By Rose Williams
This summer, to celebrate the United States of America turning 250, I decided to dedicate myself to better understanding the country I live in. For me, that means adjusting my personal syllabus. Every Fourth of July, I usually read something related to the Founding (and I still did read a few founding documents this year), but a strange series of cultural coincidences actually led me down quite a different path.
The first coincidence actually happened long before this summer. When I was in eighth grade, I happened to read John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men for the first time on a whim. The book captivated me in a way few others had, and it quickly became a favorite — though I didn’t read much more of Steinbeck until I found a $5 used copy of East of Eden in college. I purchased it, also on a whim, and devoured it greedily the very next summer. And that was how I developed a love of Steinbeck.
Because of that deep affinity, I bought his books whenever I could find used copies or pretty covers; then, they’d sit on my shelf, waiting to reach the top of my reading list. One such book was his 1962 travelogue, Travels with Charley: In Search of America, in which Steinbeck chronicles a cross-country road trip he took with his dog. I bought the book because it was small, it had a pretty pink cover, and I hadn’t read Steinbeck’s nonfiction before; but somehow, whenever I considered reading it, I picked something else up instead.
Then, I happened upon another writer’s nod to America’s 250th anniversary. In the spirit of Christopher Nolan’s then-forthcoming Odyssey adaptation), Plough Quarterly ran an article titled “Who Is America’s Homer?” Various members of the literati submitted their nominations for the defining voice that told America’s story; nominees ran the gamut from children’s author Laura Ingalls Wilder to poet Walt Whitman to musical artist Tracy Chapman to the Homeric choice of “no one” (yet).
It was like this article was made for me. I excitedly forwarded it to a group chat and shared my thoughts; I, personally, nominated Steinbeck, and I chose East of Eden as his defining epic. A friend agreed on Steinbeck but, instead, humbly submitted Travels with Charley as the epic. What an odd choice, I thought, knowing that it was far from his most popular. But, knowing that the book sat on my shelf unread, I resolved to read it this summer and draw my own conclusions. As an added plus, I would get to read about Steinbeck’s “search” for America in 1960, at the beginning of the most tumultuous part in the nation’s recent history — fitting, I thought, given where we are at the moment.
