Dogging Steinbeck: How I Went in Search of John Steinbeck's America, Found My Own America, and Exposed the Truth about 'Travels with Charley'

by Bill Steigerwald

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.

Genres: Travel, Nonfiction, Books About Books, Travelogue, Biography Memoir, Biography, History

268 pages, Paperback

First published December 14, 2012

About the author

Bill Steigerwald has written five books since retiring from his newspaper career, his journalism/civil rights history book "30 Days a Black Man" (2017), and "Dogging Steinbeck" (2013), his expose of the fictions and lies John Steinbeck and his publisher put into "Travels With Charley." He wrote and edited "Undercover in the Land of Jim Crow," which reprints the 1948 series written by Ray Sprigle (the subject of "30 Days a Black Man." And in 2022 he wrote 'Grandpa Bear Goes to Washington," an illustrated "adult kids book" about a polar bear who goes to Washington to tell the politicians there that his species is not endangered by climate change. He is a veteran journalist from Pittsburgh who worked as an editor and writer/reporter/columnist 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 at CagleCartoons.com, and he worked briefly for CBS-TV in Hollywood in the late 1970s. Steigerwald's freelance articles, interviews and commentaries have appeared in many of the major newspapers in the USA and in magazines like Reason, Penthouse and Family Circle. He retired from the daily newspaper business in March 2009. He and his wife Trudi live south of Pittsburgh in the woods.

Reviews

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Travels with Charley is a personal favorite, so the teaser to Dogging Steinbeck – wherein a retired journalist “proved Steinbeck’s iconic nonfiction book was a 50-year old literary fraud” by re-tracking the steps of his famed road trip – seemed worth a read.

Suffice to say, the author finds parts of Steinbeck’s descriptions to be improbable, others impossible. In addition to retracing the stops on the same 11,000-mile journey, Steigerwald compares the narrative of Steinbeck’s trip to published letters the author wrote to his third wife and friends while on the road, pointing out chronological and geographical inconsistencies that, in his own words, anyone with a library card and an inclination towards fact-checking could have figured out.

The trouble is, no one before him did. I think his disillusionment with the world of literary academia is right on the money in this regard. The most prominent “Steinbeck scholars” had overlooked major discrepancies in the “real” Steinbeck trip, as corroborated from by an abundance of available primary source accounts, from the version presented in “Charley.” A biographer trumpeted rose-colored accounts of Steinbeck’s journey corroborated only by one (of three) ex-wives, without basic fact- and sense-checking. And lastly, as academics are prone to do when shown to be wrong or just inept, the aforementioned scholars doubled down on their original positions in the face of concrete to highly suggestive evidence that large parts of their analyses on Steinbeck and his journey were fundamentally flawed.

With all that said, I found Steigerwald’s accusations of “fraud” perpetuated by Steinbeck and his editors to be a bit childish. I’d hazard a guess that >95% of the “lies” exposed were actually omissions or events where the ex-journalist couldn’t find additional confirming evidence attesting to Steinbeck’s whereabouts. In fact, many of the pieces that his editors cut from his first draft, including the occasional political rant, or the presence of his third wife for roughly half of the journey, struck me as totally, or at least arguably, appropriate. They made for a better read, and a more universally-compelling story. Steigerwald’s own narrative is overly detailed and full of needless political jabs, which, to me, illustrates the exact rationale for editorial license that Steinbeck's editors took in the first place.

Steinbeck admits to his own readers in “Charley” that he may have taken liberties to relay greater truths, or to tell better narrative, though it certainly seems he and his editors took much more license than what is hinted at in the original work. Many of Steigerwald’s vehemently-argued points would be totally moot of Penguin or Viking had stuck “Creative Nonfiction” rather than just “nonfiction” on the binder of “Charley.” In my mind, the Steinbeck academics are the ones with egg on their face here.

In summary, I found Steigerwald’s book interesting for the issues it made me ponder – editorial license and the shades of grey in between nonfiction and fiction. On its own though, Dogging Steinbeck gets a middling three stars, vs a full five for the Steinbeck original.

[Juniper · Rating 1 out of 5]

oh boy.

at first the book was a bit of a curiosity. then i began feeling quite annoyed with the author. things then escalated to the point i was hate-reading the last ⅓ of this book. sigh. i am not sure what went so horribly wrong with this book for me? in initially i wondered if the author was trying to be funny and it just wasn't translating well? but i don't think that's it. the style of writing is not very strong, so that was problematic throughout. but i also found the tone of the writing to be...as though the author was putting himself above everyone else, as though he was better than everyone else. there are moments in the book when the author criticized steinbeck, but then goes and does the exact same thing he's critical about. for instance, steigerwald calls out steinbeck for perhaps being mean. and then goes on to be fairly nasty himself. (towards the state of louisiana, in one over-the-top display.) so i was really noticing lots of moments of hypocrisy.

another thing that to really hit me the wrong way was the grossly unnecessary number of times steigerwald had to insert the fax that he's a libertarian. (25+, in case you are wondering.) who the fuck cares?! (a statement steigerwald should actually appreciate given his predisposition.)

overall, i just came to find the personality of the author - as shown in this book - to be that of a jerkface. one instance of this has to do with a potential visit with his sister. the author lives in pittsburgh. his sister in...new mexico. he gets to within 100 miles of his sister's house - a place where she lives mostly off the grid, in a very simple way. steigerwald has time for this, as he's ahead of steinbeck's schedule. but he opts to not go visit her. a bit later on, when he does not quite have a lot of time, he goes on a 125-ish mile detour. where i had a problem was in how he qualified this decision, which only served to make me feel that his sister was not terribly important to him.

it's funny how things are read and opinions are formed. steigerwald may be a perfectly nice man...but, wow. i did not get that impression in reading this book. it's clear he has done a lot of research on steinbeck, and it's cool he retraced (mostly) steinbeck's 1960 journey. both men, though looking to find 'america', were fairly insulated in their travels, their exposures were to mostly white, middle class people. at times (both in 1960 and in 2010) when so many people in america are struggling, and politics are so active, neither did a good job of capturing diverse slices of life. (though at least steigerwald recognizes this, yet seems to take pains to stress how well and wealthy americans are doing today (wtf?)- the fact his only visit to an area of colour/diversity occurred in new orleans, and is then followed by a serious hate-on rant agains the entire state really didn't serve him, or the book, well at all.)

i don't know if i am making sense here. i have a number of passages highlighted in the book, so will come back to add some quotes to support my opinions, once i have my nook at hand.

anyway...this book -- skip it. i read it for you, now you don't have to. ugh!

[Nina · Rating 2 out of 5]

The premise of the book - proving that Steinbeck fabricated many things in his Travels With Charley book, was interesting. But this book itself stunk on so many fronts: 1`) It's a political rant. The author's libertarian diatribes were tedious and out of place in this kind of book. 2) It's whiny. He spends way too much ink complaining about how people didn't recognize him for the genius he perceives himself to be for documenting Steinbeck's "creative nonfiction." He seems to think his achievement ranks up there with exposing Watergate, when it's just an expose of a book that's quickly losing relevance anyway. 3) It's repetitive. E.g., three times within one chapter he quotes Steinbeck saying that the state of Montana is his love, and that's just one example. 4) It's hypocritical. He accuses Steinbeck of padding, while he himself pads with repetition and whining. He accuses Steinbeck of a shallow, drive-by look at America (which it was), but the author's own perceptions were shallow. 5) He wasn't just critical of Steinbeck; his verbiage bordered on vindictiveness. I appreciate participatory journalism, but this book was just annoying to read.

[James · Rating 1 out of 5]

Anti-union, anti-dog, anti-New Deal Baby Boomer sets off on quest to prove that John Steinbeck's Travels with Charley book was a "fraud." Uses anonymous Facebook posts to prove his foregone conclusion. The most dishonest and misguided book I've ever read. Truly awful.

[Jamie Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

John Steinbeck was fifty-eight in 1960 when he decided to take a road trip. He was by then famous, wealthy, and well connected, living in New York City and Sag Harbor when he wasn’t traveling around Europe. He wanted to reconnect with the America of his youth, to understand its people and the ways it was changing. His route followed the perimeter of the country, from New York to Maine; then to Chicago; Seattle; San Francisco; his boyhood hometown of Salinas, California; Amarillo,Texas; New Orleans; and back to New York. He bought a pickup truck and fitted it with a custom camper shell. His intentions was to drive the highways of America, camp in his truck, meet real working people, hear their stories, and demonstrate that regardless of where they lived, Americans had more in common than they thought. He also took along his wife’s aging poodle.

The result was Travels with Charley. It was a huge success, and is still in print today. He had made his reputation earlier with books such as Grapes of Wrath and Cannery Row but this one was more accessible to ordinary readers, less polemical, and without his earlier critiques of capitalism. For scholars, Charley has always existed in a kind of gray area of artistic license when it came to who he actually met and what they were presumed to have said, but Steinbeck experts considered any fabrications trivial and not worth researching, and the book was (and is) sold as nonfiction. But, as the old song goes, “it ain’t necessarily so….”

Bill Steigerwald decided that he would retrace Steinbeck’s route. He would start from the house in Sag Harbor that Steinbeck had left from, fifty years to the day later. He would follow the same route, to the extent that the old roads still existed, and he would try to find traces of Steinbeck in the places where he had stopped and the things he would have seen.

Problems started to arise as soon as Steigerwald began his research, pouring over letters and documents in the various Steinbeck libraries, and he began to suspect that the book was mostly fiction. He even the read the original, hand-written first draft, which was significantly modified before publication. Steinbeck presented Travels with Charley as the story of a man and his dog, hitting the open road, camping rough, meeting folks along the way, and getting in touch with the real America. He was a great writer, and this book shows him at the top of his game. It is full of charming encounters with ordinary or eccentric people who have interesting and engaging things to say. Steinbeck can bring a character to life in just a few sentences, with an effortless style that generations of writers have tried to emulate.

The problem is that he was singularly unsuited for that kind of participatory journalism. He was not in good health; everyone who knew him tried to talk him out of taking the trip. He had also grown accustomed to a sumptuous lifestyle, and was not likely to enjoy spending a lot of time camping in the wilderness. Finally, he was shy and socially awkward, not at all the kind of person who would be comfortable sitting around chatting up farmers and factory workers and waitresses to see what they were thinking.

He did travel alone with his dog for a good portion of the trip, but he took his wife along at one point, and a friend of his at another. He also made extended stops along the way, staying in luxurious hotels and enjoying the adulation of the local literary and cultural crowds. All of this was cut out of the book.

And those remarkable people he met and had interesting conversation with? They probably existed only in his head. Steinbeck had two sons, Thom and John IV. In his book The Other Side of Eden: Life with John Steinbeck, John IV writes

Thom and I are convinced that he never talked to any of those people in Travels with Charley. He just sat in his camper and wrote all that shit. He was too shy. He was really frightened of people who saw through him. He couldn’t have handled that amount of interaction. So, the book is actually a great novel.

Part of Dogging Steinbeck is about retracing the trip, part is about revealing the fictions that pose as facts, and part of it is Steigerwald’s attempts to get anyone to care. In the cadre of professional Steinbeck scholars, none of them seemed to be concerned about whether Charley was fiction presented as fact, and they were annoyed that someone outside their clique was making waves in their comfortable little world. It didn’t matter to them whether Steinbeck made up most or all of the conversations he reported in his book because as far as they were concerned the book is true in the sense of showing eternal verities illuminating the human condition. They weren’t concerned about whether it was true in the sense of being, well, true. Most of us, though, who do not live in that ethereal world consider truth an important consideration rather than a vague abstraction.

There is nothing wrong with it being mostly fiction so long as people understand that. It has entertained generations of readers, and will no doubt remain in the canon of American literature for a long time to come. It was the first work by Steinbeck I read that was not part of a class assignment, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It gave me a taste for travel writing which I retain to this day.

[Ethan Casey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dogging Steinbeck by Bill Steigerwald is a masterpiece of reporting and of skeptical but respectful literary sleuthing. Paradoxically, it should enhance any reader's appreciation of Steinbeck's genuinely Nobel-worthy overall accomplishment, while simultaneously humanizing him as a flawed human being who, in the case of his Travels with Charley project, made a series of bad decisions that resulted in a very bad and, as Steigerwald argues and shows persuasively, fraudulent book. Steigerwald's book, Dogging Steinbeck, is a deftly woven and entertaining account of both the things he learned about Steinbeck while following his trail fifty years later, and the circa 2010 America that Steigerwald found along the same roads. Fantastic, really an instant classic, a gem of travel writing and literary journalism.

[Cindy Veneris · Rating 1 out of 5]

I hated this book and the author's viewpoints. It's pretty obvious that Travels with Charley was not meant to be taken as the absolute, verbatim truth. The incessant whining over and over about Steinbeck being a later was just annoying. I'm so glad this was a Kindle Unlimited selection and I didn't have to pay anything to read it.

[Ann · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book. Steinbeck was author who may have enabled many to see the West. Bill Steigerwald says he only wanted to travel the same road fifty years after Steinbeck immortalized it in TRAVELS WITH CHARLEY. Living in Dakota all my life, there seems much to be written about us yet.
Every day events are the stuff of good reading but when a writer can connect with the one who reads, he may accomplish much. Many of us still seek the truth even if we do it doglessly!

[David Welsher · Rating 2 out of 5]

Overblown Pseudo-Journalism

Please keep your “libertarian” political leanings out of your so-called objective portrayal of Steinbeck’s innocent trip. Have a nice sleep at Walmart, you cheap bastard.

[Judith · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read just about every American travelogue and "Travels with Charley" was my first and favorite. I was a believer through the first couple of readings, but after decades of long road trips I began to be suspicious. Dogging Steinbeck confirmed my doubts. I never learned much during days spent just rocketing over highways except that this is a vast country sparsely populated with mostly kind, helpful people. The best conversations, comparable to the ones Steinbeck apparently enjoyed daily, generally occur only in hostels or while soaking in remote hot springs.

I believe Steinbeck did not set out to perpetrate a fraud. He could not have known that he couldn't learn much in his mode of travel over just 11 weeks. Finding knowledge, adventure, and joy in a road trip takes skill and a propensity to dawdle.

Just as Steinbeck's fraudulent account was not premeditated, Bill Steigerwald's book was not motivated by the desire to unmask Steinbeck. No experienced road-tripper could miss the fictional aspects, especially armed with Steinbeck documents detailing the actual trip as was Steigerwald. One critical reviewer who obviously has not read Dogging Steinbeck called it a hatchet job. It is most certainly not. The author's respect for both the truth and Steinbeck is obvious.

I wish John Steinbeck had been healthy and free enough to apply his wonderful literary skills to the kind of trip he needed to take to write the book that he initially envisioned. But if the book we got was the only one he could write, I forgive him. Because of Travels with Charley my life has been richer, happier, and, while traveling, I have attended Sunday services from cathedrals to adobe missions to inner-city converted store fronts, even though I otherwise rarely darken the door of a church. Still, Charley is the only fictionalized travelogue I will forgive. A travel book is only one perspective of one journey, and Steigerwald is right to insist that readers are owed a true account.

I felt that Steigerwald's account of his trip and his research was as honest as he could make it. His political opinions do not detract from the book: although he did not make his book about himself, he did tell us who he is and that can only help readers to understand his perspective. I recommend this book to all who enjoy American road trip literature.

[Sandi Widner · Rating 5 out of 5]

A five-star read! A really enjoyable book!

First 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.


Dear Readers: Mr. Steigerwald's "Dogging Steinbeck" was both a revelation and a joy to read. As he follows Steinbeck's old route, he meticulously highlights the discrepancies between what appears in Steinbeck's book and the facts from the author's research. He also describes his own experiences on the trip. At the end of the book (Trip's End) Mr. Steigerwald's summarizes his findings and describes the reaction to them by literary experts. This part alone is a gem.

[Mike Reuther · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wasn't greatly disturbed that John Steinbeck made up a lot of what he wrote about in "Travels with Charley," his account of his cross-country journey back in 1960. That's the subject of this book by Bill Steigerwald. I had a good time just following Steigerwald on his journey around the country fifty years after the Nobel Prize-winning author made his trip. Beware. If you're a liberal who's sensitive about having your political ideologies challenged, this may not be your kind of book. Steigerwald loads up the book with his libertarian views.

[Wil · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an interesting book. My only question is how could anyone be interested in Steinbeck enough to prove his book a fraud. Steigerwald certainly went to great lengths to do so, though, and wrote a rather remarkable travelogue in the process.

[Ellen Wylie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think this is the worst book I’ve bothered to finish. Self-aggrandizing, political twaddle, and worst of all, boring as hell, unless you find tales of overnighting in Walmart parking lots interesting.

[Beth · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting and well written, but the negative tone was off-putting. The book would benefit, as Travels with Charley did, from editing out the politics.

[Jerry Steimel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bill….What are you so angry about?? I liked what you set out to do and I feel it has some merit. But your anger over what Steinbeck and his editors did seems like a reach to me. I think if you had approached it with a little more humor it would have worked a little better. I was never crazy about Travels With Charley. Read it for the first time in high school and trashed it in my book report. Read it again a few years ago before my own cross country journey in a VW bus. (Shameless plug….the book I wrote about it is Chasing Zorba - A Journey of Self-Discovery in a VW Bus….and I can assure you it is nonfiction). My second read made me a appreciate it a little more…but not much. I still feel Steinbeck kind of mailed this one in. But as even Bill did….I give him props for making the journey and giving it a shot.

I not upset like some lovers of TWC for Bill’s exposure. I appreciate knowing more about Steinbeck’s real journey. In fact…It made me want to read it for a third time being a little more informed by Bill’s research. So kudos to Bill for his own trip and for the great research he did. I just wish he wasn’t so angry about it. So Steinbeck stretched things….and left other things out….it’s still a good story. Have a cold one, Bill, and take another road trip just for the fun of it.

[Allison Dubya · Rating 1 out of 5]

Steigerwald's use of "truth" and "reporting" must be taken with a grain of red salt. This book is his vision, impaired by the dark red glasses through which he views the world, of America. He denounces Steinbeck's discoveries as a "fraud" simply because Steinbeck came to different conclusions. Sounds about right.

[Judith Lott · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a very interesting book. Thanks to the author and to Goodreads for having the chance to win this book and enjoy it. I have never been a Steinbeck reader, but this makes me very interested in reading his books. I enjoyed the 'journey' around the U.S.

[Evelyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this book the author travels the same route that Steinbeck & Charley took. On his trip he found that Steinbeck had fabricated some of the experiences. I love to travel and I enjoyed the authors narrative as he followed the route. Good job Bill!

[Dave Pratt · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book, being a Steinbeck fan it really opened my eyes.
The writer made me wish that I was on the trip with him.
I will never pass a Walmart again wondering about all those RVs in the parking lot.
I definitely recommend this book to everyone who is looking for adventure.

[Lisa DeRea · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was excited to read this book for book club and then UGH, so disappointed. It was terribly boring with the author talking about himself all the time. I had to stop at only 16% read.

[J · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well researched book. Fun to read about a sort of a mystery solved and to see how the author unravels Steinbeck's narrative of "Travels with Charley".

[Mark · Rating 1 out of 5]

Bill is an angry man; reminds me of an alcoholic uncle of mine who was a complete angry, jerk while he was drinking. He quit drinking, but he was still an angry jerk. Could not finish this book.

[Dan · Rating 2 out of 5]

My wife and I are currently on a road trip, so I thought this might be a great companion. I remember reading Travels with Charley and loving it, but I wanted something more modern. In Travels with Charley, Steinbeck sets out at the end of his career to see for himself how the country has changed. He traveled in a small camper with his poodle, Charley, and wrote about the people he met and the scenery he discovered.

Unfortunately, the author’s intent in this book was to put across his political views, which contrasted with Steinbeck’s. During our currently political season, I’ve been trying my best to distract myself. The author himself starts the book by saying he was never a Steinbeck fan, and that he just needed to publish the book to make some money. Very disappointing, especially when he calls Steinbeck a fraud. This is the hyper-political fury I’ve been trying to stay out of. I read almost all of the book before putting it down.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bill Steigerwald must have been desperate. Did he find discrepancies in the book and the actual trip that was taken? Yes. Does that discount the importance of Steinbeck's book? No. Please retire into obscurity, Mr. Steigerwald.

[Tracey · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read a review of this book in the eReaderIQ Newsletter - 6 Mar 2015 and it intrigued me, even though I'd never read Travels with Charley: In Search of America. I bought Steigerwald's book, then checked Steinbeck out from the library to see what was what.


I don't think I've read any Steinbeck since college (tho I did watch the Chaney/Burgess Of Mice and Men film adaptation last year - excellent!); after reading Travels with Charley, I think I'll have to revisit his works, as I really enjoyed this book.

In 1960 Steinbeck crossed the United States in a custom camper pickup truck, and his standard poodle (the titular Charley) as companion, with the intent of reconnecting with his country and its people. This book - part travelogue, part essays on the state of America, part memoir/reflection is the result. The term "picaresque" comes to mind - he meets many colorful characters along the way, and enjoys the majority of his interactions. The overall tone is reflective, with the occasional dips into pessimism; Steinbeck doesn't think much of so-called "Progress". However, I got an overall positive vibe from the story - especially his travels through Montana and the Redwoods, where his appreciation of the outdoors pours from his pen. Even his return to Salinas, where he meets up with childhood friends and realizes that "you can't go home again" came off more wistful and nostalgic than genuinely sad, at least to me.

Steinbeck seems to generally enjoy the experience and the people he meets over the first 2/3 to 3/4 of the book - until New Orleans. He goes to the William Frantz elementary school in the Ninth Ward, where young Ruby Bridges, the first black student to be admitted, is attending school escorted by U.S. Marshals. I had a basic understanding of this episode, and had seen the moving Norman Rockwell painting "The Problem We All Live With". But Steinbeck's portrayal of the Cheerleaders - the women who gathered each day to spew their vicious, vile, verbal abuse at this child - made me heartsick; especially with the current events in Ferguson, Baltimore and now Charleston making me wonder what progress we have made in the past 50 years. The experience affected him as well - he made a beeline for home at that point, no longer savoring the journey.

Fifty years later, freelance journalist Bill Steigerwald decided to retrace Steinbeck's journey across the United States to see how we as a people and the land itself had changed in a half-century, with the intent of writing some articles. However, as he prepared for the journey by doing research into Steinbeck's route ... he started finding discrepancies. Using letters Steinbeck wrote to his wife, along with other archival material, Steigerwald began to doubt some of Steinbeck's story. So he embarked on the route in a Toyota Rav4 (totally alone - no dog) to see what the truth was out there.

Travels with Charley portrays Steinbeck as a man alone in his travels, sleeping in his camper alongside the road. But as Steigerwald pieced things together - it appears that of the 75 days Steinbeck spent away from home, over half of the time was spent with his wife. The stopovers he refers to briefly in his book - Seattle, California and Texas -- were much more lengthy in reality, and Steinbeck was more likely to find a nice hotel than he was to "rough it" along the road. In fact, Steigerwald could only find good evidence of him spending 4 or 5 nights in the camper itself.

As a journalist, Steigerwald did his best to track down anyone who may have remembered/interacted with Steinbeck along his travels (and met some fairly colorful characters himself!). However, Steigerwald was unable to identify the majority of the people Steinbeck wrote of so evocatively. Along with this research, he had conversations with Steinbeck's son, Thom (who thinks that his father "just sat in his camper and wrote all that [expletive].") and came to the conclusion that many of these meetings and events were conflated at best, confabulated at worst.

Steigerwald published his findings in a few magazines - and what responses he did get from the Steinbeck scholars were ... less than accepting. His self-published book is his way of reaching out to a larger audience and perhaps a bit of a nose-thumbing to the Steinbeck apologists.

When I followed Steinbeck's work up with Steigerwald's -- it really didn't change my opinion much of Travels with Charley . Perhaps it's because I came to this work so recently, I don't have much invested in it. I also tend to approach both travelogues and memoirs with a grain or two of salt - appreciating the story while not assuming everything is 100% accurate. However, I recognize that others may not feel that way - Steigerwald, as a journalist, is bound by his profession's ethics and apparently thinks Steinbeck should have felt similarly.

I enjoyed the writing styles of both men and would like to read more from both of them.

[Jennet headstones · Rating 5 out of 5]

KSKS

[Jennifer Molyneaux · Rating 2 out of 5]

Most if this book was complaining about the fictional places and people that Steinbeck says he encountered on his cross country trip.

[Dеnnis]

I read 'Travels with Charlie' for the reading club. Glad I followed it with this one. I won't rate it, but it's just because I wanted to concentrate on pages, where Steinbeck's 'inconsistencies' were exposed. I wasn't much interested in author's one experiences of America discovery. Not that those parts were badly written, but rather it,s just because I had too little time to gulp the book for the Club's session. plus he provides good overview of current vs. Steinbeck's US in the end of the book.

I can't say that reading this book soured my impression from the Steinbeck's one, but my fellow club men were veery surprised to learn the realities of that trip and about all those pieces that never went into the final edition of the Travels. All this extra data makes Steinbeck so much more real person.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was the trademark of Route 66 stenciled onto the pavement that sold me on the book's purchase having driven across this country 4 times that Route 66 was part of. I was curious to see what the author and Steinbeck had to say about the "Mother Road" neither of which seemed to be impressed by its significance in American culture. I did however enjoyed the authors politics and viewpoint. I have slept in my van in Rest areas never in a Walmart parking lot although they were an alternative I was aware of.