Millions of Americas
Sunday, January 31st, 2010It’s possible that no road trip book tour would be complete without a discussion of Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley: in Search of America. He talked about the uniqueness of every journey, each like a snowflake with different patterns and idiosyncrasies. Thus, he said, every different person who traveled the same road he did would have a different impression of what America really is.
Surely there are commonalities, but even the roads and the landscape are colored by weather and traffic conditions and the unique state of mind of the driver. As humans we can connect on some level with common experiences and objects, but our unique perceptions create millions of images or versions that we can’t always reconcile. So many possibilities, so many Americas.
One thing I found interesting in Travels with Charley was Steinbeck’s comments about not wanting to draw us a map about exactly where he was in the trip. He said that some people like to have the geography lined out for them so they can better imagine where he was. I admit, I’m one of those people, but I completely understood what he was getting at. The exact geography was not relevant, just something superficial getting in the way of our connecting on the actual experiences.
And just because you might know exactly what road he was on and what restaurant, doesn’t mean you could ever experience his trip. It doesn’t mean you could ever run off sadly trying to recreate his journey for yourself to touch ever so superficially upon his celebrity.
So if you traveled the same roads and ate at the same restaurants and ordered the same things off the menu and stayed at the same hotels and decked out a truck with a camper, a shotgun, a fully stocked bar and a big black French poodle, you’d be totally missing the point. Read the memoir. Meet the man. It’s the only way to connect in any human way with his travels.

