John Steinbeck said in 1961 that he wrote Travels with Charley because he’d been in Europe so long he’d lost touch, and sympathy, with America. As shown by John Steinbeck’s USA—the Great Literary Tour series documentary available through April 29 on ARTE TV—America is looking stranger than ever to Europeans in 2019. A Franco-German venture with EU funding, ARTE (Association relative à la télévision européenne) provides serious cultural programming free, without commercials, online and on European television. Narrated in German with English subtitles that probably didn’t mean to be funny, John Steinbeck’s USA combines rare archival footage with interviews, commentary, and video filmed at a variety of venues—a hard shell Baptist church in Brunswick, Vermont; a gun-happy hunter’s house in Deer Isle, Maine; a trailer park home in Middle America—that sync with Steinbeck’s schedule in Travels with Charley. True to the sense and sensibility of Steinbeck’s semi-fictive classic, it’s one literary tour for Europeans that no American with Steinbeck’s anxiety about America’s future should miss.
Video image from John Steinbeck’s USA courtesy ARTE TV
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It looks like it took about 20 Europeans to retrace Steinbeck’s 1960 road trip, but they’ve given us a video tour that should be interesting to all Steinbeck fans despite leaving out large chunks of his journey and soft-pedaling the fictionalizing he did in “TWC.” The archival news film and vintage b&w photos of John and Elaine are great to see in one place. Lots of “Travels with Charley” quotes are used throughout as the euros provide fresh (2015-ish) video footage of Steinbeck’s Sag Harbor house, the unchanged two-lane highways of New England, the roadside junk shops, the churchgoers, the lobster fishermen of Stonington, Me., a stereotypical American gun-nutty hunter, a slightly embarrassing pair of Midwest mobile home dwellers …. The 20 Europeans, despite their government funding, clearly didn’t have the time or cash or endurance to follow Steinbeck’s entire 10,000 mile road trip. After lots of East Coast video we get a flash of Chicago, a touch of interstate highway and a bit on Steinbeck’s fascination with vending machines. Then suddenly we’re 2,000 miles west in fast-growing Seattle (then and now). Then we’re down to worship the redwoods of California before visiting Monterey/Cannery Row. Next we’re over in Austin, Tex., where a relative (nephew?) of Elaine’s explains/excuses why John largely left her out of “TWC” even though she was with him for more than half the road trip: it was a novel, you see, not true nonfiction. Then before returning to Sag Harbor the Europeans hop down to New Orleans. There’s loads of full-color KKK imagery, a school bus on fire and 1960 news-footage of little Ruby bridges and the ugly racist protests that white mothers mounted against the integration of public schools there. The Euro-film makers did a good job with their map of Steinbeck’s trip around the USA, except that they didn’t show that he went clear to the top of Maine before heading west. Like a terrible 1968 TV “documentary” of Steinbeck’s trip narrated by Henry Fonda, they skipped a few thousand road miles in Flyover Country. They entirely left out his Chicago to Seattle dash, probably for money reasons but also because the USA is such a monstrous country. They also didn’t mention Steinbeck’s five-day stop in San Francisco, his two-week layover in Pacific Grove and his Thanksgiving stay at the big ranch outside Albuquerque. The Europeans obviously were not out to criticize Steinbeck’s fictionalized account of his trip or fact-check him, but they could have benefited from using my book “Dogging Steinbeck” or Geert Mak’s “In America: Travels With John Steinbeck” as references. When I faithfully retraced every mile of Steinbeck’s 1960 trip in the fall of 2010 I only had a credit card and about $5,000 bucks to spend, but I did the best I could. I took a few thousand photos and several hours of video of the roads the Steinbecks traveled and the places they slept. Anyone interested in what the 20 Europeans left out can go to http://www.truthaboutcharley.com, where, along with my exposing and criticizing of the fictionalizing and fibbing Steinbeck and Viking Press did, there’s a timeline of Steinbeck’s journey that’s as accurate as I could make it.
Bill, glad to see your comments.
Herb