He fears abandonment and hates being left at the groomer. He is a proud dog, vain of his appearance. The poodle is suffused with complex human traits and emotions, many of which Steinbeck cheekily attributes to his French heritage.

Steinbeck’s traveling companion for his journey, his standard French Poodle Charley, figures prominently in the narrative. However, the other great story told in Steinbeck’s memoir revolves around the spiritual nature of a relationship with a dog. Steinbeck went on an epic American road trip and the resulting book reads as a snapshot of mid-century America in flux, its places and its spaces and its vibe, its racial and social and cultural tensions– all through the eyes of one of our greatest American writers. A recent blog post on Biographile discusses how, when placed in historical context, Travels With Charley documents an America on the precipice of interstate domination:–you could travel from coast to coast without ever truly seeing anything, and on Steinbeck’s efforts to capture the places that were America’s heart and soul. I’ve grown to see how right Steinbeck was. I came to the Midwest when I relocated to Chicago five years ago, and have now traveled extensively in the area. Steinbeck, who was living in New York at the time he was writing Travels With Charley, said, “New York is no more America than Paris is France or London is England.” As a native New Yorker, I once shared a common belief that New York, and the East Coast in general, were the center of all things. Not simply about dogs, but about the nooks and crannies of our big, weird, beautiful country. I recently reread this book, and realize how much Steinbeck’s discoveries align with my own. It should be no surprise that one of my most enduring favorite books is John Steinbeck’s Travels With Charley, the iconic author’s 1961 memoir that deftly fuses a lust for travel with the great mystery of the love between canines and humans.

I’ve doted heavily on my own dogs, stopped to greet every dog I pass, and I’ve volunteered at animal shelters.

I’ve explored and traveled anywhere I can, finding equal joy in a quick jaunt to a nearby town and a long plane ride to far-off place. For me, two that have greatly informed my life are my insatiable wanderlust and my boundless love for dogs. Our lives are dictated by a variety of proclivities that influence our decisions and choices and actions.

John steinbeck charley