Nonfiction account of his trip across the country with his dog. Iran were reading it when i was 15. It would probably i remember reading it when i was 15. I remember being kind of disappointed that on his great trek he did come through pittsburgh. The place closest he came was eerie erie. I have a vague recollection of reading it, but it made no impression on me. Steinbeck himself, i had to read of mice and men. Grapes of wrath. I did not have to read his other major work, cannery row, in high school. But they say are springsteens life was changed when he read grapes of wrath. It gave him a social conscience and he wanted to do work on the working man. It had no effect on me. I was a goldwater boy. Hillary clinton was a goldwater girl in chicago. Almost the same age as i am. It set me off in a whole different direction than bruce springsteen. The book, travels with charley, when did the trip happen for him . On september 23, 1960, after a great deal of preparation, he left his summer home in sag harbor, new york, on long island. The european end of long island. He and charlie set off in his camper van, a pickup truck with a camper almost like a sailboat cabin or a boat cabin on top, set into the bed of the pickup truck. We will show it in a minute. He took off on september 23 and headed north the message uses and visited his kid at school near deerfield. Then he made his way up to the top of main. Manine. For some strange reason he thought he had to touch the top of maine first. He found out how big maine is. He worked his way he went to bangor and up to port kent, the top of maine, and drops down. How many days was he on the road . 75, maybe 77 at the most. No one knows for sure. He kept no notes. There were no records, no expense reports i can find or that anybody had. I know when he started Thomas September 23, 1960. I know he was he mailed something from tallahatchie, mississippi december 19 60. He was pushing hard to get home. He was sick of the road and trying to get home. What kind of dog . A french poodle, born in france. 10 years old, his wifes, his third wife and widow. It was her dog. At the last minute he said, how about i take the dog for company . But quick background on you. Where did you work most of your life . I grew up in pittsburgh. I decided to get into journalism, went to penn state, started to get a masters, did not work out. I went to cincinnati for four years. Then i left and went to l. A. Got in the side door at the l. A. Times as copy editor. Had 12 great years in l. A. I went out there with a car with everything i owned on top, including a old typewriter. I went out to see what would happen to me in los angeles. I was divorced of the time and had two kids. I ended up getting married again and having three hollywoodborn children. That is my great gift of them. I worked at the l. A. Times for 10 years, from 19791989. Then we were back in pittsburgh, as i say, to raise my children and die in peace. You did work at the pittsburgh postgazette. For the 1990s, basically, then the Pittsburgh Tribune review which is a libertarian alternative. You say discovering the truth about travels with charley. Why is there a truth to be exposed . I set out to do this. A lot of people say i set out to bring steinbeck down, which is totally silly. I did a lot of feature stories in my life as a journalist. A sunday feature story where you spend a week or two with somebody. There is a long piece and maybe analysis. It was not a straight upand down reportorial piece, but more of a firstperson piece, although i did not write it in the first person. I was very much in the story. I thought i quit my daily newspaper job in march 2009 and thought, i will read books until i die. How about this book . I will find out where steinbeck went on his trip and i will follow that route faithfully, 50 years later, exactly 50 years later. It is almost like a sunday feature a sunday newspaper feature to the 10th power. No newspaper would let me go away for seven weeks or spend that kind of money. I did it on my own dime and on my own time. My agent in new york did not think it was a good idea. Wrote books to not sell anymore unless you are somebody famous. Books do not sell anymore unless you are somebody famous. I started researching steinbeck. I bought travels with charley. This is the 1997 version. I read it first in 1962. Probably close to one million people. It sold 250,000 copies immediately. In any case, i was on, i started researching travels with charley. I wrote down every place he went, every place he mentioned. I thought it would be fairly easy to find his route and determine what it was. I had a 1960 two rd atlas and a sort of plotted 1962 road atlas and plotted the trip. Good thing i did not have a real job. I kept building this database of time and places times and places in travels with charley. I went to the steinbeck fast summer of 2010. I went exactly 50 years after he went. He went right in the midst of the jfknixon race. I went 50 years later, the Tea Party Fall of 2010. By the time i left i had read also the original manuscript of travels with charley, which is sort of like a holy relic. The west coast relic is the truck he went in. The east coast relic is the manuscript, the original handwritten manuscript of travels with charley. When i went to read it at the morgan library, it is unbelievably beautiful. Like getting in and out of the pentagon and the vatican at the same time. Appointments, very strict. In new york city. I have been there many times. On madison avenue and 37 think . Named after j. P. Morgan. His old home. They brought out the manuscript donated by steinbeck, handwritten. He wrote in longhand, in pencil mostly. Margin to margin, top to bottom. I can read most of the words, but many of them are indecipherable. I compared the manuscript with the published book. Had anybody ever done that . The guy who wrote at the morgan told me i was the first person to do it since 2006, and only six or seven people had done it. Did anybody ever publish anything . No. I call it the smoking gun, the smoking artillery piece. I did that last in my research. Strange how it worked out worked out very well. There i am reading this manuscript. I had my smartphone with the kindle version of travels with charley. I compared. And you realize that the untruth part of travels travels with charley is betrayed by the manuscript and the edits made on the manuscript. You see what he really did, his wife joined him in seattle, spent 20 days with him on the west coast. That is not in the book. He had all the scenes about them traveling together in the manuscript. Going to resorts and staying at the st. Francis hotel in San Francisco, which is where fatty arbuckle and Queen Victoria state. A very palatial place. I realized then there was quite a large gap between what steinbeck wrote and what he actually did on his trip. Who he met, where he went, who he traveled with. You call him a fraud . I did. That was sort of a slow process. In my notebook, the day i read the manuscript i wrote the thing that this is a fraud. But i did not use that word until much later. I was introduced by a friend of mine at the postgazette. He called it something of a fraud. I like the way that rang. In a sense it is a literary fraud. It was marketed, sold, reviewed, and topped for 50 years is a true story. Or 50 years is a true story. How old was he . 58, and not in great health. He had a couple strokes. He was fine, but not a young man. Lets take a look at that. We were at the Steinbeck Center back in 2002 when we did a series on writers. What was it named after . , i hope. Ixotes horse im a nonfiction guy. What iron member most is that basically, i remember most is that basically, they set up the vehicle. It has one of the first camper bodies i have ever seen. That was not a major sport in those days. There were very few large campers that contain toilets and all the rest. He thought it made him look rather invisible on the road. There were not many of them in those days. He called it the turtle. Nante . Iant my father is a great fan of don quixote. Mount. Sancho panzas it is really amazing that he occupied the space. Did he sleep in here . Yes. This table goes down and there was a mattress that goes on top so you could sleep this way. Did you talk or meet with john Tom Steinbeck . I tried several times. He is one of the first guys i wanted to talk to. Who would know more about the real trip and what went on on the west coast than him . It was kind of awkward. His wife was kind of tough to get through. Then i sort of gained her confidence. She warmed up to me a little. But i never he was in santa barbara. I was never going to be in santa barbara. I never talked to him. Why should anybody care . That is a good question. Not about your meeting with Tom Steinbeck, but the whole thing . In a way, if i were only doing a book about the fictionalizing, some of the deceit that went into the writing and marketing and publishing of travels with charley, i do not think that is enough to write a book about. That was one of my problems selling it to traditional publishers in new york. We tried everywhere. Road books do not sell. Steinbeck is not important enough to anybody. I did not have a real neither one of those made a book, but i think everything made a book. My adventures, my innocent, naive attempts to follow this trail and applying basic 30 years of journalism experience to the process as opposed to being a dog fan or a travel fan or a steinbeck fan i was a journalist. I followed the trail. There is no great reason to say this was a big deal, i do not think. But there is fiction and there is nonfiction, and there is quite a divide between the two these days. There is creative nonfiction, narrative nonfiction, all these different applications or fictional techniques to nonfiction that are either ok or not ok depending on how far you go and make things up or fudging the facts or changing things around. As they say, all good nonfiction contains fictional techniques, narrative, and all nonfiction contains fiction. If you he won a nobel prize for literature, what did he get it for . His whole body of work . Pretty much so. He won it in 1962 a couple months after travels with charley came out. I guess it just came out recently he was sort of, ok, we do not have anybody else worthy this year, we will give it to him. They had a bunch of people and they all the woman who wrote out of africa was one of the finalists. They gave it to steinbeck. They just release the notes from the nobel committee. He was sort of not a second choice but a, ok, we will give it to some guy. For his body of work. Travels with charley was a big commercial success of the time. They did mention that in a release about the award. He had written the winter of our discontent. Lets look at John Steinbeck in 1962 as he accepts the award. [applause] it is customary for the recipient of this award to offer on the nature and direction of literature. In this particular time, however, i think it would be good for us to consider the responsibilities of the makers of literature. Such is the prestige of the nobel award that at this place rice stand im compelled not to speak like a grateful and apologetic mouse but to roar like a lion for our profession and the great and good men who have practiced it through the ages. What you think he was like . What do you you know from your research . Likable in a lot of ways. I guess he became rich and famous. He started out as a struggling writer. He worked hard to become rich and famous. He was a big guy. He had a big, heavy voice. I think he was a funny guy, a playful guy. He loves to travel. He traveled an awful lot with his family. At one point they all took off for europe. He was, i think, smart. He was a great writer, a great nature writer. He had trouble becoming a journalist at 25. He basically got fired from a new york newspaper because he could not tell the story straight, tell the facts straight. He was always embellishing, which is kind of funny to me. He is a tremendous writer. Any journalist would love to be able to capture the details and colors and feeling of nature and just reality as he took it in. Now, his biographer, jackson benson, claims he was kind of cranky and not as good to his kids or a couple of his wives i do not know anything about that. To me, i guess my argument would be that of all the great celebrities and writers of his age he was a pretty normal guy. There is not any real horrible stories about him. Atlets look at some video the sag harbor home. You took this video. Do you remember when it was . Wax it would have been the night before or the day of the 50th anniversary of his leaving. You are starting your trip then . Wax once once i see it i can tell you when. This is where steinbeck started his trip, september 20 3, 19 1960. This is his house on a private lane. Sag harbor, very close to southampton. He planted that tree right by his door. It was tiny then, now it is huge. Out in the yard, there is his writing house where he wrote. Hes is the writers shack used to write his books in. He would come out here where he could not lie and basically no one could visit him. It looks like it is in pretty good shape. The sun is going down behind it, which makes for a pretty spectacular spot. Who has that house now . His last wife, elaine, her heirs have control of the house. Is it a museum . No. It is well taken care of. The New York Times has taken pictures of the inside. I did not look inside the windows or anything that day. But the times took a bunch of pictures. It looks like it is pretty much the way it was when he left it. I think people live there or have lived there, and there is sort of a struggle of the house over the house as to what to do with it. Back to what you said earlier nobody wanted a book of travel. Why not . What has happened . I do not think road books work anymore. Unless you are im trying to think, william least heat moon, who wrote blue highway. That started out very small but grew into a big road book. Im trying to think if there had been any major since. The traditional Publishing Industry is all about selling books. If they do not think it is going to sell, they do not care who you are or what you are doing. They do not want the book. I was told by way of my agent, who got responses by editors who read my proposal, the idea is when you go to write a book you write a proposal. The saying is that you sell the proposal, then write the book. I had to pitch this whole idea, what i was going to do, why was doing it, what i knew about steinbecks book not being factual. How i was going to compare my america in 2010 with steinbeck s 1960 america, all that stuff. Basically, i was euro35 in zero35 on this. It would great if it became a bestseller, i would have a final laugh, but im not holding up much obama. It turned out much better than i am not holding up much hope for that. It turned out much better than i thought. Not only because the trip and people i met, which did not surprise me that i met so many wonderful interest and people driving around like a maniac for 43 days on 11,000 miles around the country. I knew i would meet good people. I have done things like that before, been on the road as a journalist. I know that if you are alone and on the road you will meet many interesting people. You will not mean the kind of people that steinbeck invented and put in his book because you do not meet traveling shakespearean actors in the middle of a cornfield in eastern north dakota, as he says he did, and did not. But you do me a farmer on a big ford truck. How do you know he did not meet that actor . He betrayed where he really was on the trip. He had no notes, no tape recorder. He did write letters to his wife from the road very often. How many of those did you read . Maybe seven or eight. Where were they . Wax where were they . Conveniently, in a book, steinbeck, life and letters edited by his widow. His wife joined him on the trip after about 10 days. He drove from chicago to seattle, 2100 miles, in seven days. Each night he wrote a letter. His wife through back to flew back to new york. He is averaging 300 or 400 miles a day. Each night he wrote a letter to his wife and said where he was. Monday, tuesday, wednesday, thursday, friday. He compares that compare that to what he says in his book and you realize the night he says in the book that he is camped out under the stars in a cornfield in eastern north dakota meeting an itinerant shakespearean actor. The next night sleeping in the badlands, hearing the barking of coyotes. Those two nights did not exist. They are pure invention. He was, as he said in a letter to his wife, in a motel taking a bath. S so he and his wife inadvertently betrayed this by publishing those letters. I do not know if that letters would have ever seen those letters would have ever seen the light of day. I often say what i did was nothing spectacular. Any kid with a library card and a healthy dose of skepticism could have done what i did. Imagine william least heat moon. He has been here a couple times. I want to run a clip of him talking about John Steinbeck. I think that blue highway is a better book than travels with charley but i must say this in John Steinbecks defense. He was suffering from cancer at the time. This is really his swan song, so to speak. He took a challenging trip. He took that well recovering from cancer and never really traveled again after that. So for a man who is ill it is a tremendous effort. I admire tremendously. But it is not his best writing. Reaction to that characterization . I agree. I agree, but it was not cancer. It was a series of strokes. He was in pretty good shape. It is easy to say, to be too nice two easy on steinbeck to say he was sick. That is why he had to make up the stuff he made up. There are contemporaneous reports about steinbeck where he was on the road. A man who wrote the book helterskelter, interviewed steinbeck in his hotel in San Francisco. Steinbeck was playful and full of vigor. Others who saw him on this trip, especially in San Francisco, he was not a sickly guy moping around the country. He was full of energy. And good health, apparently. He was not totally depressed, either. Based on these observations of people. His local paper, the peninsula herald, in monterey, went to his cottage in Pacific Grove and found him there fixing the fence. They got a big picture of him. He was banging away at some fence trying to fix it. A very nicely written feature. He is perfectly fine. Born in salinas, went to stanford John Steinbeck lived in sag harbor way at the end of manhattan long island. And manhattan at the same time. How long did you live in manhattan . He died in 1968. 66 years old. I would say he was in new york the last 20 years of his life. Back to when you