Down John's Road: Recreating John Steinbeck's 1960 American Road Trip

by John R. Olson

Two men. Two trucks. Two Americas. Follow journalist John Olson in fall 2009 as he recreated John Steinbeck's iconic 1960 "Travels With Charley" journey in a GMC truck * Ride shotgun with Olson for 80 days, 12,673 miles, through 34 states. * Meet the zany characters at the midnight parking lots of Walmart. * Feel the tension as Olson comes within a second of dying on a lonesome Louisiana road. * Pick up a hitchhiker in Arizona thumbing his way to Egypt. * Joke with convicts, eat with the homeless, and chase a moose in backwoods Maine. * Go berserk in the boroughs of New York City searching for Yankee Stadium. * Find what Alice Cooper, Carl Bernstein, Mae West and Willie Nelson have in common. In September 1960, writer John Steinbeck, left Sag Harbor, Long Island, in a GMC truck camper, and later wrote "Travels With In Search of America." He wanted to save his sanity and prove his manhood. In September 2009, writer John Olson, stared into his mortality as well, and started driving down Steinbeck's long road - also in a GMC truck camper. Both men took 11 weeks on the trek obsessed with circling the United States. Comparing and contrasting Steinbeck's 1960 Great American Road Trip with America five decades later, Olson ponders the question Steinbeck What are Joe Average Americans like today? Find out for yourself - Down John's Road.

330 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 29, 2011

Reviews

[Wayne Murphy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A journey worth travelling.
It is a nice story about ordinary people and ordinary places; but those are the things worth experiencing - same goes for the book.
Added note: I’ve never met the author - but I was given a copy of the book by the author’s brother, while on a train ride in Toronto. We just struck up a conversation and he gave me a copy to read. I think friendliness runs in the family...
Thank you for the conversation and the book, both were time well spent.

[Diane Ferbrache · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this up in a used bookstore in Port Townsend, WA. I was intrigued by the possibilities. I first re-read Travels with Charley and then this book by a local journalist who recreated Steinbeck's trip. Filled with anecdotes and experiences that sometimes mirrored Steinbeck's own experiences, this is a fun, thought-provoking look at America in the 21st century. Although even the author will likely admit his writing is not equal to Steinbeck's, this book is well worth the time.

[D.M. Dutcher · Rating 3 out of 5]

Disclaimer: bought the Amazon Kindle version.

John Olson is a retired newspaper journalist going through a rough time in his life. So he decides to go on a road trip, and not just any road trip: one that recreates the famous trip John Steinbeck took in his novel Travels With Charley. So he gets a truck, has a truck camper made by the same company that made Steinbeck's, saves some money, and heads out.

I was interested in it because truck campers have always appealed to me. There's something about being able to put your house right on your vehicle and just drive. The book is good, but it lacks a spark to make it really good. Maybe it's too much focus on random people he encounters, or too many nights doing the usual RV way of boondocking: parking overnight in Wal-Mart. He enters a town, talks to one or more of its inhabitants, maybe sees the sights, and moves on to the next town. After awhile it feels a bit formulaic, especially with his tendency to end each chapter with some permutation of "Down John's Road."

I almost wish he had just traveled on his own itinerary than try to be captive to Steinbeck's. However, I have yet to read Travels with Charley, so I might be missing deeper levels of meaning. It's a good book to read, but towards the end you feel a little fatigued as a reader. Which is fitting, considering that he himself must have felt the same fatigue.