Travels With Charley: in Search of America - Veracity of Travels

Veracity of Travels

Bill Steigerwald, a former staff writer for Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and an associate editor for Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, followed the route as it is laid out in the Travels with Charley and wrote about it in the Post-Gazette, and published an article "Sorry, Charley" (April 2011) in Reason magazine. Steigerwald concluded that Travels contains such a level of invention, and Steinbeck took such great liberty with the truth, that the work has limited claim to being non-fiction.

He uses the dialogue with the itinerant Shakespearean actor near Alice, North Dakota to exemplify his point. On October 12 Steinbeck wrote a letter to his wife describing a motel in the Badlands where he was staying, the same date, October 12, as the supposed conversation in Alice. Given that the Badlands are some 350 miles away from Alice, Steigerwald concluded that the conversation with the actor was unlikely to have occurred. Even Steinbeck's son believes his father invented much of the dialogue in the book, "He just sat in his camper and wrote all that ."

Steigerwald also challenges the perception that Steinbeck was roughing it during his journey, or that it was a solo voyage (save Charley). Steigerwald says "Steinbeck was almost never alone on his trip. Out of 75 days away from New York, he traveled with, stayed with, and slept with his beloved wife, Elaine, on 45 days. On 17 other days he stayed at motels and busy truck stops and trailer courts, or parked his camper on the property of friends. Steinbeck didn't rough it. With Elaine he stayed at some of the country's top hotels, motels, and resorts, not to mention two weeks at the Steinbeck family cottage in Pacific Grove, California, and a week at a Texas cattle ranch for millionaires. By himself, as he admits in Charley, he often stayed in luxurious motels."

Steinbeck scholars have responded to Steigerwald's findings. Susan Shillinglaw, an English teacher at San Jose State University and scholar at the National Steinbeck Center, told the New York Times:

"Any writer has the right to shape materials, and undoubtedly Steinbeck left things out. That doesn't make the book a lie." In regards to the supposed conversations, she said "Whether or not Steinbeck met that actor where he says he did, he could have met such a figure at some point in his life. And perhaps he enhanced some of the anecdotes with the waitress. Does it really matter that much?"

Jay Parini, author of a Steinbeck biography, and who wrote the Introduction for the Penguin edition of Travels, told the New York Times:

"I have always assumed that to some degree it's a work of fiction. Steinbeck was a fiction writer, and here he's shaping events, massaging them. He probably wasn't using a tape recorder. But I still feel there's an authenticity there. Does this shake my faith in the book? Quite the opposite. I would say hooray for Steinbeck. If you want to get at the spirit of something, sometimes it's important to use the techniques of a fiction writer. Why has this book stayed in the American imagination, unlike, for example, Michael Harrington's 'The Other America,' which came out at the same time?"

Bill Barich, who wrote Long Way Home: On the Trail of Steinbeck's America, a retracing of Steinbeck's footsteps, said:

"I'm fairly certain that Steinbeck made up most of the book. The dialogue is so wooden. Steinbeck was extremely depressed, in really bad health, and was discouraged by everyone from making the trip. He was trying to recapture his youth, the spirit of the knight-errant. But at that point he was probably incapable of interviewing ordinary people. He'd become a celebrity and was more interested in talking to Dag Hammarskjold and Adlai Stevenson. The die was probably cast long before he hit the road, and a lot of what he wrote was colored by the fact that he was so ill. But I still take seriously a lot of what he said about the country. His perceptions were right on the money about the death of localism, the growing homogeneity of America, the trashing of the environment. He was prescient about all that."