John Steinbeck · 1962 · road

John Steinbeck's 1962 account of the road trip he made in 1960, at fifty-eight and in failing health, to see his country one more time. With his poodle Charley and a camper truck named Rocinante, he traced the rim of the United States, from Long Island up to Maine, west across the northern plains to the Pacific, down to his native Salinas Valley, and back across Texas and the segregated Deep South to New York. Part travelogue, part elegy for a vanishing America.

1. 1
   Sag Harbor

   Steinbeck sets out from his Long Island home in a camper truck named Rocinante, his poodle Charley beside him, to rediscover an America he fears he has lost.

2. 2
   Deer Isle

   North first, to the top of New England and the plastic motels and potato country of Maine.

3. 3
   Chicago

   West through Niagara and the Midwest to Chicago, and a brief reunion with his wife.

4. 4
   North Dakota

   Across Minnesota to the Missouri at Bismarck, the line where, he decides, the real West begins.

5. 5
   Montana

   Into Montana, with which he falls in love, and the battlefield at Little Bighorn.

6. 6
   Seattle

   Through Idaho to a Seattle he no longer knows, dismayed at how much progress looks like destruction.

7. 7
   Monterey

   Down the Pacific coast to Monterey and Salinas, his birthplace, changed past recognition.

8. 8
   The Mojave

   East across the Mojave and the desert Southwest.

9. 9
   Amarillo

   To the vast hospitality of Texas, and Thanksgiving with friends near Amarillo.

10. 10
    New Orleans

    And to New Orleans, the journey's nadir, where he watches the ugly theatre of school desegregation.

11. 11
    New York

    Then the long road home through the South and the mid-Atlantic, back to New York.