But he does use his thespian friend to explain some key themes of his journey: The nature of just-passing-through and how, if you look closely enough, there are no real “yokels” anywhere. Probably not a verbatim recounting of the afternoon. And not to quibble too much with other people’s quibbles, but this section of the book opens with Steinbeck speaking treatises on the American character to his dog. I happened to see professional actors perform a wonderful staged reading in Fargo, N.D., so I find it easier to believe that an actor could have been camping out one fine Dakota fall day. And because Steinbeck wrote to his wife from the other side of the state, at a motel in Beach, N.D., making no mention of camping by the Maple River. Steigerwald asserts that it’s highly unlikely Steinbeck met this fellow or spent the night outside Alice, because the timing is off. Steinbeck writes in “Charley” that he encountered a traveling actor while camping near the river the men discussed life on stage and how an interloper can get his audience to trust him.
It’s territory that I covered on my own Steinbeck-inspired travels, and the book’s passage on that part of the trip illustrates why the author’s fabrications don’t diminish the whole. Steigerwald, who drove more than 11,000 miles retracing Steinbeck’s route, starts his essay in North Dakota, on the banks of the Maple River, outside the town of Alice. He showed us the country in a rich, kaleidoscopic view: one nation that included Swiss-cheese candy in Wisconsin, a New Yorker-reading aspiring hairdresser near the continental divide and the ugly invective that came with integration in New Orleans. He may not have slept in the camper much (one of Steigerwald’s main contentions) or been alone with only a poodle for companionship (Steigerwald found that his wife was with him for a lot of the trip), but he gave us something we wouldn’t have otherwise. Steinbeck showed us postwar America as it looked from the window of his green GMC truck, custom-fitted with a camper. This is a small part of the reason that, even after reading Steigerwald’s essay in the April issue of the libertarian magazine Reason, which generated a New York Times story and a hand-wringing editorial, I think it doesn’t matter. I am a Steinbeck fan, and I happen also to have once been caught in a lie by Steigerwald - a lie linked to Steinbeck and his journey. The Nobel laureate, according to Steigerwald, probably invented characters and embellished the hardships of the cross-country journey he made with his dog, Charley, in the fall of 1960, chronicled in his bestseller “Travels With Charley.” Journalist Bill Steigerwald has caught John Steinbeck in a lie.
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