Travels with Charley in Search of America

Travels with Charley in Search of America PDF Author: John Steinbeck
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 9780140187410
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
An intimate journey across America, as told by one of its most beloved writers A Penguin Classic In September 1960, John Steinbeck embarked on a journey across America. He felt that he might have lost touch with the country, with its speech, the smell of its grass and trees, its color and quality of light, the pulse of its people. To reassure himself, he set out on a voyage of rediscovery of the American identity, accompanied by a distinguished French poodle named Charley; and riding in a three-quarter-ton pickup truck named Rocinante. His course took him through almost forty states: northward from Long Island to Maine; through the Midwest to Chicago; onward by way of Minnesota, North Dakota, Montana (with which he fell in love), and Idaho to Seattle, south to San Francisco and his birthplace, Salinas; eastward through the Mojave, New Mexico, Arizona, to the vast hospitality of Texas, to New Orleans and a shocking drama of desegregation; finally, on the last leg, through Alabama, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey to New York. Travels with Charley in Search of America is an intimate look at one of America's most beloved writers in the later years of his life—a self-portrait of a man who never wrote an explicit autobiography. Written during a time of upheaval and racial tension in the South—which Steinbeck witnessed firsthand—Travels with Charley is a stunning evocation of America on the eve of a tumultuous decade. This Penguin Classics edition includes an introduction by Jay Parini. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Travels with Charley in Search of America

Travels with Charley in Search of America PDF Author: John Steinbeck
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 9780140187410
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 244

Get Book Here

Book Description
An intimate journey across America, as told by one of its most beloved writers A Penguin Classic In September 1960, John Steinbeck embarked on a journey across America. He felt that he might have lost touch with the country, with its speech, the smell of its grass and trees, its color and quality of light, the pulse of its people. To reassure himself, he set out on a voyage of rediscovery of the American identity, accompanied by a distinguished French poodle named Charley; and riding in a three-quarter-ton pickup truck named Rocinante. His course took him through almost forty states: northward from Long Island to Maine; through the Midwest to Chicago; onward by way of Minnesota, North Dakota, Montana (with which he fell in love), and Idaho to Seattle, south to San Francisco and his birthplace, Salinas; eastward through the Mojave, New Mexico, Arizona, to the vast hospitality of Texas, to New Orleans and a shocking drama of desegregation; finally, on the last leg, through Alabama, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey to New York. Travels with Charley in Search of America is an intimate look at one of America's most beloved writers in the later years of his life—a self-portrait of a man who never wrote an explicit autobiography. Written during a time of upheaval and racial tension in the South—which Steinbeck witnessed firsthand—Travels with Charley is a stunning evocation of America on the eve of a tumultuous decade. This Penguin Classics edition includes an introduction by Jay Parini. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Dogging Steinbeck

Dogging Steinbeck PDF Author: Bill Steigerwald
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781481078764
Category : Journalists
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
"Steinbeck falsified his trip. I am delighted that you went deep into this." -- Paul Theroux, Author of "Deep South" and "The Tao of Travel""No book gave me more of a kick this year than Bill Steigerwald's investigative travelogue 'Dogging Steinbeck.'" -- Nick Gillespie, editor-in-chief of Reason.com"... a wry, wistful, but never angry tale about a great literary deception that lasted way too long." -- Pittsburgh Post-Gazette"... an idol-slaying travelogue of truth.' -- Shawn Macomber, The Weekly StandardFirst journalist Bill Steigerwald took John Steinbeck's classic "Travels With Charley" and used it as a map for his own cross-country road trip in search of America. Then he proved Steinbeck's iconic nonfiction book was a 50-year-old literary fraud. A true story about the triumph of truth.Bill Steigerwald had a brilliant plan for showing how much America has changed in the last half century -- or so he thought. He'd simply retrace the 10,000-mile route John Steinbeck took around the USA in 1960 for his beloved bestseller "Travels With Charley." Then he'd compare the America he saw with the country Steinbeck described in his classic road book. But when the intrepid ex-newspaperman from Pittsburgh started researching Steinbeck's trip he uncovered a shocking literary scoop. Steinbeck's iconic nonfiction book was a fraud. "Travels With Charley" was not just full of fiction. It was a deceptive and dishonest account of the great novelist's actual road trip. Steigerwald made his own road trip exactly 50 years after Steinbeck did. Chasing and fact-checking Steinbeck's ghost for 11,276 miles and 43 days, meeting hundreds of ordinary Americans, often sleeping in the back of his car in Wal-Mart parking lots, he drove from Maine to California to Texas. Despite the Great Recession and national headlines dripping with gloom and doom, Steigerwald discovered an America along the Steinbeck Highway that was big, empty, rich, safe, clean, prosperous and friendly. He didn't just reaffirm his faith in America to withstand the long train of abuse from Washington and Wall Street, however. He also exposed the half-century-old myths of "Travels With Charley," ruffled the PhDs of the country's top Steinbeck scholars and forced "Charley's" publisher to finally tell the truth. Steigerwald is a well-traveled journalist and veteran libertarian columnist. With the spirit of a teenage driver, a dogged pursuit of the facts and a refreshing point of view about America proudly located in the heart of Flyover Country not Manhattan, he spins the story of his ride with Steinbeck's ghost into a provocative, news-making and entertaining American road book.('Travels With Charley' timeline and more at www.truthaboutcharley.comMore Praise & Critiques"I still believe John Steinbeck is one of America's greatest writers and I still love 'Travels With Charley, ' be it fact or fiction or, as Bill Steigerwald doggedly proved, both. While I disagree with a number of Steigerwald's conclusions, I don't dispute his facts. He greatly broadened my understanding of Steinbeck the man and the author, particularly during his last years. And, whether Steigerwald intended it or not, in tracking down the original draft of 'Travels With Charley' he made a significant contribution to Steinbeck's legacy. "Dogging Steinbeck" is a good honest book."-- Curt Gentry, Author of "Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders" (with Vincent Bugliosi)I wanted ... first to express my personal admiration for the job you did. Second to tell you that you became a kind of a journalistic hero in my travel-story about Steinbeck, because you did such fantastic detailed research on the subject, and you did it alone, in sometimes-difficult circumstances.- Geert Mak, Dutch journalist/historian and author of "In America: Travels With John Steinbeck"

Travels with Charley in Search of America

Travels with Charley in Search of America PDF Author: John Steinbeck
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0140053204
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
An intimate journey across America, as told by one of its most beloved writers To hear the speech of the real America, to smell the grass and the trees, to see the colors and the light—these were John Steinbeck's goals as he set out, at the age of fifty-eight, to rediscover the country he had been writing about for so many years. With Charley, his French poodle, Steinbeck drives the interstates and the country roads, dines with truckers, encounters bears at Yellowstone and old friends in San Francisco. Along the way he reflects on the American character, racial hostility, the particular form of American loneliness he finds almost everywhere, and the unexpected kindness of strangers.

Quicklet on John Steinbeck's Travels with Charley in Search of America (CliffNotes-like Summary)

Quicklet on John Steinbeck's Travels with Charley in Search of America (CliffNotes-like Summary) PDF Author: David Shook
Publisher: Hyperink Inc
ISBN: 1614641595
Category : Study Aids
Languages : en
Pages : 43

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Book Description
ABOUT THE BOOK I came to John Steinbeck’s work through his novella The Pearl, a diminutive but dark allegory about a Native American pearl diver whose discovery of an enormous pearl hurls him and his family into a world of greed and its disastrous consequences. From The Pearl, I found Cannery Row, my favorite Steinbeck novel. From its first sentence, Steinbeck’s descriptions vibrate with the same energy and poetry that his eclectic cast of outcasts embody as they throw unauthorized parties and philosophize with Doc, based on Steinbeck’s real-life friend Ed Ricketts, on 1920s Monterey Bay, the American sardine capital at that time. “Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream.” I turned next to Steinbeck’s nonfiction, attracted to Travels with Charley: In Search of America because of my own experiences on Routes 10 and 40, mostly heading west towards California, or back to Oklahoma or Texas to wait until I could go again. Like Steinbeck with his standard poodle Charley, I drove with my steadfast companion, Okie Doke, a considerably smaller pooch. MEET THE AUTHOR David Shook studied endangered languages in Oklahoma and poetry at Oxford. He's published essays about dancing with the President of Burundi and being detained in Equatorial Guinea, and his poetry, translations, and book reviews regularly appear in magazines like Ambit, Poetry, and World Literature Today. His most recent translations include Mario Bellatin’s novella Shiki Nagaoka: A Nose for Fiction, Roberto Bolano’s 1976 manifesto “Leave Everything, Again,” and the selected love poems of Isthmus Zapotec poet Victor Teran. His current writing projects include Kilometer Zero, a covertly filmed documentary about lost Equatoguinean poets, a miniature encyclopedia, and a collection of travel essays. Shook lives with his wife and chihuahua in Los Angeles, where he edits Molossus. He’s a competitive foosballer, miniature book collector, banjolele picker, and aspiring rapper. His moustache is sponsored by Oregon Wild Hair Moustache Wax, the most literary moustache wax in the world. EXCERPT FROM THE BOOK Steinbeck won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962, two years after his driving tour across the continent and just months after the publication of Travels with Charley. His winning propelled Travels with Charley to the number one spot on the New York Times Best Seller List. In his acceptance speech he lauded “man’s proven capacity for greatness,” and challenged all writers to celebrate that greatness in their written work. For Steinbeck, that was literature’s ultimate purpose, and he compellingly articulated his opinion throughout his speech: “I hold that the writer who does not believe in the perfectibility of man has no dedication nor any membership in literature.” Born in Salinas, California on 27 February 1902, John Steinbeck witnessed man’s capacity for greatness in the fertile farmlands surrounding the agricultural hub town. While working those fields himself—notably in the company town of Spreckels, which boasted the world’s largest beet sugar processing plant—he witnessed many of man’s less noble attributes, including corporate and individual greed, the poor treatment of migrant workers, and the degradation of the physical environment, all themes he explored in his work. Buy a copy to keep reading!

A New Study Guide to Steinbeck's Major Works, with Critical Explications

A New Study Guide to Steinbeck's Major Works, with Critical Explications PDF Author: Tetsumaro Hayashi
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
ISBN: 9780810826113
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description


Critical Companion to John Steinbeck

Critical Companion to John Steinbeck PDF Author: Jeffrey D. Schultz
Publisher: Infobase Publishing
ISBN: 1438108508
Category : Electronic books
Languages : en
Pages : 417

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Book Description
Celebrates the American writer who in his works confronted and explored the social fabric of the United States in the early 20th century. More than 500 entries include synopses of his novels, short stories, and nonfiction; descriptions of his characters, details about family, friends, and associates.

Travels With Charley

Travels With Charley PDF Author: John Steinbeck
Publisher: Turtleback
ISBN: 9780606033251
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 277

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Book Description
Steinbeck records his emotions and experiences during a journey of rediscovery in his native land

The Moral Philosophy of John Steinbeck

The Moral Philosophy of John Steinbeck PDF Author: Stephen K. George
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
ISBN: 9780810854413
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 222

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Book Description
More than any other author of the Modern period of American literature, John Steinbeck evidenced a serious interest and background in moral philosophy. His personal reading collection included works ranging from Kant and Spinoza to Taoism and the Bible. Critics also consistently identify Steinbeck as an author whose work promotes serious moral reflection and whose characters undergo profound moral growth. Yet to date there has been no sustained examination of either John Steinbeck's personal moral philosophy or the ethical features and content of his major works. This critical neglect is remedied by a collection of highly readable essays exploring the philosophy and work of one of America's few Nobel Prize winning authors. These thirteen essays, written by experts both within philosophy and Steinbeck studies, examine almost all of Steinbeck's major works. Included in the compilation are five general essays examining Steinbeck's own moral philosophy and eight specific essays analyzing the ethics of various major works.

Travels with Charley in Search of America

Travels with Charley in Search of America PDF Author: John Steinbeck
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101615168
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
An intimate journey across and in search of America, as told by one of its most beloved writers, in a deluxe centennial edition In September 1960, John Steinbeck embarked on a journey across America. He felt that he might have lost touch with the country, with its speech, the smell of its grass and trees, its color and quality of light, the pulse of its people. To reassure himself, he set out on a voyage of rediscovery of the American identity, accompanied by a distinguished French poodle named Charley; and riding in a three-quarter-ton pickup truck named Rocinante. His course took him through almost forty states: northward from Long Island to Maine; through the Midwest to Chicago; onward by way of Minnesota, North Dakota, Montana (with which he fell in love), and Idaho to Seattle, south to San Francisco and his birthplace, Salinas; eastward through the Mojave, New Mexico, Arizona, to the vast hospitality of Texas, to New Orleans and a shocking drama of desegregation; finally, on the last leg, through Alabama, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey to New York. Travels with Charley in Search of America is an intimate look at one of America's most beloved writers in the later years of his life—a self-portrait of a man who never wrote an explicit autobiography. Written during a time of upheaval and racial tension in the South—which Steinbeck witnessed firsthand—Travels with Charley is a stunning evocation of America on the eve of a tumultuous decade. This Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition also features French flaps and deckle-edged paper. For more than sixty-five years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,500 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators. From the Trade Paperback edition.

Settling the Borderland

Settling the Borderland PDF Author: Jan Whitt
Publisher: University Press of America
ISBN: 9780761840930
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 198

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Book Description
Settling the Borderland deals with the intimate connection between journalism and literature, both fields in which work by women has been underrepresented. This book has a twin focus: the work of journalists who became some of the greatest novelists, poets, and short-story writers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in America, several of whom are men, and contemporary journalists who best exemplify the effective use of literary techniques in news coverage. Although five women are emphasized here (Katherine Anne Porter, Eudora Welty, Joan Didion, Sara Davidson, and Susan Orlean), three men whose work was profoundly influenced by journalism also are included. Edgar Allan Poe, Walt Whitman, and John Steinbeck are well known as writers of poetry, short stories, and novels, but they, too, are among the 'other voices' rarely included in studies of literary journalism. In Settling the Borderland, Jan Whitt presents a thorough analysis of the increasingly indistinct lines between truth and fiction and between fact and creative narrative in contemporary media.