Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    Quicklet on John Steinbeck's Travels with Charley in Search of America (CliffNotes-like Summary)
    Unavailable
    Quicklet on John Steinbeck's Travels with Charley in Search of America (CliffNotes-like Summary)
    Unavailable
    Quicklet on John Steinbeck's Travels with Charley in Search of America (CliffNotes-like Summary)
    Ebook35 pages21 minutes

    Quicklet on John Steinbeck's Travels with Charley in Search of America (CliffNotes-like Summary)

    By David Shook

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    ABOUT THE BOOK

    I came to John Steinbeck’s work through his novella The Pearl, a diminutive but dark allegory about a Native American pearl diver whose discovery of an enormous pearl hurls him and his family into a world of greed and its disastrous consequences. From The Pearl, I found Cannery Row, my favorite Steinbeck novel.

    From its first sentence, Steinbeck’s descriptions vibrate with the same energy and poetry that his eclectic cast of outcasts embody as they throw unauthorized parties and philosophize with Doc, based on Steinbeck’s real-life friend Ed Ricketts, on 1920s Monterey Bay, the American sardine capital at that time. “Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream.”

    I turned next to Steinbeck’s nonfiction, attracted to Travels with Charley: In Search of America because of my own experiences on Routes 10 and 40, mostly heading west towards California, or back to Oklahoma or Texas to wait until I could go again. Like Steinbeck with his standard poodle Charley, I drove with my steadfast companion, Okie Doke, a considerably smaller pooch.

    MEET THE AUTHOR

    David Shook studied endangered languages in Oklahoma and poetry at Oxford. He's published essays about dancing with the President of Burundi and being detained in Equatorial Guinea, and his poetry, translations, and book reviews regularly appear in magazines like Ambit, Poetry, and World Literature Today. His most recent translations include Mario Bellatin’s novella Shiki Nagaoka: A Nose for Fiction, Roberto Bolano’s 1976 manifesto “Leave Everything, Again,” and the selected love poems of Isthmus Zapotec poet Victor Teran. His current writing projects include Kilometer Zero, a covertly filmed documentary about lost Equatoguinean poets, a miniature encyclopedia, and a collection of travel essays. Shook lives with his wife and chihuahua in Los Angeles, where he edits Molossus. He’s a competitive foosballer, miniature book collector, banjolele picker, and aspiring rapper. His moustache is sponsored by Oregon Wild Hair Moustache Wax, the most literary moustache wax in the world.

    EXCERPT FROM THE BOOK

    Steinbeck won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962, two years after his driving tour across the continent and just months after the publication of Travels with Charley. His winning propelled Travels with Charley to the number one spot on the New York Times Best Seller List. In his acceptance speech he lauded “man’s proven capacity for greatness,” and challenged all writers to celebrate that greatness in their written work.

    For Steinbeck, that was literature’s ultimate purpose, and he compellingly articulated his opinion throughout his speech:

    “I hold that the writer who does not believe in the perfectibility of man has no dedication nor any membership in literature.”

    Born in Salinas, California on 27 February 1902, John Steinbeck witnessed man’s capacity for greatness in the fertile farmlands surrounding the agricultural hub town. While working those fields himself—notably in the company town of Spreckels, which boasted the world’s largest beet sugar processing plant—he witnessed many of man’s less noble attributes, including corporate and individual greed, the poor treatment of migrant workers, and the degradation of the physical environment, all themes he explored in his work.

    Buy a copy to keep reading!

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHyperink
    Release dateFeb 24, 2012
    ISBN9781614641599
    Unavailable
    Quicklet on John Steinbeck's Travels with Charley in Search of America (CliffNotes-like Summary)

    Related to Quicklet on John Steinbeck's Travels with Charley in Search of America (CliffNotes-like Summary)

    Related ebooks

    Book Notes For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Jean Stein, 1934–2017

      May 2, 2017

      Jean Stein, 1934–2017
      1 min read

    • Article

      Those Who Left Us: Literary Obits of 2021

      Dec 30, 2021

      This highly selective list of literary lights that were extinguished during the past year ranges from brand names to barely-knowns. The post Those Who Left Us: Literary Obits of 2021 appeared first on The Millions.

      12 min read

    • Article

      Richard Holmes

      Dec 15, 2017

      Richard Holmes
      25 min read

    • Article

      The Art of Editing No. 4

      Jun 15, 2019

      The Art of Editing No. 4
      25 min read

    • Article

      The California Gaze

      Apr 1, 2023

      The California Gaze
      7 min read

    • Article

      Gerald Stern, Prize-winning And Lyrical Poet, Dies At 97

      Oct 30, 2022

      Stern was one of the country's most loved and respected poets who wrote with spirited melancholy and earthly humor about his childhood, Judaism, mortality and the wonders of the contemplative life.

      3 min read

    • Article

      Kerouac Centennial

      Apr 26, 2022

      Kerouac Centennial
      5 min read

    • Article

      Those Who Left Us: Select Literary Obituaries of 2019

      Dec 31, 2019

      Death didn’t discriminate in 2019—it took down the acclaimed, the obscure, and a little bit of everything in between. The post Those Who Left Us: Select Literary Obituaries of 2019 appeared first on The Millions.

      10 min read

    • Article

      The Late Bloomer

      Sep 1, 2023

      “An eccentric woman deserves an eccentric biography.” So writes Willard Spiegelman in this first biography of the poet Amy Clampitt. If there was anything eccentric about the genteel bohemian Amy Clampitt, it was that she was extremely private about

      5 min read

    • Article

      Can a Myth Grow Up?: The Poet Frank Stanford at Second Sight

      Apr 18, 2019

      The real question about the cult-hero of American poetry has now become: “What are we gonna do with this motherfucker?” The post Can a Myth Grow Up?: The Poet Frank Stanford at Second Sight appeared first on The Millions.

      15 min read

    • Article

      The American Idea

      Oct 12, 2022

      The American Idea
      5 min read

    • Article

      Reading and Writing California

      Jun 30, 2020

      Reading and Writing California
      9 min read

    • Article

      Interview Nathaniel Philbrick History Ashore and Afloat

      Jan 1, 2019

      Nathaniel Philbrick is the celebrated author of several nonfiction books about the American experience, notably military and maritime history. A number of his books have been New York Times best sellers, including In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy

      4 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Arif Anwar

      Dec 9, 2021

      I’m on track to have finished a book a week in 2021, which I’m happy with given that so much of my time is spoken for by family, work, and writing. I don’t like stuffing 100-plus books into a year like passengers in a rush hour subway car, leaving me

      13 min read

    • Article

      Hanukkah Lights 2023

      Dec 7, 2023

      Hanukkah Lights 2023
      2 min read

    • Article

      It’s Not Rocket Science

      Jul 24, 2018

      Joe Jackson might not seem your typical Western historian. His father was a rocket scientist during the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs, and Jackson majored in English and psychology in college, then worked briefly as a suicide councilor before m

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Whole Texas Thing

      Oct 17, 2023

      The Whole Texas Thing
      4 min read

    • Article

      Travels With Cleo

      Jan 27, 2022

      Travels With Cleo
      9 min read

    • Article

      Holding A Mirror Up To Local Stories

      Dec 4, 2018

      Every year we see the publication of more diverse books about British Columbia’s history, reflecting the expectations of readers and the interests of authors and historians. My eyes are drawn to titles on bookstore shelves that amplify underrepresent

      15 min read

    Reviews for Quicklet on John Steinbeck's Travels with Charley in Search of America (CliffNotes-like Summary)

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words