Notes: Analysis Travels with Charley

Class Date: 3/10/2011

Note Taker: Tena Banks

Snowden: SO by way of introduction what did you think of the book?

Nick: It was ok.

Thomas: I liked it better than Tobacco Road. It was easier to analyze. Lizzy’s article mentions how people are never content with where they are. People aren’t content with where they are.

Mick: Steinbeck needs to stop whining so much.

Diane: This is the first of his books that I’ve read. Because of the way he treated the situations when he got to the south. Here’s a white privileged man. To get the kind of (I didn’t catch everything she said here.) I envy him of the fact that he’s doing it because he hasn’t travelled in twenty-five years. He wants to see the landscape for himself. Lots of people have this feeling but don’t do anything about it.

Snowden: Did he get something out of it.

Mick: I think got something out of it because people don’t think the way that he does. (I couldn’t keep up with everything he said.)

Snowden: I guess you could he was whiny you’ve got to wonder where he’s coming from because he does complain a lot. He’s very bitter at the end of his journey. He never lets you forget who he is.

Markus: I thought he’d be more humble but he wasn’t.

Snowden: (I didn’t catch what was said.)

Lizzy: (I didn’t catch what she said.)

Markus: (I didn’t catch what he said.)

1 Snowden: The Steinbeck museum is online. They have the actual truck that he used on his journey.

Mick: I’m going out to meet people. (I didn’t catch what else he said.)

Snowden: You get the feeling that he’s actually terrified to take this journey. He’s packing all these guns maybe for self defense.

Diane: Yes.

Snowden: So the point of the book?

Mick: I think that maybe he had a contract to write a book and so he took the trip to have a story to tell.

Snowden: Lots of people take journeys like this, but they don’t write a book about it. What was

Steinbeck’s point?

Diane: I think he had a virus of restlessness. It was an explosive time in the country. He tries to ask people about politics. (I couldn’t keep up with everything she said.)

Lizzy: in the 1960’s there was a large area of mobility. He sees all these mobile homes and thinks everyone else is doing it so let me do it too.

Snowden: (I didn’t catch what she said.)

Mick: I think Steinbeck was unhappy with himself. He felt stuck in the North East. I haven’t read anything pose East of Eden. (I couldn’t keep up with all that was said.)

Snowden: Ok. Amy do you have anything to add?

Amy: I didn’t like it because he’d be talking about something that happened in one state, and then jump to something else in another state.

Snowden: He got ahead of himself.

Mick: It’s like he expects to see something or experience something so the places are similar.

Diane: I wanted to go from place to place with him in the book. I think editing might have got him.

Mick: Who’s going to edit Steinbeck?

2 Snowden: There’s no way to prove that the conversations in the book are true. The critiques say that he made up a lot of the conversations in the book.

Mick: I’d like to know more about the millionaires that he spent time with in Texas.

Markus: Packing up in Las Vegas (I didn’t catch everything he said.)

Snowden: So maybe he was hallucinating that part?

Amy: (I didn’t catch what she said.)

Mick: Bicycle days is the first day ever of an LSD trip. Hoffman wrote about this. He rode a bicycle after experimenting on himself and wrote a diary about it. (I couldn’t keep up with everything.)

Snowden: It’s not the Tour De’ France. List. Ellen, Mick and Thomas are going to next week.

Diane: I’m using the Pierce Lewis article Axioms for Landscape in order to analyze travels. Starting with the ideas. Lewis has Ideas he called axioms. Starting with Axioms of Landscape as a clue to culture. It is the ordinary things man puts on the land that you examine to why landscape is the way it is. One sub point is corollary of cultural change. Expect that if one kind of culture is in one part of country and something else in another expect landscape to be different. He mentioned Sag Harbor. Geographically it is in the Upper east Coast. Reason to hone in on conversation with the young man is the coast line is beautiful scenery. Because of things in American culture as a whole things use changing. Nuclear power soldier points out to Steinbeck. You can see feel...(I didn’t catch what else she said.) I looked up a critique of Steinbeck’s work. He’s very good at presenting timeless introspection. He tells young man that the nuclear subs worry him. What critique means timeless introspection you ponder in mind. Reason when he thought about nuclear power in world. Even today you think doom and gloom. I thought it was timeless whether it is the 1960s today. The thought of fear and dread something we all fee. The regional corollary because Lewis says that regional corollary means that in one part of the country basically same thing. Why scenery is different. Thought descriptions of the black family he knew growing up and the old black man because of cultural differences. Because of time that is the ‘60’s things are happening. You don’t see plantations. You can see how the culture has made the landscape change. Now imagery is the school. But marshals barricade the crowd, and escort a little black girl to school. You see distinct cultural differences.

Snowden: Lizzy has a different perspective of Axioms.

Lizzy: The way that I saw it was looking at it from an academic approach. Field notes or anything can be considered information. Lewis states travels older can be…(I couldn’t keep up with everything she said.) The case where you see mobile homes. Steinbeck saw them at first as free loaders or bums. They take education etc. and don’t pay taxes. Not so much physical landscape but the people that interact with Steinbeck… (I couldn’t keep up with everything.)

3 When he tries to go to Canada the people are nice, but when he has to turn around to return the American’s are cruel and foul. I love how Lewis in the Axioms defines literature. He sourced what landscape…(I couldn’t keep up with everything.)

Snowden: Let’s use Lewis…(I couldn’t keep up.)

Markus: I think Steinbeck should have read Lewis’s piece.

Snowden: He spends most of his time travelling and we hear very little about the landscape.

Mick: Social and cultural landscapes too.. (I couldn’t keep up.)

Markus: (I couldn’t keep up.)

Mick: I used Symbolic Landscape but I focused on the landscapes of Texas. Texas has been talked about in Literature and Mienig has…(I couldn’t keep up.) Texas is a state of mind, and Texans band together simply from being from Texas. Puts together these six quest Steinbeck interesting way. When we look at Texas we often things are written about Texas are written by Texans and are biased because of it. Questions (I couldn’t keep up.) Steinbeck talks about ranch life held up in Texas. Texas created culture around the landscape that doesn’t really exist. I don’t know where I’m going with this.

Snowden: You are on to something.

Mick: Symbol has taken hold on Texas…(I couldn’t keep up.) Landscape more symbol than anything real. Our perspective of the western landscape comes from films like John Wayne or the Louis La’more novel. (I couldn’t keep up.) Texans continue to identify with the copper and steel stars that they put on their million dollar buildings. (I couldn’t keep up.)

Snowden. You’ve hit on something. Classic North East village. The example of Texas is really good way to blend with the methodology.

Mick: Texas myth with..(I couldn’t keep up.) Texans becomes so wrapped up in myth to show Texas character.

Snowden: He really urbanized the state. They’ve bought into the symbolism.

Mick: Go buy a ranch.

Snowden: The lure of country living.

Mick: I think the symbolism of Texas represents a fierce rugged thing. Historically, we didn’t have that character. Texans identify with the cattle drive. Ignore the historical past.

Snowden: We do have cultural icons true.

4 Mick: There are native Texans and true Texan.

Snowden: Largest portion Steinbeck says about succession. Crazy stuff about our maintaining the right to succeed from the union.

Diane: Because he doesn’t give a lot of descriptions but because of the clues supplied in the south I could see the landscape and fill in the missing parts.

Snowden: He gives mechanisms to create your own image.

Diane: I could fill in the imagery. He doesn’t describe the gas station but the man. When the man said ‘I thought you had a nigger in there’ I could see the whole scene. When he picked up the old black man he tried to make conversation. Because of the quality of life at the time the black man would rather walk that ride in the car with Steinbeck.

Mick: He talks about the blandness along the way.

Snowden: Jackson talks about the vernacular while Steinbeck makes a big point of not addressing them. Image of the gas station.

Mick: I imagine the old fashioned pumps where you see the gas moving through the tubes.

Snowden: What you can take away from the book was the trees. The vista’s of Montana and everything else we fill in the scene based on cultural baggage we already know.

Mick: he’s writing that this is a section of America and this is another section of America etc.

Snowden: It makes you wonder how much of the dialogue was fiction.

Mick: (I didn’t catch what was said.)

Diane: He had….out of the northern state...(I couldn’t keep up.)

Amy: He could have stolen car.

Mick: I don’t think he would have gotten into a car.

Snowden: I doubt the veracity of the story. He might have offered the black man a ride. He probably made the story up to make himself look good.

Mick: He wrote about it to get the message out there.

Snowden: Documented snapshots. Based on the book you want to go to Montana and Wisconsin. It’s a perfect patchwork.

Markus: Makes sense idea of America.

5 Snowden: Presenting Ellen’s paper: Ellen looked at the road itself as symbolic landscape. What is the road in the piece? She talks about the idea versus reality in the journey itself. The adventure. Idea social relationship very lonely and austere. Most of the time on the road he’s doing it alone. She looks at how the road because symbolic landscape how it...(I couldn’t keep up.) The idea of go west young man. Idea that movement is a good thing as going someplace. He idealized the road frontier versus….(I couldn’t keep up.) Don’t think about where we are going. We’re always going somewhere and have a plan. Steinbeck gets lost a lot. He spends a lot of time going in circles. It can also represent transients in the worst way getting at the mobile home culture. Idea is that you can move it. Tells everyone that I’m a mobile person. False impression of adventure… Great adventure versus what really happened. Highway congestion the highway doesn’t encourage you to stop. So you can travel across the country and never see anything. The destination goal is not a factor. Things could be better if you get to another place. Escapist is the idea in our culture kind of an anti-urban biased even though it is heavily urbanized. He puts the small towns of Montana on a pedestal. She addressed each of Meinig’s questions and how Steinbeck described and used the road. Comments about any of this? Amy?

Amy: (I didn’t catch what she said.

Mick: I kept mixing up Travels with Charley with other things that I’ve read.

Snowden: When the WPA projects came up they were written by novelist who were hired to write the guide books. This was done for state guide books.

Mick: The state parks are starting to do something like that again.

Snowden: Who are they getting to do them?

Mick: Historians.

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