Arts, Entertainment, Living Travels Without Charley Chasing "Charley" in New Hamphire
 Bill Steigerwald hit the road on Sept. 23 to follow the 10,000-mile trail blazed by John Steinbeck in the fall of 1960 for his bestseller "Travels With Charley." Bill traveled without a dog and did not camp under the stars. But the former Post-Gazette staffer used the "Charley" book, research from Steinbeck archives and his best drive-by journalism skills to compare the author's actual journey with the one he depicted in his best-selling road book. Steigerwald’s 11,276-mile road trip, which also documented some of the ways the America Steinbeck saw has – or has not – changed, took 43 days and ended Nov. 7.  On Twitter
Related Charley Links: Related Steinbeck Links: The National Steinbeck Center is the most accessible place to enter the fictional and nonfictional world of John Steinbeck, who was 58 when he set off in search of America. Located in Salinas, Calif., Steinbeck's birthplace, the center offers multimedia exhibits and the star Steinbeck relic, Rocinante, the restored truck-camper used for "Travels With Charley," the top-selling book in the museum store. The center's archivist will take your questions at the center's Facebook page. San Jose State University's His publisher Time magazine's top 10 nonfiction list
About Bill Steigerwald: The oldest member of the Pittsburgh multimedia family that includes his TV sports brothers John and Paul and guitarist Dan, Bill was an editor and writer/reporter for the Los Angeles Times in the 1980s, the Post-Gazette in the 1990s and the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review in the 2000s. His interviews and libertarian op-ed columns were nationally syndicated for about five years, and he worked briefly for CBS-TV in Hollywood in the late 1970s. The former Pittsburgh Press paper boy retired from the daily newspaper business in March 2009, hoping to spend the last third of his life writing books. |
RSS: 
Travels Without Charley: The route
See an interactive map of John Steinbeck's 1960 route, and follow the path Bill Steigerwald took as he retraced it from Sept. 23 to Nov. 7, 2010. Also see: "Travels without Charley/A journalist sets out to retrace John Steinbeck's 1960 trek across America" (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Sept. 19, 2010).
"Travels Without Charley" explains in great detail how I discovered that John Steinbeck’s 1962 travel classic "Travels With Charley" – marketed and taught as a work of nonfiction for half a century -- is not a true and honest account of the cross-country trip he made in the fall of 1960. The best place to start is where I did, at the beginning.
“Charley” & America in Pictures
In the fall of 2010, when I retraced the road trip John Steinbeck made for his bestseller “Travels With Charley,” I took nearly 2,000 pictures of America and Americans.
I took snapshots of people I met, places I went or things I thought were interesting, pretty, funny or stupid. I photographed many places Steinbeck mentions in “Travels With Charley” as well as hotels and homes he stayed at while on his 1960 journey.
Some of my photos are pretty good, some are blurry or kind of crazy. Many were taken through my car windows at 70 mph.
Collectively they help me tell the true story of “Travels With Charley” and provide a hint of the beautiful country and good people I saw on my high-speed dash down the Steinbeck Highway.
At least one picture from my trip, starting with Steinbeck's summer home in Sag Harbor, N.Y., will be posted here each day until July 29, 2012, the 50th anniversary of the publication of "Travels With Charley in Search of America.
Bill Steigerwald
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
A mini-index:
"'Travels With Charley' Timeline" is a well-linked, well-illustrated, updated timeline that pinpoints, as much as possible, the places Steinbeck was between Sept. 23, 1960, and Dec. 5, 1960, and what I wrote about them when I went there. There are photos and some short, raw, amateur but informative video clips of some of the stops I made on the Steinbeck Highway.
“Why I’m Hounding Steinbeck" explains that I didn’t set out to fact-check Steinbeck or his “Charley” trip or cause the great author any grief. I just wanted to retrace his 1960 route and compare what he saw in 1960 with what I saw and then write a book about how America has and has not changed in the last 50 years.
"The Travels With Steinbeck Myth" shows how deeply the myths and fictions of Steinbeck's trip have been buried into the consciousness of American culture.
Subscribe to this comment's feed
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|