Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 2000. [Vol. 6.] Eger Journal of American Studies. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 26)
Studies - Jason M. Dew: Cold War Reflections in Travels with Charley: Steinbeck's New Americanist Evaluation of Intra-Imperialist America
quarrel with passion and violence. That would be only normal, except that the beauty and the quiet made me slow to respond with resentment, and in my hesitation I lost it. I said, "I knew it must be private. I was about to look for someone to ask permission or maybe pay to rest here." "The owner don't want campers. They leave papers around and build fires." "I don't blame him. I know the mess they make." "See that sign on that tree? No trespassing, hunting, fishing, camping." "Well," I said, "that sounds as if it means business. If it's your job to throw me off, you've got to throw me off. I'll go peacefully. But I've just made a pot of coffee. Do you think your boss would mind if I finished it? Would he mind if I offered you a cup?" (TWC 109110) Repressing the understandably strong urge to react in a similarly hostile fashion to the man's intentionally brusque orders, Steinbeck, instead, adopts a more passive stance. Steinbeck, to borrow a popular phrase, kills him with kindness by offering, in its most basic form, a sense of community absent arguably inane rules and regulations. In effect, Steinbeck forms a "dissensus" with the man, for they each choose to temporarily suspend the rules surrounding and informing the ownership of private property. They each have a cup of coffee spiked generously with Old Grandad whiskey, and even plan to (and actually do) break another posted rule in the morning by going fishing. Nothing was caught but good will. I do not want to attribute psychic powers to a man who initially admitted ignorance of his country and its people; however, it is noteworthy that Steinbeck chooses a demeanor very much opposite the demeanor of the man brandishing the authority of an absentee owner. In point of truth, Steinbeck intuited how best to respond so that his alternative ethic could emerge. A new, de-politicized manner of self-legitimation displaced the manner of the status quo —one where placement in society was configured by how faithfully one followed and executed the rules of the intra-imperialist ethic —and a brief, twoman insurrection of sorts occurred. Having established this encounter as a formation of a "dissensus" outside of an exclusive binary that fosters nothing but oppositionalism as a way to self-legitimate, it follows that the larger issue responsible, at least initially, for 33
