The Grapes of Wrath, Of Mice and Men and East of Eden are great, but Travels with Charley teaches our kids real and more valuable life lessons.
NOTE: Our Curriculum of Dissent is an ongoing series on Dad Bod Weekly that asks explores books or ideas that our kids need most right now. It’s not a book club. It’s a reading list for raising kids who think for themselves.
When we think of John Steinbeck, we usually call to mind one of the standard books we were required read in high school, either The Grapes of Wrath, Of Mice and Men or East of Eden. Students can usually rattle off a few conversational bullet points about Steinbeck’s focus on the hardships of the working man or his literary battles of good vs evil. But I believe students rarely make a connection to how those books relate to their lives in today’s modern digital age. Are we teaching our kids the wrong Steinbeck books? Possibly.
I contend that we as parents and our schools should be placing emphasis on one of Steinbeck’s last and little-known books, Travels with Charley: In Search of America.
In the Summer of 1960, Steinbeck was an acclaimed novelist and journalist. He was living in New York City dining and socializing with famous actors, models, designers and politicians. However, Steinbeck felt something was off in his life. He felt removed from the connection he had with the people he knew and loved in his agricultural roots of Salinas, California. He felt he was losing touch with the people he wrote about. So, he planned a trip for that fall, to begin in September.
So at the age of 58, Steinbeck bought a GMC pickup truck with a camper shell attachment. He named the truck Rocinante, after the skinny and aged horse belonging to Don Quixote. From September to November of 1960 Steinbeck and his French Poodle, Charley, set out on a road trip circling America. Along the way, he wrote about his adventures and the people he met. The book was published in July 1962. Three months later, Steinbeck was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, his greatest honor.
You can see the truck at the Steinbeck National Center in his birthplace of Salinas, California.
But I believe this short book (just 206 pages) provides us, as parents, and our children, far more relevant life lessons that are applicable to our kids’ lives than any other of his works.
Let’s look at a few select quotes from the book and how they can help us and our kids today.
I.) “New York is No More America than Paris is France or London is England.”
Steinbeck is right. When you look at a population breakdown of the United States, approximately 36% of Americans live in one of the top 15 of American Metropolitan Areas. That’s not a majority. 64% live outside these areas. Steinbeck is telling us that we need to expand our horizons and see the other guy’s point of view. There is no denying that a resident of Manhattan is living a very different life than a resident of Carson City, Nevada, but population of one location does not negate the opinions of another. And Steinbeck set out to hear those opinions. He didn’t agree with everything he heard. But the lesson is that he took the time to hear them.
II.) “I was born lost and take no pleasure in being found.”
As Steinbeck set out on his three-month journey, he started travelling via established highways and interstates. Quickly Steinbeck became dissatisfied. As he traveled along five-lane wide highways, he missed the small towns. Every restaurant on every highway was the same, serving the same bland food on the same bland plates with the same bland utensils.
So, he ditched the highways for the back roads. He took a long way around. He camped instead of staying at the newest motor courts. Immediately, he started finding small towns that were insignificant dots on a map. He found real food and real people in the small diners and camp sites. Instantly, he started making human connections. He had conversations with the men sitting next to him at a lunch counter. He shared a bottle of whisky with a traveling actor who was staying in the next campsite next to him.
Steinbeck is telling us that life will not go according to plan, and that’s OK. In fact, it’s GREAT. Steinbeck jumped off the fast highway and found the good stuff (human connection) on the slower less crowded routes. Our kids may not get into the top schools; they may not make first string on the sports teams; they may not get hired by top corporations. And that’s ok. They may never get on the 5-lane paved highway metaphor for schools, jobs and “success”. But he tells us, wherever they end up, if there is human connection, they’ll be living their best life.
III.) “In my own life I am not willing to trade quality for quantity. If this projected journey should prove too much, then it was time to go anyway.”
and
” I see too many men delay their exits with sickly, slow reluctance to leave the stage. It’s bad theater as well as bad living. “
and
” And I had seen too many begin to pack their lives in cotton wool, smother their impulses, hood their passions, and gradually retire from their manhood into a kind of spiritual and physical semi-invalidism.”
At the time of his trip, Steinbeck was probably suffering from heart disease. Steinbeck knew his time was running out. Only a few friends and family knew. And they warned him, including one of his own sons, Thomas. But Steinbeck went anyway. Steinbeck was telling us two things: First, our time on this planet is finite. Steinbeck is asking us: “What are you waiting for?” He’s warning us that one day there will no longer be a tomorrow. Second, he is telling us that no matter how much time we have left, there’s still time to live. Take the trip, connect with loved ones, and do what you’ve always wanted to do. Check off every item on your bucket list. You are never too old. You are never too young. Steinbeck is telling us to get up, get started, and never stop.
IV.) ” For I have lived violently, drunk hugely, eaten too much or not at all, slept around the clock or missed two nights of sleeping, worked too hard and too long in glory, or slobbed for a time in utter laziness. I’ve lifted, pulled, chopped, climbed, made love with joy and taken my hangovers as a consequence, not as a punishment. I did not want to surrender fierceness for a small gain in yardage.”
Here Steinbeck is advocating an embrace of the unplanned life. If we look at all the events he mentions, drunk hugely, worked too hard, slobbed for a time in laziness, they are all unplanned events. Steinbeck is urging us to live in the moment. He is telling us to enjoy a life filled with unplanned adventure and surprise. Again, he is telling us to get off the paved highway and experience the surprises life can provide.
V. “Let us not fool ourselves. What we knew is dead, and maybe the greatest part of what we were is dead. What’s out there is new and perhaps good, but it’s nothing we know.”
This quote appears when Steinbeck finally reaches the west coast and visits his old home in Monterey. He stops in a bar and connects with some of the local patrons. Some of the patrons recognize him. The patrons lament how Monterey and the area has changed, not necessarily for the better.
But Steinbeck doesn’t join the patrons in their lament for the past. He shares their grief but refuses to stop there; he acknowledges what’s lost before redirecting toward the future. He tells his friends that time continues to march on, whether we like it or not. He goes on to tell them that the march of time and progress isn’t a bad thing. Steinbeck is telling us to look forward to it. He is telling us that progress and the future may be unknown, but that does not mean it is bad. This quote and scene will be remembered in heavy contrast as Steinbeck continues his quest to New Orleans and encounters open racism in the school system. Steinbeck is telling us that looking back and false nostalgia are not healthy. Moving forward and building something new for all is important.
VI. “For all of our enormous geographic range, for all of our sectionalism, for all our interwoven breeds draw from every part of the ethnic world, we are a nation, a new breed. Americans are much more American than they are Northerners, Southerners, Westerners or Easterners. And descendants of English, Irish, Italian, Jewish, German, Polish are essentially American. California Chinese, Boston Irish, Wisconsin German, yes, and Alabama Negroes have more in common than they have apart.”
In the most difficult section of the book, Steinbeck witnesses gut-wrenching acts of open racism towards small school children. He had heard about a group of white middle-aged women, who call themselves The Cheerleaders, who every morning gather at the local school to yell racist jeers at the black school children now attending this previously segregated white school. Steinbeck is stunned at the ability of these middle-aged women, the cheerleaders, to whip the crowd into a racist frenzy each morning. He is stunned at the unchecked hatred yelled at the little girl entering the school. He sees this form of separatist thinking more dangerous than any foreign invasion. Steinbeck calls for the ending of separate thinking, segregation and tribalism. And if there ever was a lesson we and our kids need to learn today, this is it. The use of race, color, religion, region, education and culture as a weapon against each other is the single most powerful weapon any enemy can use against us.
And unfortunately, the enemy is us.
So, yes. The Grapes of Wrath is a masterpiece, but it is a masterpiece about a world our kids will never inhabit. Travels with Charley is something rarer – a book about the world they are already living in. A 58-year-old man, running out of time, got off the highway and went looking for human connection in America. He found it in diners and campsites and bar stools and schoolyard sidewalks. He found the best of us and the worst of us, and he wrote it all down in 206 pages.
This is the Steinbeck our kids need. Travels with Charley won’t be on any standardized test. It won’t appear on most required reading lists. But it might be the one book that teaches your kid how to actually live, which is still the whole point.
In our “Curriculum of Dissent” series, we explored The Great Gatsby and cornered one man’s obsession with image, false love, and his fatal downfall when authenticity, decency, and empathy are replaced by the chase for status, image, and greed. (Click here to read that post)
In Brave New World, we explored the dangers to our kids as governments and corporations use pleasure as a means of control, distraction to discourage deep critical thinking, and the death of the individual. (Click here to read that post)
In The Catcher in the Rye, we explored Holden Caulfield’s search for empathy and how his search is still very important and relevant to our kids’ lives today. (Click here to read that post)
Hunter S. Thompson and the Death of American Honesty: Why Our Kids Need His Fearless Truth Today, we explored the desperate need for unbridled truth in our kids media.
Please read, share with your kids and share with anybody you may think will enjoy our discussions
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