bad, people? Really?
1 comment:
This really stunned me too. Somewhere around here we have a first edition - my husband introduced me to the book.
On reflection, the guy was a novelist after all, an American Road Trip novelist in fact. When his wife asked how his day went, he probably embroidered the answer to that too.
In the words of ... one of John Wayne's characters ... when asked if something was true: "If it ain't, it oughta be.:
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