Dogging Steinbeck: Discovering America and Exposing the Truth about 'Travels With Charley': Discovering America and Exposing the Truth about 'Travels With Charley'
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Thanks to Steinbeck’s superb writing skills, Viking’s devious editing and marketing, the gullibility of the age and the subsequent lack of scrutiny by scholars, Steinbeck was able to turn a failed journey into an American road classic. “Travels With Charley” remains an iconic travel book. It will be sold and read all over the world for a long time. Everyone interested in its author, literature or America should read it once – but critically, skeptically, with an adult eye. And as John Steinbeck’s last major work of fiction.
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Bill Steigerwald bio
I was 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. My interviews and libertarian op-ed columns were nationally syndicated for about five years at CagleCartoons.com, and I worked briefly for CBS-TV in Hollywood in the late 1970s. My 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. I retired from the daily newspaper business in March 2009.
Many many thanks
Thanks to the hundreds of people I met or called or emailed in the last 2.5 years who were so kind to me and helped me write this book. Special thanks to my good friend Bob Hoover for his unflagging encouragement and advice about the slow, frustrating world of books and publishing. Thanks to the wise editors at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and Reason magazine who helped me break the bad news about “Charley.” Thanks to NPR and especially “On the Media” for discovering me early and to the New York Times for discovering me later but giving me and my journalism eternal credibility. Thanks to my agent Peter Rubie. Thanks to authors Curt Gentry, Paul Theroux, Geert Mak and Nancy Steinbeck – and especially to "The Bookman Jim Dourgarian and humor columnist/author Tom Purcell – for their help, praise and/or moral support. Thanks to the many people I forgot to thank. And may God bless all the wonderful librarians in public and university libraries from New Hampshire to Butte to Stanford.
I welcome all praise, criticism, quibbles and corrections at my web site The Truth About ‘Travels With Charley.’
Chronology of articles & media coverage
NPR, “Weekend Edition Saturday,” Oct. 2, 2010: Scott Simon interviews me in Vermont while I’m making my trip.
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Dec. 5, 2010: “Sorry, Charley” Though “Travels With Charley” has been marketed, reviewed and taught as a work of nonfiction for half a century, I charge that it is mostly fiction and a dishonest account of his actual journey.
NPR media watchdog show "On the Media" with Bob Garfield, Dec. 24, 2010: The first national media coverage of my literary “scoop.”
Monterey County Weekly, Jan. 20, 2011: In “Travels With Steinbeck” Steinbeck scholar Susan Shillinglaw discredits my journalism and pooh-poohs my findings when interviewed for a feature story on Bill Barich’s Steinbeck-inspired 2010 book, “Long Way Home: On the Trail of Steinbeck’s America.” My response.
Reason magazine, April, 2011: “Sorry, Charley: Was John Steinbeck’s ‘Travels With Charley’ a Fraud?” A stronger indictment of Steinbeck’s literary fraud.
New York Times, April 4, 2011: "A Reality Check for Steinbeck and Charley" The Times “discovers” my story and culture writer Charles McGrath interviews me and two Steinbeck scholars, San Jose State English professor Susan Shillinglaw and Steinbeck biographer Jay Parini, who don’t think much of my 50-year-old literary "scoop."
New York Times editorial, April 10, 2011: In "The Truth About Charley" the Paper of Record’s editorial page credits me with having made an "intriguing" and "disheartening" discovery about the high level of untruth and dishonesty in "Charley" and expresses irritation Steinbeck scholars were so blasé about my findings.
Washington Post, April, 2011: In “Steinbeck’s true enough ‘Travels With Charley’” Post editorial page staffer Rachel Dry describes her own Steinbeck road trip, her encounter with me in Chicago and why she thinks Steinbeck’s fictions and lies don’t matter.
Daily Pilot, April 16, 2011: Editor John Canalis explains why he was disappointed by my discoveries about his literary hero’s fictions and fibs. Gail Steinbeck, the wife of Steinbeck’s son Thom, said Canalis had been duped by me and questioned the depth of my research and my motives in "Steinbeck's daughter-in-law says 'Travels' is true," a letter to the editor that ran April 28, 2011.
Wikipedia: Its "Travels With Charley" entry quickly added information about my indictment of the book’s veracity and in 2013 it added a portion of the disclaimer Penguin Group asked Professor Jay Parini to add to the introduction of the 50th anniversary edition of "Charley."
Nouse, the University of York’s student newspaper, June 22, 2011: The great travel writer Paul Theroux, speaking at the Hay Literary festival in Britain, referred to my findings and said that Steinbeck – like many travel writers – played fast and loose with the truth.
Reason magazine, July 25, 2012: “Whitewashing John Steinbeck: Why partisan politics and virulent racism were cut from the celebrated 'non-fiction' road book Travels With Charley” Steinbeck’s “Paragraph of Filth,” which was edited out of his first draft in 1961 because it was too vulgar to publish then or now, is seen by the public for the first time.
Reizen zonder John: Op zoek naar Amerika (“Traveling Without John: In Search of America”), August, 2012: In his 573-page book famed Dutch journalist and author Geert Mak recounts his 2010 retracing of Steinbeck’s “Charley” trip, publicizes my discoveries about Steinbeck’s fictions and lies and praises my dogged journalism (in Dutch).
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Oct. 14, 2012: "'Travels With Charley': Now officially mostly fiction" My article points out that because of my discoveries Penguin Group had quietly inserted disclaimers into the introduction of their latest edition of “Charley,” making it clear the book was so fictionalized it should not be believed as the true story of Steinbeck’s trip.
C-SPAN, March 3, 2013: "Q&A" C-SPAN founding father Brian Lamb interviewed me for an hour about how I came to write "Dogging Steinbeck" on his "Q&A" program.
Miscellaneous
A “Travels With Charley” Timeline, with photos and video I shot on the road in the fall of 2010. My YouTube channel has raw video from my road trip.
John Biewen, a producer/reporter for North Carolina Public Radio, did an inventive CDS radio series, "Travels with Mike: In Search of America 50 Years After Steinbeck." He asked Steinbeck scholar Susan Shillinglaw if she agreed with him that some of the characters in "Charley" were a little too good to be true/real. Her full interview is here.
About John Steinbeck
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 in 1960. 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 helpful archivist Herb Behrens will answer all your Steinbeck questions.
San Jose State University's Martha Heasley Cox Center for Steinbeck Studies
His books
His biographers
His publisher
His movies & TV
His author son Thom
Atlantic Monthly review (1962)
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