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

Confined to a hospital bed a few short years after his travels due to an illness that would eventually consume him, Steinbeck confided to interviewer Budd Schulberg that "I've never seen a time when the country was so confused as to where it's headed" (Schulberg 214). These words came at a time when the intensity of Cold War intraimperialism blossomed into something far greater and arguably much worse. The national existential crisis leading into a pathological addiction to "progress" (Astro 42) boiled over into, among other things, a wider-scaled Civil Rights movement, grass roots activism, and an ill-fated battle to contain Communism in Vietnam.

5 Given the nihilistic corners into which Cold War intra-imperialism painted the people of America, this is not at all surprising. An era of turbulence had come on the coattails of an ideologically-heightened fight against Communism. In hindsight, the cause and effect relationship is practically predictable. Steinbeck's telling comment, moreover, suffices as an expression of the era. Still without a compass yet in the throes of orienting itself amidst ideological fallout of its own conception, America reacted to the insipid, emotionally barren circumstances detailed in Travels with Charley in an obstreperous, oftentimes violent manner.

6 Were people to read this text for its 5 Steinbeck's encounters with the notorious "Cheerleaders" in New Orleans who taunted black children about to matriculate into the previously all-white school district also speaks to the effects of Cold War intra-imperialism. While predicated upon a slew of obvious reasons, there is something to say about the increased tension between the races during the Cold War as a result of the belief that Communists and blacks, not to mention homosexuals and other groups considered to be morally defective, were natural compatriots. Isolating racial injustice as sustained by Cold War ideology in this study, however, detracts from the larger picture of the state of America as a whole; indeed, an analysis of Cold War ideology and how it pertains to the Civil Rights movement reaches beyond the scope that Steinbeck provides in Travels with Charley. 6 See also Steinbeck's America and Americans (1966) for a more focused and opinionated statement on the condition of the nation. This text is excluded from my study because it steps outside of my target period of consideration, which is that time when Cold War intra-imperialism was at its peak. This is not to say that its effects did not resonate nor is it to suggest that the inclusion of America and Americans in this study would not help to elucidate exactly how Cold War intraimperialism continued to leave its mark, but, practically speaking, it is to confine my argument to the period when those radical ideals were at a greater intensity. 39