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

JASON M. DEW COLD WAR REFLECTIONS IN TRAVELS WITH CHARLEY: STEINBECK'S NEW AMERICANIST EVALUATION OF INTRA-IMPERIALIST AMERICA When Steinbeck removes unabashedly the shield of artist in Travels with Charley (1962) and, instead, adopts the role of social investigator by conspicuously casting himself as the main character in a national work-in-progress, the champion of the down-and-out demonstrates his uninhibited passion for coming to terms with what was then America's predominant ideological infection. By this, I refer to the cultural ailment afflicting America at the time of the travelogue's composition otherwise known as Cold War intraimperialism. This is my term to describe the ideological hegemonies America foisted upon itself as a means to establish a national identity theoretically couched in democratic ideals yet mirroring to significant degrees the very ideologies (Communist Russia's) with which it wished to be contrasted: consensus thinking and the consequent social and/or political intimidation of anybody who did not submit readily to what was politically sanctioned as "right." In a phrase, intraimperialism was America's answer to the crisis in legitimation—a crisis that can be described as America's general lack of purpose, meaning, identity, and direction, in this context, immediately following the demise of a very tangible threat (Nazi Germany) unlike the unquestionably more contrived threat of the Russians following World War II. Indeed, America struggled to justify its own existence post-Hitler. The collective American identity during the Cold War was anything but articulate, leaving one half of the new world dichotomy 25