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

such, sheds light on the real state of American society even before Steinbeck fires up Rocinante's engine. What the idea of Steinbeck's trek whets for his curious onlookers is an appetite to leave, to pick up and go in search of better things and better lives.

2 One does not have to scratch the surface too deeply in order to ascertain the likely source of this restlessness. Americans by the early 1960s had long graduated from the obnoxiously apparent anti-Communist national pedagogy and had come of age into an environment where the lessons learned had assimilated into the culture and become the norm. Stephen J. Whitfield, in fact, notes that "[t]he culture of the Cold War [circa 1960] decomposed when the moral distinction between East and West lost a bit of its sharpness, when American self-righteousness could be more readily punctured, [and] when the activities of the two superpowers assumed a greater symmetry" (205). Although the ostensible reason for hyperconsumerism and, in general, the embrace of "negative" individualism had faded as the tapestry of international politics became increasingly complex, the new ethic remained firmly entrenched in the collective American psyche. As the compulsion to celebrate Americanness in the form of capitalism continued to incite human relationships based on money and fraught with competition, so did it continue to warp the American understanding of the self in that progress and advancement not to mention the material comfort that came with it were the only ways to achieve personal gratification. The crisis in legitimation did not wane, but, rather, intensified when America began to lose the only, albeit flimsy, device with which to establish legitimacy. 2 ,., I This theme, while especially relevant to the effects of Cold War intra-imperialism on Americans, does have a history with Steinbeck. One example is seen in the short story "The Leader of the People" published in The Red Pony (1937) as well as in a collection of works entitled The Long Valley (1938) where the Grandfather expresses to Jody, his grandson, the anguish felt at having no place to go and nothing for which to strive after the West was finally won. He laments: "There's no place to go. There's the ocean to stop you. There's a line of old men along the shore hating the ocean because it stopped them." 29