Sunday, November 12, 2017

Week 8


To the Editor of the New York Times Book Review,

After having read your recent review of the manifesto Travels with Charlie I am both taken surprised and slightly intrigued by your opinions of the work. Because I myself have a plethora of opinions, many of which I am still trying to sift through, I will attempt to work through them here. You may agree or disagree on my opinions of travel, but all of what I say comes from the position of a God-fearing woman from France who knows only of America what I am told from my niece and from what I saw first hand during my brief travels there.

First and foremost, I read the text like a fictional journal entry before a factual text. I found Steinbeck's semi-prosaic structure to be at its best moments flamboyant and rich with lucid detail and at its worst moments to be some of the flattest bits of literature I've ever read. Almost as though I was reading the dinner menu at my local diner. He has this way about him -- this dry humor -- that is at some times a reprieve from the monotony, and at other times is so distracting that I am at a loss for how to place it. His descriptions of the land of Montana were enticing, glowing even, but I lacked the same luster reading his dry descriptions of Texas, whose only redeeming characteristic seemed to be the jokes that came at its expense. Why include such bland description in a work intended to be read by others? I understand journalistic integrity, but my stars!

Second, I found the work to be a bit problematic, for in my cursory readings I found no mention of women other than the sidelong glance or passing reference to his wife or a waitress. How might I, a potential traveler, regard the American countryside without an understanding of how I might be situated there? I found myself wondering why his descriptions focused so heavily on men and the countryside before realizing that a discussion of the feminine was not absent at all -- in fact, it was the focus of the text. The feminine was ubiquitous! Steinbeck clearly has not read my niece's work The Second Sex, for in his analysis of the natural world he conflates the natural world with womanhood more broadly. Be it in his desire to domesticate the "untamable" forests, his disdain for natural parks for their already having been "conquered," or in his descriptions of rivers and streams mimicking the description of a woman's body, he implicitly relies upon the dualism between masculine and feminine to construct his narrative. Embodying at times the prototypical masculine explorer, Steinbeck reveals his own implicit biases -- while he ignores women throughout most of his journey, he simultaneously draws on their "energies" (as Simone might say) to purport his story.

Third, I am a bit put off by his pessimism in the final chapters of the book. While it is certainly true that he is justified in certain critiques of urbanization, to assume the world has not benefitted from humanity's centralization in the city seems to miss the boat entirely. I understand completely his dismay at industrialization, as in France the skyline is now too tinged with grey and the air hard to breathe. But how does he not feel exhilaration in Seattle at seeing the manicured lawns and curated museums, the fish markets and the shops bustling with excited tourists? How does he not even feel thankful for the veterinarian? It is in this reluctance to bifurcate from the traditional travel narrative that Steinbeck, in my humble opinion, risks invalidating his own story as inauthentic, or instead gives away his status as a geezer. Not all of us older folk are "too resistant to modernization for our own good!"

As usual, I am unable to parse through these qualms sufficiently. Call me a disaffected French woman with her nose too far into American texts for her own good, but frankly, Steinbeck's journeys seem to rely upon a mysteriously vague and indefatigable conceptual basis, for most of which I am simply lost. Perhaps in reading your response my quandaries will find resolution. I await your reading.

Best,
Margaret de Beauvoir

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