![]() Route 50 in 2008 told the Los Angeles Times recently that he thought Steinbeck’s pessimistic view of the America he found in 1960 (but didn’t put into “Charley”) was partly a result of spending so much time alone on the road with only a dog and a cache of booze to keep him company. ![]() Bill Barich, author of “Long Way Home,” a new Steinbeck-themed book about his six-week road trip up the gut of middle American on U.S. Using clues from the “Charley” book, biographies of Steinbeck, letters Steinbeck wrote from the road, newspaper articles and the first draft of the “Charley” manuscript, I built a time-and-place line for Steinbeck’s trip from Sept. The first part of Steigerwald’s critique - that Steinbeck’s meetings with vividly colorful characters in the proverbial middle of nowhere seemed too good to be true - sounds plausible until I recall bizarre and random meetings with strangers during my years of travel.īut then Steigerwald gets into the meat of his case - that Steinbeck’s own correspondence and other records contradict the details in his book. Steinbeck’s nonfiction book actually is fiction. ![]() ![]() Bill Steigerwald, a writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, did some research and retraced the cross-country journey recounted in John Steinbeck’s popular me-and-my-dog road book, “Travels with Charley,” and came to this conclusion: ![]()
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