Whitewashing John Steinbeck
Why partisan politics and virulent racism were cut from the celebrated “non-fiction” road book Travels With Charley
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In the end it was no great loss that politics was purged from Charley’s first draft, because Steinbeck had pulled most of his punches anyway. What he wrote was softball stuff compared to what he expressed in long letters to Adlai Stevenson and his operatives in the run-up to the 1960 primary. In one letter now among the Stevenson papers kept at Princeton’s Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library, Steinbeck casually referred to Kennedy as “a bed-hopper.” It was a character flaw the author obviously knew about in the summer of 1960, even if the voting masses didn’t.
Nor was Steinbeck shy about sharing his distaste for Richard Nixon in his first draft. But he didn’t dare tell readers of Charley about the personal dirt he had on Nixon—which he privately urged the Stevenson camp to leak. In a letter to a Stevenson aide in the summer of 1960, Steinbeck wrote that he knew a talkative “psycho-analyst” in New York who bragged that he traveled three times a week to Washington to “put Dickie on the couch.” Calling for tactics Tricky Dick himself would have countenanced, Steinbeck said, “it is pleasant to know that Poor Richard is not happy. But this should be used.” If the Stevenson people didn’t use it, Steinbeck said he’d try other channels. (Nixon’s secret shrink was Dr. Arnold Hutschnecker, whom the Kennedy campaign didn’t find out about until the first week of September 1960.)
The Reality of Racism
Near the end of the Charley manuscript comes something that had to be cut because it was too graphic to publish in 1962. It was Steinbeck's transcription of what he heard a group of white mothers screaming outside the newly integrated William Frantz Elementary school in New Orleans’ white Upper Ninth Ward. The women, the so-called Cheerleaders, gathered outside the school each morning and their protest had become a national news story. Steinbeck drove to New Orleans specifically to see the daily circus of hate and what he saw rightly disgusted him. He felt that the “sad sickness” of that racist sideshow could not be conveyed unless the foul things the working-class women screamed were put down on paper for all to see. Writing that he knew there was “not a chance in the world that my readers will see” the women’s “bestial and degenerate” words, he quoted—or, more likely, he wrote down a condensed version of how he remembered them. His rendering raises questions of veracity in me if only because the taunt seems so masculine in its specifics. But there's little doubt that he was capturing what too many Americans thought when it came to integrating blacks into their full share of American life.
This is what Steinbeck said one woman shrieked at a white man who was defying the boycott by bringing his child to the virtually empty school: “You mother fucking, nigger sucking, prick licking piece of shit. Why you’d lick a dog’s ass if he’d let you. Look at the bastard drag his dirty stinking ass along. You think that’s his kid? That’s a piece of shit. That’s shit leading shit. Know what we ought to do? Strip down them fancy pants and cut off his balls and feed them to the pigs—that is if he’s got any balls. How about it friends?”
Whether the quote is literally accurate or not, that paragraph of filth and hate, like Steinbeck’s political play-by-play, never made it into the final version of the work. Travels with Charley is very much a PG-rated road book. Steinbeck's partisan leanings would have disturbed the general tone of the story by revealing its narrator as something other than a world-weary observer who cared more about deep truths and social trends than any ephemeral presidential election (his partisanship also ran the obvious risk of alienating the nearly 50 percent of American voters who voted for Nixon in 1960). The stark and vile racism expressed by the women in New Orleans similarly would have disrupted the overriding sensibility of Steinbeck's last major book. Cutting the women’s crude remarks shielded millions of readers from the indefensible and irrational hatred and foulness at the heart of racial discrimination.
And so the obscenities were cut, as Steinbeck knew they would be. He ultimately rewrote part of the Cheerleaders scene, capturing the ugliness of the scene without using a single dirty word (he reported that the women used words that were "bestial and filthy and degenerate" without quoting them directly). The resulting book proved to be a massive hit with readers and critics, but partly because Travels With Charley was less than honest not just about early 1960s America but about its author’s true feelings.
Bill Steigerwald worked as a writer, editor, and columnist for the Los Angeles Times in the 1980s, the Pittsburgh-Post Gazette in the 1990s, and the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review in the 2000s. This is adapted from his forthcoming book On the Road With Steinbeck’s Ghost: In Search of America and the Truth about Travels With Charley. The blog he wrote while retracing Steinbeck’s journey in the fall of 2010 is at The Truth About “Travels With Charley.”
Editor's Note: We invite comments and request that they be civil and on-topic. We do not moderate or assume any responsibility for comments, which are owned by the readers who post them. Comments do not represent the views of Reason.com or Reason Foundation. We reserve the right to delete any comment for any reason at any time.
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Is Bill any relation to Lucy?
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I was pretending I didn't see that. Now I has a sad. Was it something we said, Lucy?
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Why, dude? It's just her dad.
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Nepotism makes Tonio sad.
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Well, sure, it makes all of us sad. But Tonio's just pissed because his dad didn't tap him to be the next president of his clown college, and chose Steve-o from Jackass instead.
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Don't get me wrong... I love me some nepotism. I've just never had a relative that was in a position to help me get a job.
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What about your cousin who busses tables at Waffle House?
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I'm not fancy enough for that establishment.
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I need a ruling. Which is classier, Huddle House or Waffle House?
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Huddle. Less stools, more tables, generally cleaner. But Waffle House is a better iteration of the greasy spoon diner food-wise.
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It's quite remarkable how small they can make those places. And they're friggin' everywhere in certain states.
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What the fuck are you southerners talking about?
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Chain greasy spoon diners. Go back to suckling your John Taylor's Pork Roll.
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Just go over to the dine-uh and have a grind-uh, Yankee.
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Oh, please, like people from the North know how to make food.
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Well, we do know how to make things that don't involve deep frying or Wonder Bread.
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Uh, huh. Without the South, we'd have been ostracized as food-evil long ago.
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It's quite remarkable how small they can make those places. And they're friggin' everywhere in certain states.
Fuck you!
/Stuck on west coast 800 miles from a Waffle House
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What-evah, sloopy. You at least have In and Out Burger. I'd trade a 1,000 filthy Waffle Houses for a single IOB.
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How funny--I was about to say the same thing.
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Hey NutraSweet: guess what.
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Flash freeze a burger and FedEx it to SugarFree. For a small consideration. After all, we are not communists.
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It took us forever to get a Trader Joe's. IOB in KY is just 20 years away, like fusion.
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Hey, fuck you.
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It's a deal. You can have the lone In-N-Out Burger (and their religious tracts on the bottom of the cups) and I'll take a Waffle House.
Although, Banjos and I have made this place our Saturday go-to breakfast joint. Country fried steak and eggs with ebelskivers and medisterpolse on the side. Yum!
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We have both In-N-Out Burger and Waffle House here in Arizona. We even have Culver's. We do not, however, have White Castle or Steak 'n Shake.
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We have Steak 'n Shakes in some malls in AZ. I dunno why White Castle hasn't tried to branch out here, though.
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Pardon me, I was thinking of Steak Escapes.
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Waffle House, Huddle House is a dive. They are both from where I live. Waffle House #1 is over in Avondale. The Huddle House world headquarters is in Decatur.
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What's funny is that those places exist and thrive in towns with tremendous local competition, where the local mom and pop is eleventy billion times better. Maybe it's on pricing?
There are a shocking number of pancake places in the Gatlinburg/Pigeon Forge area. Including the chains. Some are excellent, yet the chains remain.
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The chains are 24 hour and you can get breakfast anytime.They are usually very quick too.
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Hmmm. Well, I think you may be on to something with the open-all-the-time part. Most of those places serve breakfast all day, assuming they're open all day. Not all of them are. And the chains are cheaper.
I had some awesome blueberry pancakes up there last year. With those little mountain blueberries. De-lightful.
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A big reason for their success is the fact that they are open 24 Hours. And when you're on a bender food tastes so much better.
When you are sober a few weeks later and you are hungry on a Sunday morning, where are you gonna go? The local place whose menu you are unfamiliar with or the place that reminds you of eating country ham and eggs while all gas-faced with your buddies at 4 am?
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What's funny is that those places exist and thrive in towns with tremendous local competition, where the local mom and pop is eleventy billion times better.
“In olden times, you’d wander down to Mom’s Café for a bite to eat and a cup of joe, and you would feel right at home. It worked just fine if you never left your hometown. But if you went to the next town over, everyone would look up and stare at you when you came in the door, and the Blue Plate Special would be something you didn’t recognize. If you did enough traveling, you’d never feel at home anywhere.
But when a businessman from New Jersey goes to Dubuque, he knows he can walk into a McDonald’s and no one will stare at him. He can order without having to look at the menu, and the food will always taste the same. McDonald’s is Home, condensed into a three-ringed binder and xeroxed. “No surprises” is the motto of the franchise ghetto, its Good Housekeeping seal, subliminally blazoned on every sign and logo that make up the curves and grids of light that outline the Basin.
The people of America, who live in the world’s most surprising and terrible country, take comfort in that motto.”-Neal Stevenson, Snow Crash
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It may be from Snow Crash, but I'm still gonna read it in Tyler Durden's voice.
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"Never play cards with a man called Doc. Never eat at a place called Mom's. Never sleep with a woman whose troubles are worse than your own."
-Nelson AlgrenNeal Stevenson must never eat at an urban MacDonalds. Everyone stares at you, the food sucks unless the manager is really cracking down and sometimes they have McRibs out of season and weird shake flavors they don't have at the other MacDonalds.
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Driving to South Carolina, I swear once we got into Tennessee there was a Waffle House at every exit.
Driving home, I finally gave in and we ate at one. Pleasantly surprised - good greasy food and low prices. I also jumped off my low carb diet to eat some grits.
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I had grits at Wild Eggs and have to say that this was the first time in my life I actually enjoyed them. The only grits I had previously were homemade by my friend's mom from MD. It was like eating buttered sand. But those Wild Eggs grits were like jalapeno-bacon-cheddar custard. Pretty much amazing.
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Grits, polenta, what's the difference?
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Grits, polenta, what's the difference?
Polenta is the garbage that poor wops eat, that's the difference.
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Us wops like our grits with spaghetti sauce and cheese.
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I only ate redneck-style grits in the military.
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Polenta is ground too fine.
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The only grits I had previously were homemade by my friend's mom from MD.
Why would you eat grits from a woman in Maryland? What did you have for dinner, Texas sushi or Fried chicken Seattle-style?
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I concur.
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Because people don't eat grits where I live, and last time I was in Kentucky I turned them down (based on this previous experience). It was my next trip to Kentucky where I had the amazing ones.
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The Waffle House at every exit also explains why they thrive. Yes there is a better place in town, but when Im driving thru, I can see the WH from the interstate.
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My one and only stop at a Waffle House was to use a restroom at 2am somewhere in Georgia. I walked in, observed feces everywhere, and I mean everywhere, and have never stepped foot in one since.
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He had a kid with her, and he's in no position to help that kid get anything except fetal alcohol syndrome.
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Dude, I never had a kid with my friend's mom. I always went anal with her out of respect for my buddy.
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I am way, way more charming and gregarious than my father. Just saying.
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Oh Gawd, that isn't true.
But just remember I can delete your comments, but he can't! Muahaha.
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Threats, Lucy? Really?
(Please don't ban me)
"Jerry, if you think that by threatening me you can get me to be your slave...well, that's where you're right. But--and I am only saying this because I care--there are a lot of decaffeinated brands on the market today that are just as tasty as the real thing."
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Could Lucy give us special inline coding powers?
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I call dibs on the blink tag!
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That's not what his stable of whores say.
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At least he can spell.
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Gasp.
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See below at 2:02, guys.
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Some googling confirmed yes and it also led to a previous Reason article by him about Steinbeck where Lucy is arguing with a liberal troll who claims it is all a bircher conspiracy to slag Steinbeck.
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On the facebook post, not here. I've never been to the Reason facebook page. It's as awful as you would expect.
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Come on... Make John do his own homework!
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He's her dad. He's also the only reason to read the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.
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Thank you, Warty, thank you.
(Private to Mr. S: Don't freak, Dude, this is like the Little Rascals episode where the kids are all jealous of their beloved teacher's boyfriend)
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Bill Steigerwald is in this notorious post
He gives the right answer.
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He was the only reason. Now, well, I haven't read it in a few years, so maybe there are no more reasons.
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LUCY! YAY!
That new girl is mean and won't come out to play with us.
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Which new girl? The intern? Have you been pulling her pigtails?
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I refuse to learn any names until she posts in the comments. I've been burned before.
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No, she pulled NutraSweet's. Unfortunately, his pigtails are in his pubic region and it didn't go well.
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Those aren't pigtails, those are dreadlocks. You of all people should know the difference, you filthy-ass New York queer.
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I thought County Health SWAT finally washed Epi's cloaca for him.
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Well done working "cloaca" in there.
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Of course you know the fine details about NutraSweet's pubic hair styles, Warty. WHY AM I NOT SURPRISED.
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The beadwork in those pigtails is impressive, though.
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Oh, did they fire him for not hating towelheads enough or something?
Well, my grandma is a big fan of the crypto-quote game in the funny pages, and we can still use the paper to start fires, so I guess I can forgive my parents for retaining their subscription.
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so steinbeck = goebbels ?!
i has a sad (((
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The women were probably Democrats.
Did Steinbeck mention the women's politics but Steigerwald left that part out?
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What good would it do? Anyone with a brain already knows they are Democrats, the rest of them will just do their "Democrats were really Republicans then" song and dance.
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"I tag your TEAM with the racists!"
"No, I tag your TEAM!"
So. Fucking. Tiresome.
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Why, you’d lick a dog’s ass if he’d let you.
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I'm not gonna apologize for that!
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So an essay on a historic political book about new deal politics, the 1960 presidential race and school racial segregation shouldn't mention which party the racist segregationists were?
Especially when the whole point of the essay was about historical whitewashing??
What the fuck epi?
Can't we talk about the actual subject of the actual article?
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I don't care if it is fake. I like Travels With Charlie. It is a really entertaining book. A whole lot better than Grapes of Wrath, which is like a book from an alternative universe where Bruce Springsteen became a novelist.
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Just call it the original gonzo journalism, then all the fiction will be cool, not corrupt.
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Yeah I don't hear anyone fact checking Hunter S. Thompson.
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So long as you read Thompson understanding that it's mostly fiction, all is well.
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All reporting is fiction on some level.
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This is true, though I suppose there are some exceptions: Man shoots people in theater. People die. That's fairly factual.
In any case, it's a sliding scale. If someone is seriously purporting to be delivering facts, though, I don't want much fiction. . .especially about the facts.
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We think it's all fiction because so many articles have the phrase, "According to police/officers/authorities" in them.
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He didn't shoot those people. Someone else did.
It's the
ChewbaccaObama defense! -
It's the
ChewbaccaObama defense!There's a Michelle joke in there somewhere but I just can't quite put my finger on it.
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my finger on it
Or in it, if you know what's good for you.
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George McGovern himself once told me that Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 was the most "true" (if least factual) book about that campaign.
Of course he stole that line from Frank Mankiewicz. -
Yeah, save the "But the narrative was true" for the little people. I mean literally, short people. I'm into them after my recent Dinklage marathon of Game of Thrones and The Station Agent. No homo.
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Claiming something is a "memoir" is one way to get second rate fiction published.
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Book Publisher: I'm sorry to tell you this, sir, but nobody is ever going to publish your memoirs.
Towelie: Huh? Why not?
Book Publisher: Well, just the small trivial fact that people aren't interested in autobiographies of TOWELS.
Towelie: Well, yeah, but maybe people will read my memoirs, and like…apply its lessons to their own lives.
Book Publisher: No, they won't. Because they're people. And you're a towel.
Towelie: (mumbling) You're a towel…
Book Publisher: No, I'm a big book publisher whose not the least bit interested in your stony memoirs. You're a towel.
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Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was hilarious, true or not.
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Exactly. Travels with Charley is the only readable thing that Steinbeck ever wrote.
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I like about anything with a good dog in it. Charlie was a good dog. Big poodles get a bad name from their snappy annoying miniature cousins. But the big ones are real dogs.
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I use only them as my attack dogs, so that my victims get the added humiliation of being savaged by, you know, poodles.
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I had a friend in law school who was just a spoiled little bastard growing up. Him and his friends spent years torturing the big poodles raised by this gay couple in his neighborhood. Finally one Halloween the poodles got loose. And it was the poodle apocalypse for the little bastards. He still had a scar on his hand where one of them nailed him.
And amazingly enough, his and his friends parents never demanded the dogs be put down and rightly put the blame on their bastard sons for teasing the dogs after being told not to. Different age.
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There's no hatred like a dog's hatred.
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They deserved it. I bet those poodles went to sleep content that night.
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"Poodle Apocaslypse" must find it's way into everyday vernacular.
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john's just mad cause the dem fascist sheriff didnt taze woody guthrie
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Oh please, The Grapes of Wrath is great light entertainment.
It's not meant to be read, it's meant to be watched. :@
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You know, dude, for a second I thought you were cool enough to have posted this, but then I clicked through and remembered you're more square than Warty's anus.
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I will not be lectured on taste by someone who is obsessed with Robin Williams
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"Obsessed with" is a strong phrase. Perhaps "tormented by"?
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"Consumed By"
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"In orbit around."
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I contend that Robin Williams is the best Peter Pan in Hook, even better than Sandy Duncan on Broadway.
What do you think of that?
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That's a damned lie.
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I'll admit that I don't actually think that and was just baiting you. I actually saw Sandy during her run; I was just a kid, but she was really good. Glass eye and all.
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You leave Sandy alone!!
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Not when a chick has a glass eye and an extra hole to diddle.
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is there anything worse on the face of the planet than Robin Williams acting?
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I find that I have it in for actors who have raped Asimov's books. Smith and Williams being at the top of the list.
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Yeah, his standup when he isn't on cocaine.
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But on coke--very funny. He needs more coke. You'd think he could afford it with all of the movies he's made.
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He should just go back to being Mork.
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Mork is due for a gritty re-boot. Like Battle for Los Angeles but with far, far more suspenders.
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Already done, or have you forgotten the egg in ALIEN?
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Dark, evil, Mork.
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Did you just admit to watching Battle for LA?!?
They need to make it so that "Nanoo-nanoo" is as chilling a sound as the music from Psycho.
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"Surgically removed before embryo implantation. Subject: Cunningham, RIchard C., died during the procedure." They killed him taking it off.
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No, not Richie. Chuck. It explains everything!
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Hmmm.
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I didn't say I watched it. I just think that giant Egg-Ships should destroy LA.
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Ripley: But each one of these things comes from an egg, right? So who's laying these eggs?
Bishop: I'm not sure. It must be something we haven't seen yet. -
"Yolk-ships on fire off the shoulder of Anaheim. I watched Hard-Boil-Beams glitter in the dark near Paramount Studios. All those moments will be lost in time, like whites in hippie omelets."
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He should just go back to being Mork.
Yeah, the Happy Days iteration where he only shows up once and then goes back to his hope planet of Ork.
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Just saw him narrate "Your Body on Drugs" last night. I was impressed how the girl who just smoked heroin assembled the bookcase perfectly within the allotted time. I was not the least bit surprised that the met smoker was done early and the thing fell apart immediately.
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met = meth
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Awesome link, Epi. I'm inspired to get my SCTV DVDs off the shelf.
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MONSTER CHILLER HORROR THEATER
I miss John Candy.
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I don't care if it is fake. I like Travels With Charlie.
I am reading the Travels of Marco Polo right now and loving it...so I really cannot argue with you.
On a side note: RR Martin really needs to be called out for not giving Marco Polo its due for how much it influenced his Game of Thrones books.
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History is the best fiction. You don't need a plot. There is an endless supply of them in history.
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Steinbeck may be the most overrated writer of any era, Fitzgerald excluded. His writing is stilted and dull, with East Of Eden being the one great exception.
Faulkner. Huxley. Bradbury. Hemingway.
Steinbeck is a hack compared to these men.
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You call Steinbeck stilted and then praise Faulkner? Are you kidding me? Yeah lets write another two hundred word run on sentence describing two people sitting in a run down plantation in July sweating.
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Faulkner was 10x the writer Steinbeck was. Or maybe he just wasn't such a whiny-ass advocate for griefer trolls like Steinbeck was.
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I agree with you that Faulkner was better. But God he was a tough read. I am not saying it didn't take skill to write that stuff. But my God those novels are depressing. The only one that doesn't make you want to take your own life is The Rievers. That one is pretty fun and almost unknown.
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Was it the Pearl where the baby has it's head blown off? Yeah, great literature there.
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Yes. But Canery Row is fun. And as depressing as The Pearle is, it doesn't even begin to touch a book like Absolum Absolum or As I Lay Dying for emotional power and pure bleakness. Faulkner was the much better writer of the two. So much better his books are damn near unreadable.
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I'd rather read Iron Man back issues.
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"You call Steinbeck stilted and then praise Faulkner? Are you kidding me?"
And while we're at it: Fuck Hemingway.
Stunted excuse for prose and duller than dry paint, the only reason he's remembered to this day is because people insist on giving him credit for other people's writing styles. nd don't get me started on his undue reputation as being a rugged individualist who supposedly embodied the American spirit despite his fishing trips with mass-murdering dictators and his love of Communist firing squads.
His books and life philosophy could be succinctly summed up as, "Individualism at the bottom of a glass for me, Collectivism at the bottom of a gun barrel for You."
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"Individualism at the bottom of a glass for me, Collectivism at the bottom of a gun barrel for You."
I like that.
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Screw that--I like Hemingway.
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What? That title definitely goes to someone named Bronte if we're talking English language. In America, I'd nominate David Brooks or Tom Friedman for any of their books as most overrated. So I guess you're talking about most overrated decent author who can't quite carry his own legend.
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I think to be "overrated" you have to be worthy of being rated. So clowns like Friedman don't count even though by any objective measure Friedman is the worst writer ever to be published in the English language.
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My book, Travels With Charley in Search of America? I didn't write that. Someone else made it happen.
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+1. Very well played.
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To steal from comic Stephen Wright: 'That guy who wrote the A-B-C song - he wrote everything.'
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u mean like the somebody else who invented paper and the printing press?
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You see, this is where imbeciles like you get me all worked up, triple asshole. The inventor of the printing press and paper (which both have evolutionary histories as opposed to being "invented") did nothing to make the book happen. They enabled it to be more widely distributed, but had absolutely zilch to do with the literary works.
Perhaps you should take issue with the publisher that employed the use of printing presses and paper so he could distribute the book and make money. I wonder if the developer of the paper and presses he uses feel like they had a fair exchange of goods for an agreed-to sum.
Besides, the publisher paid taxes that more than offset his use of the roads. The fucking griefer trolls out there bitching about inequality? Not so much.
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sloopy's on a bridge too far
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I thought Obama didn't really mean that tripple asshole?
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Turns out the dog wrote the book and Steinbeck had his head out the window for the entire trip.
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Shhhhhhh...
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This should be the thread winner.
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I wonder what Travels With Charlie would have been written like if Steinbeck would have gotten a $250 ticket in Hackensack, New Jersey for not having his dog harnessed and seat belted in?
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That's one hell of an editor's note.
Also, anyone who has read The Grapes of Wrath already knows that Steinbeck is anything but impartial.
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Ya know the problem with America? Nobody makes a decent, good looking watch for a reasonable price anymore.
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It's all the fault of those iphones with their built-in clocks.
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Does anybody today actually READ "Travels With Charlie" anymore?
I thought "Winter of Our Discontent" was Steinbeck's last major novel. I liked Grapes of Wrath, East of Eden (his best), and many other Steinbeck works - read them all - but Winter of Our Discontent is pretty forgettable, although I read it about 50 years ago and still remember reading it even if I only remember that it was about some guy coming to terms with his suicidal thoughts or something.
