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

Americans were still restless and lacking well-defined purpose, and physical location proved only to be an easy target of blame. When, to offer another example, Steinbeck pauses shortly into his trip to stock up on refreshments for all occasions and types of guests

—"bourbon, scotch, gin, vermouth, vodka, a medium good brandy, aged applejack, and a case of beer" (TWC 25)—he again encounters in an owner of a small store that deeply-inspired hankering to leave: He helped me to carry the cartons out and I opened Rocinante's door. "You going in that?" "Sure." "Where?" "All over." And then I saw what I was to see so many times on the journey

—a look of longing. "Lord! I wish I could go." "Don't you like it here?" "Sure. It's all right, but I wish I could go." "You don't even know where I'm going." "I don't care. I'd like to go anywhere." (TWC 25) Keeping with his non-teleological approach, Steinbeck resists punctuating this episode with his own analysis. While, as Irvine Howe writes, novelists of this period "saw—often better than they could say

—the hovering sickness of soul, the despairing contentment, the prosperous malaise" (200) as a result of what has long come to be known as the postmodern condition, this common assessment of writers including Steinbeck during the Cold War should not arrive with the implication that these writers were merely deep-thinking journalists who may just as well have "gone on the road" for the New York Times.

3 The difference, I argue, can be found in the author's intent; specifically, Steinbeck's intent in Travels

, as it was his intent throughout his corpus of work, is to harmonize the binary opposition between the individual will and the group to which that individual belongs. It is, ultimately, the complementary relationship that 3 Thomas Docherty, ed. and intro., Postmodernism: A Reader. New York: Columbia UP, 1993. See this collection of essays for a fuller characterization of the postmodern condition. 30