Tag: John Steinbeck

Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck

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Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck

American Memoir

Source – Personal copy

When I read the list of books I could read for the club 1962, I looked at one book that leapt of the page to read, and that was this one another reread. Unlike Kerouac, this is a road trip like his books are but this is from one of my all-time favourite writers, Steinbeck he just stood for so much his books we social commentaries on time and covered the tougher side of life. He captured an America that is now gone, and in this book he tries to do that. I do think he picks his tales here and it is, in a way, a modern tale. I love the idea of van Life is something that appeals to me the ability to go here and there every day, and this is what he did he took out his camper he’d called Rocinante after Quixotes horse. Now the companion for his trip was his blue French poodle Charley as he turns sixty, Steinbeck wants to see the small villages and towns of America before they go.

We didn’t give George any trouble because for two nights we stayed in Rocinante, but I am told that when guests sleep in the house George goes into the pine woods and watches from afar, grumbling his dissatisfaction and pouring out his dis-like. Miss Brace admits that for the purposes of a cat, whatever they are, George is worthless. He isn’t good company, he is not sympathetic, and he has little aesthetic value.

“Perhaps he catches mice and rats,” I suggested helpfully.

“Never,” said Miss Brace. “Wouldn’t think of it.

And do you want to know something? George is a girl.”

I had to restrain Charley because the unseen presence of George was everywhere. In a more enlightened day when witches and familiars were better understood, George would have found his, or rather her, end in a bonfire, because if ever there was a familiar, an envoy of the devil, a consorter with evil spirits, George is it.

George the Cat from his friends at Deer Island

The book starts with him explaining why he decided to make this trip a last chance to capture a world slowly going in fact, at the time, it maybe was nearly gone when he did the trip. He shows how he got Rocinate ready. His family wanted to go, but ultimately, he chose the dog as his companion and set off around the States. Nearly losing the camper and his boat in a storm on the eve of the trip, he sets off. He says he is just a guy, not Steinbeck, the famous writer but some ordinary Joe on a road trip with his dog. he notes how he uses the dinners and radio to get the feel of the places in Maine as he drives through this has one of my favourite parts of the book he visit someone he knows on Deer island that is the owner of a grey cat that is the least cat like cat he has ever meet harte people and dogs and make any guest at the house feel unwelcome even when he isn’t in the room. He meets migrant workers from Canada and compares how they pack the farm up to what English families did in Kent every summer when they went hop-picking. He likes to blend with the common man at truckstops, nearly getting shot, then having a coffee with a game warden on an estate. s he winds around the country, retreading ground in his old home of  Salinas, lamenting the changing country and the way it has become upper class no more fish guts on the beach from the canneries; he also laments the way this is the way the country ad a whole is changing as the freeways disconnect towns and everything becomes the same like the way people speak till he gets to  Texas where he notes how separate all Texans still are and how individual they can be. He laments what has gone from the America of his youth.

“I have said that Texas is a state of mind, but I think it is more than that. It is a mystique closely approximating a religion. And this is true to the extent that people either passionately love Texas or passionately hate it and, as in other religions, few people dare to inspect it for fear of losing their bearings in mystery or paradox. But I think there will be little quarrel with my feeling that Texas is one thing. For all its enormous range of space, climate, and physical appearance, and for all the internal squabbles, contentions, and strivings, Texas has a tight cohesiveness perhaps stronger than any other section of America. Rich, poor, Panhandle, Gulf, city, country, Texas is the obsession, the proper study, and the passionate possession of all Texans.”

His thoughts on Texas.

Well, I could go on I love this writer and this book so much. I think he has rose-coloured glasses in a way and has picked maybe the best tales of this trip, but he has also caught what has gone the lament of the loss of language accents and identity between towns is all something we see more and more, and since his day every town is the same with the same shops and restaurants etc. What he also captures is migrant workers from those from Quebec to those he used to know in Monterey who have now moved on from when he wrote Cannery row (my favourite novel by him) . I must try Geert Mak’s book, where a few years ago he retraced this trip and saw how the country was now. This captured America before Vietnam, but post-Korea, that golden glow of the post-war years is fading. This is like a Norman Rockwell painting of a book, but you can see just at the edges of the images he paints the world he loved, and we get corporate America. I even forgot to mention the visits to the vet well that is for you to find out. Have you read this?

Winstons score A I love steinbeck and lament the loss of his world even if it is a bit overly romantic.

Sweet Thursday by John Steinbeck

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Sweet Thursday by John Steinbeck

American fiction

Source – personal copy

I am on to the second choice for this weeks 1954 club and I go to America and John Steinbeck . I have long been a fan of Steinbeck I like of Mice and men at school and then in may 20s I read a few more then I decided to slow down and leave some for the rest of my life so as I turned fifty the other week it seemed right to cover him again in fact it was 2010 when I reviewed the Pearl from him here so maybe it is time to read a few more of my tar from him this jumped out as it was the follow up to my favourite book from Steinbeck Cannery row.What Sweet Thursday(the title is a reference to an old names for the days of the weeks so it is sweet Thursday after Lousy Wednesday and before Waiting Friday ). As we catch up with Doc  after the war as he returns to his home on cannery Row and sees a changed row but in some ways it is just  the same

Doc was philosophical about it.He whiled away his free hours with an unlimited supply of government alcohol, mad many friends and resisted promotion. When the war was over, doc was kept on by a grateful government to straighten out certain inventory problems, a job he was fitted for since he had contributed largely to the muck-up . Doc was honourably discharged two years after our victory.

Doc returns a couple years after everyone else

It opens and says how the war had an effect on Monterey and cannery row in either small or large parts this include Doc who was drafted as a sergeant in a vd section. He’d left an old friend in charge of his western Labs but when he returned he found it run down covered in mildew. he then discover the shop owner opposite we has changed but Mack is still there and they drink. what follows is Doc settling back into the row and seeing how the world of the row has change slightly since the end of the war. then a few chapters in we see Suzy arrive on a Greyhound bus her arrival which sees her end up on the row and at the Bear house where people notice doc seems to like here and this leads to them teaching her to drive and try to get her and Doc together bring him  some happiness but there is more to Suzy and we see what happens.

When a girl named Suzy got off the greyhound bus, she looked up and down the street, fixed her lipstick, then lifted her beat-up suitcase and headed for the Golden Poppy restaurant. Suzy was a pretty girl with a flat nose and wide mouth. She had a good figure, was twenty-one , five-feet five, hair probably brown(dyed blonde), brown cloth coat, rabbit sin collar, cotton print drsss, brown calf shoes(heel taps little run over), scruff on the right toe.She limped slightly on her right foot. Before she picked up the suitcase she opened her brown purse of simulated leather.In it were mirror, comb with two teeth missing.Lucky strikes, matchbook that said “Hotel Rosalie, San Francisco , half a packet of peppermint life savers. eighty five cents in silver, no folding money, lipstick but no powder, tin box of aspirin, no keys

Suzy arrives but she is a little down on heel her self

 

I loved cannery row the way Steinbeck caught those with no hope so well and made us feel pathos with them as characters so with Docs return after the war we capture those years between the end of the war and the baby boomer years. As we see how the war years has made some people not return and other let go and other come to the row. I said when I reviewed Simenon book set in America three bedrooms in Manhattan has a parallel in another way it follows a man falling from bed to bed and this is the row trying to find Doc a woman. Then Enter Suzy newly arrived from San Fransisco  and we see what happens when Suzy and Dc are pushed into trying to start a relationship. But as ever the `row has a nasty twists and turns to their lives.Steinbeck is great at conveying those lives on the edge of the society those we don’t always see in other books the gritty underworld of those just getting by where needing a microscope as a man of science shows how tough life is for even Doc. But what also comes across the brotherhood of the Row when Mack tries to teach suzy to drive or the way the rally round to try and get doc and Suzy together in air to help there friend feel whole.Have you read Steinbeck have you a favourite book by him ?The second stop on this weeks 1954 club and next we will be off to Italy.

Winstons score – A a gem of a story a great follow ups to Cannery row.

2018 Stu’s reading plans

~ winstonsdad ~ 29 Comments

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s a new year and the time of year when all us book bloggers make our reading plans for the coming year. Well, a few old favourites blog-wise,  will still be on this bloggers list to do. I will be doing another Shadow man booker this year. I want to do another Spanish lit month with Richard. I have a number of books waiting for this year event. Then, of course, German lit month. I have already filled my shelves ready for next year event. For me these three events keep me ticking over I love a challenge. I have seen a number of lists of books coming out. But I always just happy with the books  I get sent and if anything else catches my eye book wise I tend to get them these days.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I hope to remember John Steinbeck over the year as it will be 50 years since his death, I have a number of his books on my shelves I’m not doing a readalong or week but would happily help anyone that wanted to do. Books on my TBR I am looking forward to are the open letter books from last year I have brought and still have to read four of them. The invented part, island of point Nemo, Tomas Jonsson bestseller and Chronicle of the murdered house. River by Esther Kinsky is another great looking book from Fitzcarraldo. Before that, I need to clear a backlog of about five books from last year. I am already one book into this year reading this year.I intend to try and reach 100 French books on the blog and also get to 900 books read and maybe add three or four more countries to the blog. What are your plans