Book: Long Way Home by Bill Barich

On the Trail of Steinbeck's America. The author spends six weeks driving across country from east to west always inspired by Steinbeck's Travels with Charley. He did not have a dog and he did not have a camper but he traveled nearly 6000 miles pretty much across the middle of the country...close to US 50, but veering southwest in Utah to southern California and then up to San Francisco. Of course, I LOVE travel tales and have done my share of cross-country driving, always having the sorts of encounters Mr. Barich had on HIS trip. He takes time to engage in conversations along the way. He detours whimsically and he refers to Steinbeck often.

"The next passage in my journey is a love affair," John Steinbeck swooned over Montana, but it was "Jefferson City, Missouri that stole my heart," says Bill Barich. The book moves right along, with anecdote following anecdote, historical perspectives, musings on how Americans live and what they find important in their lives.

He finds his route peopled mostly with conservatives. He is traveling just before Obama was elected so he asks folks about their politics and concludes that there was a "bizarre reality irrespective of the facts. On this particular subject [guns] as with abortion, the possibility of an intelligent discussion had gone by the boards."

After an overload of advertising aimed at attracting tourists with all possible inducements and hyperbole, in Ouray, Colorado, he finally "saw the best sign of the trip, a small brass plaque on a nondescript brick buidling: ON THIS SITE IN 1897 NOTHING HAPPENED."

If you like the open road, you will like this book with its observations on the America he experienced in 2008.

In Monterey, he "asked around Cannery Row to discover what, if anything, of John Steinbeck's the tourists had read. Of Mice and Men topped the list....The late novels, such as The Winter of Our Discontent and Sweet Thursday, drew a blank. Oddly, Travels with Charley earned just a single mention despite being a bestseller. Readers had forgotten about it, apparently, but they praised it when prompted." The author also notes that they "loved Charley and the idea of being on the road, but they were blind to the author's acid observations, barely concealed malaise, and outright expressions of disgust." And I admit, I too have only a romanticized remembrance of Travels with Charley.

He agrees with Steinbeck's pessimism and "the trashiness of the landscape, the pernicious malls and ugly subdivisions, and the uniform blandness of our mass culture are here to stay barring a catacylsm." He decries our "gross obesity and polluted watersheds...our unsurpassed talent for living on credit cards.. and our indulgence of the divisive talk-show pundits or the way we've devalued--even become suspicious of--the pursuit of excellence."

But the author is also heartened by many of the individuals he meets, by the national protected lands, by our technology, and at the end of the book by the vote for change...the election of Obama. And he also notes that the "fifty states each with its own mores and set of priorities, don't cohere except on paper."

I find that individuals are always more complex, with richer lives, in real-time than they are when generalized or as statistics. This author, as all good travel writers, seemed honestly interested in those he met with their diverse lives and histories. This book is a very readable combination of specificities and the generalities of a trip across America.