Rating: 
Summary: It was a good idea and done well, but the story dwindled.
Review: As I read this book, I found it very easy to read, a very interesting story, but not very captivating. There wasn't much motivation to pick up the book each night. After Steinbeck left New England, in my opinion, the story dwindled. The feeling of exploration and new horizons seemed to be jaded, more of a guy driving in a car with his dog than someone discovering America. I mean, how many times can you analyze the tendencies of the local man? It was a good idea, and done to the best of his capabilities, but Steinbeck didn't make it interesting enough, and didn't establish a long running story.
Rating:
Summary:
Travels with Charley captures the ¿true¿ America.
Review:
In Steinbeck's travel across America, he sets out with the aspiration of rediscovering the country. He had lived his life in Maine, and had been longing to explore the country that he had lived in for years. Thus, he embarked. This book deals with his adventures across America. Throughout his book, Steinbeck tries to give a feeling of the "true" America. He talks to many people, from the removed country folk to the urban, big-city inhabitants. In his journal you will notice the difference between the two people. Steinbeck also talks of his love of the countryside and how this diversifies America. In the end, Travels with Charley: In Search of America turns out to be a great book, but it occasionally failed to sustain my interests. I found Steinbeck rambling sometimes, as he sometimes does, but it ended catching the true essence of America. Steinbeck has pieced together fascinating events that reflect the genuine America. It is not the America of people splashed across magazine tabloids or on the television, but the America of the working-class citizen.
Rating: 
Summary: This book is a great account of what it means to be American
Review: Travels with Charley is a great novel about the American character. John Steinbeck has a unique way of presenting the American character. There is no another way to explain this book except as a diverse account of the strange and wonderful creativity of traveling alone, while still needing the company of others. I think that no other book can truly be as accurate as this one. Travels with Charley definitely ranks as a 10 on my scale!
Rating:
Summary: Travels with Charley: A taste of America.
Review: A captivating literary work for anyone who has ever wondered about their country, Travels with Charley, by John Steinbeck, gives insight into the mind of the American citizen as a single grain in the diverse sandbox of America. Steinbeck recognizes the burning desire possessed by so many Americans at least once in their lives to travel around their country, and experience its many lifestyles firsthand. Travels with Charley has the power to calm this urge by delving deep into the many hearts of America, and blends together elements of friendship, civilization, wonder, and life in a spectacular story.
Rating:
Summary: Steinbeck provides some very interesting views on America.
Review: In this book, Steinbeck demonstrates his great gift of connecting his stories with the American people, to give his works a gritty, down-to-earth style. Steinbeck beautifully depicts the American people, not as superhuman, but as truly alive, with all their flaws and shortcomings. Travels With Charley represents the American dream, or as it was seen decades ago. Yet Travels With Charley is still worth reading in today's modern times. And ultimately, it provides the reader with an in-depth look into America's recent past.
Rating:
Summary: Travels with Charley provided a first hand look at America.
Review: Travels with Charley paints the reader a beautiful portrait of America, from individual accounts to opinions of cities and states. Steinbeck1s simple words yet deep meaning allow the reader to identify with his inside view of America. The personal accounts that Steinbeck writes about provide a look at the people and cultural regions in America, instead of a simple descriptions of the landscape. The opening chapter is certainly something anyone can identify with, as it describes Steinbeck1s own hunger to explore our great country. Travels with Charley is a unique book that provides an unprecedented description of America.
Rating:
Summary: Travels with Charley offers a diverse portrait of America.
Review: In an eerily ironic passage in Travels with Charley Steinbeck notes Sinclair Lewis's fall from the canon as well as from cultural view. Like Lewis, Steinbeck seems to have fallen from academic and literary vogue in favor of writers who present a more "diverse" portrait of American culture. However, such a tacit dismissal of Steinbeck's white-male view and his politically incorrectness (most notably using the phrase "wetback Mexican" to refer to an illegal Mexican immigrant) reduces the impact of a work which broaches many current issues well before they were in vogue. Dealing with environmental concerns (especially with his dead-on critique of the wasteful packaging of American goods), and America's restless quest for both spiritual and economic transcendence, Steinbeck's quirky travelogue speaks cogently to today's world as eloquently as it did to the Cold World of the early 1960s. Despite his penchant to embellish his enccounters with Americans, Steinbeck's work provides a cultural history which is important not only in academe and American Studies programs, but in realizing that our history as Americans is rooted squarely in our past, and a not so distant past at that. In searching for America, Steinbeck reminds us that we need to indeed look past labels and stereotypes that root us in fallow soil. Tilling the land in Rocinante, this little book prepares our minds for the diverse crops of American fiction of the past thirty-six years, and adds to our understanding of characters we have met and have yet to meet.
Rating:
Summary: Steinbeck fan
Review: I mostly picked this book up because I have been a Steinbeck fan since I was 12. I wanted more insight into his personal life, and I was not disapointed. I could just picture John driving all over our great country with his DOG! I loved how he let us into his master mind on how he viewed everything. It was no let down. Another A+ for the records.
Rating:
Summary: An essential to travelers and non-travelers alike.
Review: Steinbeck captures the essence of what it means to be an American, using the wisdom which he gathered all his life.
Rating: 
Summary: A valuable insight into Steinbeck's America
Review: In our ongoing struggle to develop an American identity that extends beyond CocaCola and denim jeans, we have forgotten what makes us a nation. Steinbeck alludes to a few of those American traits, but never makes a clear statement. The observations are vague at times, but consistent with his belief that each of us should find America on our own.
Because "Travels" is a collection of events, it was hard to stick with. I found that I was easily distracted by the nearest interruption. But just as easy as the book was to set down, I was never lost when I picked it up again. And when I continued, each episode had a valuable insight into Steinbeck's America.
If you stick with it, you'll find a few of his observations provoking. From the outset, Steinbeck insists that his observations were merely his, and that his experiences were unique.
The most important entries are saved for the end as he visits a racially segregated South on the verge of bursting. Steinbeck's exhaustion with the situation mirrors the pain that many of us feel today as race relations continue to make headlines across our nation.
|
