John Steinbeck really have been one of my fundamental authors. It is he who first seduced me to this amorphous, unrealiable, and yet very REAL totality that is America. And among his books I still like Travels with Charley better than any other.
His simple, straightforward style is so precious! Let me quote this paragraph alone to make my point:
On the long journey doubts were often my companions. I've always admired those reporters who can descend on an area, talk to key people, ask key questions, take samplings of opinions, and then set down an orderly report very like a road map. I envy this technique and at the same time do not trust it as a mirror of reality. I feel that there are too many realities. What I set down here is true until someone else passes that way and rearranges the world in his own style. In literary criticism the critic has no choice but to make over the victim of his attention into something the size and shape of himself. (76)
Ordinary? I'd say honest. And very much to the point.
Then a little further:
[O]ur morning eyes describe a different world than do our afternoon eyes, and surely our wearied evening eyes can report only a weary evening world. (77)
Such is the secret (an open one) of travel writing!
