John Steinbeck is a MILF. That’s Man of Impeccable Literary Fantasticness; get your head out of the gutter. He’s also a guy with an ability to predict the future.
In 1962 Steinbeck embarked on a trip across the country to reconnect with a place he wrote about, but felt he may have lost touch. Along for the ride went his poodle, Charlie as they rode in a specially designed truck/camper dealio Steinbeck ordered specifically for the journey.
Late in the book, the duo is traveling through Texas when Steinbeck writes about the residents therein. “Outside their state I think Texas are a little frightened and very tender in their feelings, and these qualities cause boasting, arrogance, and noisy complacency.” Sound like someone who’s been out of Texas for, say, almost eight years?
The book is called “Travels With Charley: In Search Of America” and is very much about the beloved Charley. Just like Steinbeck, Charley isn’t exactly a spry kitten anymore, not just for the fact that he’s a dog. But their relationship is an interesting one to follow as they traverse the U.S., making a loop west from New York.
Steinbeck has very clear ideas of what he wants from the journey and sometimes struggles when his vision doesn’t pan out. Across the Midwest and the Northern Plains he describes Charley’s routine of “leaving his mark” on trees as they stop for a break. When they get to California, Steinbeck is almost giddy to have Charley christen a giant redwood. Charley didn’t quite get the memo:
“‘Look, Charley. It’s the tree of all trees. It’s the end of the quest.’ Charley got a sneezing fit, as all dogs do when the nose is elevated too high. I felt the rage and hatred one has toward non-appreciators, toward those who though ignorance destroy a treasured plan.”
But Steinbeck doesn’t just give up. He decides he has to know if Charley isn’t prepared for the task, or just doesn’t get the plan. So his owner cuts a sapling and “plants” it next to the giant tree. “He sniffed its new-cut leaves delicately and then, after turning this way and that to get range and trajectory, he fired.”
Dogs: Spoiling humans’ best-laid plans for (insert number of years since dogs have been domesticated, a number I don’t feel like looking up).
Of course, maybe it’s not entirely Charley’s fault. As Steinbeck describes, there’s a bit of a language barrier. “[Charley] was born in Bercy on the outskirts of Paris and trained in France, and while he knows a little poodle-English, he responds quickly only to commands in French.” Maybe “this tree is for your bladder-emptying needs” is not a phrase Steinbeck found in a translation book.
When I read this book I didn’t realize just how integral Charley is to Steinbeck’s log of their travels. But after looking back at the sections I marked, nearly all of them are Charley related, and many were just things that made me laugh.
The best Charley paragraph is easily this: “Charley is a tall dog. As he sat in the seat beside me, his head was almost as high as mine. He put his nose close to my ear and said ‘Ftt.’ He is the only dog I ever knew who could pronounce the consonant F.”
Then there are just the wonderfull sign-of-the-times observations that go almost unnoticed in the middle of Steinbeck’s writing. While lamenting on the challenges and different nature of the South, he says he is dreading experiencing the region firsthand. “I am not draw to pain and violence. I never gaze at accidents unless I can help, or attend street fights for kicks.”
Were there that many “street fights” going on in the early 1960s? Maybe New York is a particularly tough town, but it’s hard to imagine a place where one of the giants of American literature was learning about a fight in the street such that he would make a decision to attend or not. But maybe the fact that this reference is thrown in the middle of a paragraph in the middle of a much larger discussion about the plight of the South at the time shows just how much of a non-issue that was at the time. Certainly in comparison, but one of those things that caught my eye and made me reach up and dog-ear the page.
By the way, if you’re counting at home this makes 14 books for the year. That’s definitely behind pace to reach my goal of 20, but I’m still holding out hope. Number 15–Nick Horny’s “How To Be Good”–should be done in a day or two…I hope.
