Dogging Steinbeck: How I went in search of John Steinbeck's America, found my own America, and exposed the truth about 'Travels With Charley'

328 Pages·9.322 MB·English

by  Steigerwald Bill.

Dogging
Steinbeck
How I went looking for John Steinbeck’s
America, found my own America, and exposed
the truth about ‘Travels With Charley’
Bill Steigerwald
True Nonfiction
For Trudi,
my kids
and my mom.
Copyright 2013 Bill Steigerwald
Words & Photos
Praise & Encouragement
for 'Dogging Steinbeck'
I compared Steinbeck's published letters with his travels and saw great discrepancies. These facts
have been public for years, but no one cared to mention them. … Steinbeck falsified his "Charley"
trip. I am delighted that you went deep into this.
– Paul Theroux
Author of “The Tao of Travel:
Enlightenments from Lives on the Road”
I still believe John Steinbeck is one of America's greatest writers and I still love "Travels With
Charley," be it fact or fiction or, as Bill Steigerwald doggedly proved, both. While I disagree with a
number of Steigerwald's conclusions, I don't dispute his facts. He greatly broadened my understanding
of Steinbeck the man and the author, particularly during his last years. And, whether Steigerwald
intended it or not, in tracking down the original draft of "Travels With Charley" he made a significant
contribution to Steinbeck's legacy. "Dogging Steinbeck" is a good honest book.
– Curt Gentry
Author of "Helter Skelter: The True Story of
the Manson Murders" (with Vincent Bugliosi)
No book gave me more of a kick this year than Bill Steigerwald's investigative travelogue "Dogging
Steinbeck" ... Steigerwald’s slowly growing exasperation with Steinbeck’s dissembling is a joy to
read, as is his incredulous reaction to Steinbeck scholars who wave away the esteemed author’s
flagrant bullshitting. But best of all is the contemporary America that Steigerwald discovers. Where
Steinbeck inveighed against comic books and processed food and crabbed that the nation had grown
spiritually “flabby” and “immoral,” Steigerwald is positively Whitmanesque in his celebration of the
country.
– Nick Gillespie
editor-in-chief of Reason.com
An ... idol-slaying travelogue of truth.
– Shawn Macomber
The Weekly Standard
"Dogging Steinbeck" ... is a long-overdue expose of John Steinbeck's "Travels With Charley." ...
Illustrated with photos and interviews, this is a wry, wistful, but never angry tale about a great
literary deception that lasted way too long.
– Tony Norman
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Like more than a few writers in the past, Bill Steigerwald set out to pay homage -- in this case, to
John Steinbeck's 'Travels With Charley' and discovered, to his horror, amusement, and indignation,
that 'Travels' is fundamentally a work of fiction, with large sections, several episodes, and
innumerable characters invented by the 1962 Nobel laureate. Steigerwald's laconic, self-deprecating
style wears exceptionally well, and his pursuit of the great beast is both impressive and entertaining.
Along the way he is ambushed by the Steinbeck Industry, such as it is, and finds his brilliant detective
work greeted not with gratitude but churlishness. But such are the perils faced by literary pioneers,
among whom Steigerwald now takes his place of honor. In the end, you will much prefer his company
to Steinbeck's.
– Philip Terzian
Literary editor, The Weekly Standard

I wanted … first to express my personal admiration for the job you did. Second, to tell you that you
became a kind of a journalistic hero in my travel-story about Steinbeck, because you did such
fantastic detailed research on the subject, and you did it alone, in sometimes-difficult circumstances.
– Geert Mak
Dutch journalist/historian and author of
“Reizen zonder John op zoek naar Amerika
(Traveling Without John in Search of America),”
who also retraced Steinbeck’s “Charley” trip in 2010
Table of Contents
1 – Taking the Trip
2 – Stranger in Steinbeck Country
3 – On the Road
4 – John Steinbeck’s America
5 – The Dogging Begins
6 – Maine, the Big Empty
7 – Touching the Top of Maine
8 – Escape From New England
9 – Pit-stopping in Pittsburgh
10 – Westward, Ho
11 – Into the Corn Belt
12 – Making Time in North Dakota
13 – Loving Montana
14 – Sprinting to Seattle
15 – Cruising the Coast
16 – Fun in San Francisco
17 – Steinbeck Country, USA
18 – Heading Back East
19 – The Greater State of Texas
20 – Hate & Filth in New Orleans
21 – America the Mostly Beautiful
22 – The Truths About ‘Charley’
23 – Debunking the Myths About ‘Charley’
24 – The Media & Me
25 – The Truth Gets Told
Bill Steigerwald bio
Down to Gehenna or up to the Throne,
He travels fastest who travels alone.
– Rudyard Kipling
Introduction
I discovered two important and surprising truths when I retraced the route John Steinbeck took around
the country in 1960 and turned into his "Travels With Charley in Search of America." I found out the
great author’s iconic “nonfiction” road book was a deceptive, dishonest and highly fictionalized
account of his actual 10,000-mile road trip. And I found out that despite the Great Recession and
national headlines dripping with gloom and doom, America was still a big, beautiful, empty, healthy,
rich, safe, clean, prosperous and friendly country.
“Dogging Steinbeck” is the story of my adventures on and off the road with John Steinbeck’s ghost.
It’s about the dozens of good Americans I met and the great places I saw on my high-speed drive from
Maine to Monterey along what’s left of the Old Steinbeck Highway. And it tells how I stumbled onto
a literary scoop that forced a major book publisher to finally confess the truth about “Travels With
Charley” after 50 years. Part literary detective story, part travel book, part book review, part primer
in drive-by journalism, part commentary on what a libertarian newspaperman thinks is right and
wrong about America, my book is subjective as hell. But it’s entirely nonfiction.
– Bill Steigerwald, April 1, 2013
1 – Taking the Trip
So it was that I determined to look again, to try to rediscover this monster land. Otherwise, in
writing, I could not tell the small diagnostic truths which are the foundations of the larger truth.
– John Steinbeck, “Travels With Charley
in Search of America”