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

the solution to the crisis, although the very basis of the solution was a matter of conjecture at best. Like the New Americanists who take "their bearings from a rejection of the "'liberal consensus'" (Crews XVI), Steinbeck implicitly denounces participation in a group-led defamation, especially because that defamation was grossly uninformed. A theoretic lineage between the New Americanist camp and a disillusioned author can be established because what the New Americanists are really rejecting is a germination of the very predominant Cold War binary that Steinbeck denies. Steinbeck as an unofficial forefather to a movement bent on destroying the "projection of postwar America's hegemony and self-regard onto the literary historical screen" (Crews XVII) labors toward a similar end, though, as I stated earlier, "text" in Steinbeck's world translates into an entirely disaffected people. Richard Astro in "Travels with Steinbeck: The Laws of Thought and the Laws of Things" reminds readers that Steinbeck's travel literature "tells us about the author's own search for meaning and it assists us in our search for order by illuminating the highly paradoxical nature of the American character" (35-36). In the case with Travels

, Steinbeck's relentless urge to secure an understanding of his native land and its diverse population surely speaks well of a distinctly American author wanting to substantiate his innate patriotism with fresher material. An intimate knowledge of his country and his place within it, much to the respectability of Steinbeck as an American author, goes hand in hand with his own ontology. Finding that America's "progress may be a progression toward strangulation" and that "[w]e have overcome all enemies but ourselves" (TWC 196197) only beckons immediate attention to the possible causes and in no way diminishes his obvious concern as if these comments were, in fact, declarations of surrender. Indeed, these observations do not warrant the conclusion that, as John Ditsky maintains, Steinbeck's travels ended in it being a "failed venture" (45).

4 Quite the contrary, 4 Ditsky cites, among other reasons, a general "ambivalence" (46) of Steinbeck's narrative voice as well as "parallel omissions of the places, people, and events from which the book expected to derive its weight and substance" (47) as the key factors for the book's failure. It is, in a phrase, a questioning of Steinbeck's ability to produce art at this point in his career. 36