Steinbeck John - Travels with Charley in Search of America

PENGUIN CLASSICS DELUXE EDITION

TRAVELS WITH CHARLEY IN SEARCH OF AMERICA

Born in Salinas, California, in 1902, John Steinbeck grew up in a fertile agricultural valley about twenty-five miles from the Pacific Coastand both valley and coast would serve as settings for some of his best fiction. In 1919 he went to Stanford University, where he intermittently enrolled in literature and writing courses until he left in 1925 without taking a degree. During the next five years he supported himself as a laborer and journalist in New York City, all the time working on his first novel, Cup of Gold (1929). After marriage and a move to Pacific Grove, he published two California fictions, The Pastures of Heaven (1932) and To a God Unknown (1933), and worked on short stories later collected in The Long Valley (1938). Popular success and financial security came only with Tortilla Flat (1935), stories about Montereys paisanos. A ceaseless experimenter throughout his career, Steinbeck changed courses regularly. Three powerful novels of the late 1930s focused on the California laboring class: In Dubious Battle (1936), Of Mice and Men (1937), and the book considered by many his finest, The Grapes of Wrath (1939). Early in the 1940s, Steinbeck became a filmmaker with The Forgotten Village (1941) and a serious student of marine biology with Sea of Cortez (1941). He devoted his services to the war, writing Bombs Away (1942) and the controversial play-novelette The Moon Is Down (1942). Cannery Row (1945), The Wayward Bus (1947), The Pearl (1947), A Russian Journal (1948), another experimental drama, Burning Bright (1950), and The Log from the Sea of Cortez (1951) preceded publication of the monumental East of Eden (1952), an ambitious saga of the Salinas Valley and his own familys history. The last decades of his life were spent in New York City and Sag Harbor with his third wife, with whom he traveled widely. Later books include Sweet Thursday (1954), The Short Reign of Pippin IV: A Fabrication (1957), Once There Was a War (1958), The Winter of Our Discontent (1961), Travels with Charley in Search of America (1962), America and Americans (1966), and the posthumously published Journal of a Novel: The East of Eden Letters (1969), Viva Zapata! (1975), The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights (1976), and Working Days: The Journal of The Grapes of Wrath (1989). He died in 1968, having won a Nobel Prize in 1962.

Throughout his life Steinbeck signed his letters with his personal Pigasus logo, symbolizing himself a lumbering soul but trying to fly. The Latin motto Ad Astra Per Alia Porci translates To the stars on the wings of a pig.

JAY PARINI is a poet and novelist who teaches at Middlebury College in Vermont. His most recent volume of poems is The Art of Subtraction: New and Selected Poems. His novels include The Last Station, Benjamins Crossing, and The Passages of H.M. He has also written biographies of John Steinbeck, Robert Frost, and William Faulkner. His other books include Promised Land: Thirteen Books that Changed America and Why Poetry Matters.

Publishers note: The images printed below represent the original photographs as they were taken in 1961. With permission of the copyright holder, these photographs appear as original scans of a vintage edition jacket on the back cover and inside flap of our 50th-Anniversary Edition.

John Steinbeck and Charley, 1961 (detail) by Hans Namuth 1991 Hans Namuth Estate

John Steinbeck, 1961 (detail) by Hans Namuth 1991 Hans Namuth Estate

BY JOHN STEINBECK

FICTION

Cup of Gold

The Pastures of Heaven

To a God Unknown

Tortilla Flat

In Dubious Battle

Saint Katy the Virgin

Of Mice and Men

The Red Pony

The Long Valley

The Moon Is Down

Cannery Row

The Wayward Bus

The Pearl

Burning Bright

East of Eden

Sweet Thursday

The Winter of Our Discontent

The Short Reign of Pippin IV

The Grapes of Wrath

Las uvas de la ira (Spanish-language edition of The Grapes of Wrath) The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights

NONFICTION

Sea of Cortez: A Leisurely Journal of Travel and Research (in collaboration with Edward F. Ricketts)

Bombs Away: The Story of a Bomber Team

A Russian Journal (with pictures by Robert Capa)

The Log from the Sea of Cortez

Once There Was a War

Travels with Charley in Search of America

America and Americans

America and Americans and Selected Nonfiction

Journal of a Novel: The East of Eden Letters

Working Days: The Journals of The Grapes of Wrath

PLAYS

Of Mice and Men

The Moon Is Down

COLLECTIONS

The Portable Steinbeck

The Short Novels of John Steinbeck

Steinbeck: A Life in Letters

OTHER WORKS

The Forgotten Village (documentary)

Viva Zapata! (screenplay)

Zapata (includes the screenplay of Viva Zapata!)

CRITICAL LIBRARY EDITION

The Grapes of Wrath (edited by Peter Lisca)

JOHN STEINBECK

Travels with Charley in Search of America

50TH-ANNIVERSARY EDITION

Introduction by

JAY PARINI

PENGUIN BOOKS

PENGUIN BOOKS

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First published in the United States of America by The Viking Press 1962

Published in Penguin Books 1980

Edition with an introduction by Jay Parini published 1997

This edition with a revised introduction by Jay Parini published 2012

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Copyright The Curtis Publishing Co., Inc., 1961, 1962

Copyright John Steinbeck, 1962

Copyright renewed Elaine Steinbeck, Thom Steinbeck, and John Steinbeck IV, 1989, 1990

Introduction copyright Jay Parini, 1997, 2012