🐩 After furnishing Rocinante with everything he might need to be comfortable during the journey - he ended up bringing way too many - he started right away. The first transit was Maine. From there, he headed towards the Pacific Northwest. One of his (and mine) favorite is White Mountains 'with the prettiest villages in the whole nation'. While in Maine, Steinbeck observed that mobile homes was a new trend, he found many of them, parked on the open country (immune from town taxes). The park men only charged small ground rent plus fees for water and electricity. Steinbeck invited one of his 'neighbor' camper, a performing street actor, for a cup of coffee, and they had a very interesting conversation. He did that several times during the road trip, conversing with people, to get to know their views on many things.
🐩 Another interesting observation made by Steinbeck was how the writing of city signs reflected the character of the city. But his more important discovery was the lost of regional speech with local accents. He blamed television and radio broadcasted to the whole nation as the cause. People everywhere heard the same accent, and it immersed in theirs. "For with local accent will disappear local tempo. The idioms, the figures of speech that make language rich and full of the poetry of place and time must go. And in their place will be a national speech, wrapped and packaged, standard and tasteless."
🐩 Although Steinbeck's main desire was to learn about America, he also made a not less important discovery. It's about Charley. I loved Charley! For me, he is the main attraction of the book (sorry, Steinbeck!) I loved the way he said 'Ftt', while waking up his master or attracting his attention. A truly French gentleman he is, always polite, gentle, and dignified. It was painful for him (physically and mentally) when he got prostatitis. It must have been humiliating for him every time he needs to pee, poor Charley! Anyway, Steinbeck got to learn an unknown side of Charley after an encounter with bears on Yellowstone National Park. It was a quite tensed moment. I, too, have had an interesting discovery. If you have read East of Eden, you might remember a secondary but not the least important character: Lee - the household old Chinese intelligent servant. Lee was actually the name of Steinbeck's childhood cook!
🐩 At last, Steinbeck's travels with Charley went beyond Steinbeck's dream (whose travels ever match one's expectation, right?) He wanted to learn about America, but could he conclude in the end, who, what, or how America was? It's not that easy. Steinbeck experienced one last shock before ending his travel; he experienced first hand the intense racism towards Negroes in the South. The amount of hatred he felt was enough to disgust and enraged him to, finally, soured his journey to and end, long before he arrived home. For me, the travels provided a first hand glimpse to America in the 1960s, but what pleased me the most is John Steinbeck's writing - incisive, eloquent, and witty.
Some quotes:
"It seems to me that Montana is a great splash of grandeur. The scale is huge but not overpowering."
- John Steinbeck fell in love with Montana!
"You can't go home again because home has ceased to exist except in the mothballs of memory."
Read for:
No comments:
Post a Comment
What do you think?