Have I read this before: No.

Review: This is Steinbeck + dog Charley traveling across the US in a camper. It’s basically the great American road trip with a lot of reflection about the state of America and the American people. He makes sure to note the differences in the people and cultures from state to state, especially as he hits the Midwest and then the West. It’s a summary of the flaws of a country and its people from someone who’s really good at describing the flaws of a country and its people.

Favorite Part: A few good quotes:

“I have always heard that Maine people are rather taciturn, but for this candidate for Mount Rushmore to point twice in an afternoon was to be unbearably talkative.”

After getting a flat tire: “It was obvious that the other tire might go at any moment, and it was Sunday and it was raining and it was Oregon. If the other tire blew, there we were, on a wet and lonesome road, having no recourse except to burst into tears and wait for death.”

“Americans are much more American than they are Northerners, Southerners, Westerners, or Easterners. And descendants of English, Irish, Italian, Jewish, German, Polish are essentially American. This is not patriotic whoop-de-do; it is carefully observed fact. … It is astonishing that this has happened in less than two hundred years and most of it in the last fifty. The American identity is an exact and provable thing.”

Rating: 6/10