![]() From there he forayed across the desert to Texas, where he partied with his wife’s relatives. In Seattle he turned south and headed down through the redwood forests to the Monterey Peninsula and Salinas where he grew up. I mention these because he writes about them others he crosses through without much of a description except to decry the busy freeway systems. He headed up north into Maine, cut across the country through Wisconsin, North Dakota, Montana, and other states. The camper he dubbed Rocinante, after Don Quixote’s horse. He got the wanderlust, he says, and decided to take off on his own in a pickup with a camper back, his only company being a large poodle named Charley. Steinbeck wrote this book late in his career, when he was 58 years old. My lust to travel phase was yet to come, and I was mainly into Steinbeck’s fiction. ![]() I read Travels With Charley along with all the others, but it didn’t make much impression on me at the time. Steinbeck was the first author I followed passionately, first stumbling upon The Pearl as a school requirement, and then going on to Grapes of Wrath, East of Eden, Of Mice and Men, Cannery Row, Sweet Thursday, and several other volumes. ![]() The last time I read Travels With Charley was during my John Steinbeck phase, which was about fifty years ago. ![]() One of my sons had checked it out of his college library, and I picked it up and gave it a read. It is with pleasure and nostalgia, and quite by accident I came back to this modest travel book after so many years. ![]()
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