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
Steinbeck can be seen as a domestic de Tocqueville roving the countryside and interviewing its inhabitants in order to present an accurate, yet not necessarily flattering picture of the "is" truth of America. The result of his efforts, interestingly, details not only the generic character of early 1960s America but also an America subservient to a very specific and evidently damaging set of ideals. I use the term "intra-imperialism" to describe America's enforcement of values upon itself as a means to proclaim its distinctness from Communist Russia in order to offer what I hope to be a convenient heading under which Steinbeck's descriptions tend to fall. The "paradoxical nature of the American character" of which Astro speaks, thus, is likely in reference to the ways in which America sought to resolve one politicized system of thought with another system of thought —the latter, perhaps, being a more natural, humanistic, and unimposing paradigm. This is, of course, to suggest that it is human nature to project internal maladies onto something else —"Here" or the Russians —if only to avoid addressing those maladies in a constructive manner. In light of Steinbeck's ability to capture what "is" in the form of the easily perceived friction qualifying the ideological lives of those he meets and, from that, ponder its relevance to their overall well-being, the question of Steinbeck's success becomes a moot point. Steinbeck's search for meaning, which is also an attempt, as Peter Lisca states, to reconstruct "his image of man" (7) in, for him, a new, almost foreign America is itself an appeal to his typical higher ideal, which can best be described as brotherly love: the fullest reconciliation between two parties. Although many critics call Travels yet another example of his sentimentalism, and others, such as Donald Weeks in "Steinbeck Against Steinbeck," identify Steinbeck's endeavor as simply one of "good intentions" (456), his plain observations, nonetheless, recognize a very significant factor in the disintegration of the soul of American society. Accepting and understanding what Steinbeck accepts and understands, however, is a matter of how much the reader is willing to participate in Steinbeck's deceptively matter-of-fact worldview. Regardless of how the reader chooses to receive Steinbeck's altruistic message, the fact remains that Steinbeck labors toward formations of alternative communities well removed from that ideological community that fostered, in a general sense, spiritual 37
