"A trip, a safari, an exploration, is an entity, different from all other journeys. It has personality, temperament, individuality, uniqueness. A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us. Tour masters, schedules, reservations, brass-bound and inevitable, dash themselves to wreckage on the personality of the trip. Only when this is recognized can the blown-in-the-glass bum relax and go with it. Only then do the frustrations fall away. In this a journey is like a marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it. I feel better now, having said this, although only those who have experienced it will understand it... I had to go alone and I had to be self-contained, a kind of casual turtle carrying his house on his back.”
I loved this book.
I began this book now because my book club chose it. But, it's also a personal choice. My father's had this book on his shelf for as long as I can remember - and I've seen it, wondered about it, and heard him talk about it. He is also a Steinbeck fan - and whenever someone I care about likes a writer, I always want to encounter that writer and guess at why that person enjoys them. Having such distant memories of this book made it an alluring choice in my eyes.
And, finally, the subject matter is right up my alley. For many years I've wanted to go on a road trip through this country and such a trip is the subject matter of this book. In 1960, Steinbeck decided to go on a road trip across America with his dog, a french poodle named Charley. Here is the route he took:
Why did he take this journey? He thought that he had lost his ability to listen and had lost touch with the America he had for many years been writing about. So, although afraid to be alone, he left his family/friends because he felt that he was becoming impotent as an artist. Unprepared to let that happen, he committed to the trip and lost the comfort of the familiar in order to do something that would keep him vital as an artist and a person. He says,
"It is some years since I have been alone, nameless, friendless, without any of the safety one gets from family, friends, and accomplices. There is no reality in the danger. It's just a very lonely, helpless feeling at first - a kind of desolate feeling. For this reason I took one companion on my journey - Charley."
Feeling like you're losing your vitality is something I will hazard a guess that we all struggle with to varying degrees. For my part I struggle with it a lot but for different reasons than Steinbeck alludes to here. Anyway, as time goes on, I find the remedy to this problem recedes further and further away from me, making the right choice all the more difficult to achieve. I've learned it's useful (to a point) to see how others have dealt with that problem as a part of seeking the solution. While I don't think that Steinbeck was afraid of fading into a jumble/muddled confusion, I do think he was afraid of fading into old-age and subsequently, irrelevance.
I think age played a huge part in why he decided to take this journey. He observes a lot of "current" issues throughout the country at the time - fear of nuclear weapons, racism, the insatiable growth of American cities at the expense of the small American village, the newly finished highway system and the truckers that drive it coast to coast all year long, the emergence of television/mass communication and how it was standardizing the American people across all states, the disappearance of speech dialects in different areas of the country as a consequence of this standardization. Once, while speaking to a navy man who works on a submarine, he asks him all kinds of questions about the fear of nuclear war and how uncomfortable it must be to live on a sub. The man dismisses most of his comments saying that given the time you can get used to anything. Steinbeck reacts by saying, "It's his world now. Perhaps he understands things I will never learn." Effectively, he's questioning whether it's even necessary for someone so much older to understand what's current as he himself is no longer current. His developing age makes him feel ineffectual even though his powers of observation are clearly as potent as they ever were. It's a tough spot.
It was a very interesting time to read this novel - it's amazing how many of the complaints that are being discussed with the current political climate were present already in the 1960's. Especially a lot of the effects of capitalism were already taking hold. Steinbeck once wrote a book called Cannery Row about a strip of land where poor fisherman fished for sardines off the coast of California. Apparently, it was a pretty disgusting little strip of land as areas of heavy fishing tend to be. In fact, it was so successful for what it was that at one point there were no more sardines to be had. He describes the area as it now appears in 1960 when he returns during his road trip. By then it has become a gentrified, touristy, wealthy little area on the coast of California as many areas along that coast tend to be. He says that many people flocked to that area, perhaps in part for the attention that Steinbeck brought it with his book, and that the people who live there now would despise the people who used to live on the row. It is an evolution that apparently has completely lost track of where it came from, and therefore could not possibly have any clue where it's headed. Also, the example of raping our natural resources until there really is nothing left. To me, this is a microcosm of the effects of capitalism at large here in America.
Besides the pitfalls of capitalism, another perpetually relevant issue that Steinbeck is racism. He mentions that people of the deep south repeatedly mistook Charley sitting in the front seat for a "nigger." Even more poignant than that were his observations of a mob (the cheerleaders) protesting against desegregation in New Orleans. What surprised me (although maybe it shouldn't have) was that the cheerleaders were all women.
"No newspaper had printed the words these women shouted...But now I heard the words, bestial and filthy and degenerate. In a long and unprotected life I have seen and heard the vomitings of demoniac humans before. Why then did these screams fill me with a shocked and sickened sorrow? Here was no spontaneous cry of anger, of insane rage. Perhaps that is what made me sick with weary nausea. Here was no principle good or bad, no direction. These blowzy women with their little hats and their clippings hungered for attention. They wanted to be admired. They simpered in happy, almost innocent triumph when they were applauded. Theirs was the demented cruelty of egocentric children, and somehow this made their insensate beastliness much more heartbreaking. These were not mothers, not even women. They were crazy actors playing to a crazy audience."
At one point Steinbeck's attention is drawn away from the protesters to the little girl who's being escorted into the school by a federal marshall. He keeps commenting how small she appears - but I imagine that was an affect of the seeing a child in opposition to so much aimed at destroying her. That the hatred for this little girl and her presence there so outweighed anything that she could have honestly deserved. It must have felt completely ridiculous, irrational and inconceivable to put that child on one side of the scale and the protesters on the other and even attempt to see any correlation between them.
Steinbeck's book shouldn't seem irrelevant because it was written over 50 years ago. And the writing is superb - in fact there were many other highlights of this book that are worth mentioning. But I don't think doing so would add much to the purpose of this blog - which is "reviewing" books for others and perhaps even sparking someone's interest enough in a book to read it. I think I've already presented what someone should know when deciding whether or not to read this book - the author is a very observant person who makes a good guide for the journey, a lot of interesting issues come up along the way that have relevance even for the modern reader, and finally what I haven't mentioned yet is that Steinbeck has a wonderful sense of humor. He can laugh at himself or at the disturbing quality of a situation he finds himself in - neither are easy feats to accomplish. I actually found his sense of humor inspiring.
If you decide to give this book a chance - I guess I would say keep your eye out for two of those "highlights" of the book - redwoods and the desert of the southeastern states.
No comments:
Post a Comment