The wayward bus

I don’t want to flog John Steinbeck incessantly but, having written about his travel books,  I wanted to try his fiction; preferably something easy, nothing too heavy going or wrathful. So I turned to The Wayward Bus. I liked the title, with its hint of troubled travelling. And it reminded me of my first tentative attempt at writing a blog, The girl on the 227 bus. (That’s enough references to my other writings – I won’t mention them again; promise).

This is a story of a beaten up bus, its passengers and driver, and their short but ill-fated journey. It’s a study in character, but Steinbeck draws the reader in, so you start to take sides, to develop likes and dislikes – just as in real life. There’s Alice, Juan Chicoy’s wife, crass and foul tempered, as worn out as the bus itself. Kit the apprentice mechanic, nicknamed for his acne, longing to be known by his real name; he could hardly be more different. Waiting for the bus is Mr Pritchard, a business man, out of his depth when not surrounded by his corporate cronies, the antithesis of Steinbeck himself. Norma the skivvy spends her days in phantasy, dreaming of Clark Gable, until warm hearted Camille, the stripper, introduces her to the ways of the world.

The Wayward Bus was written more than sixty years ago, and I wondered at the outset how it would stand up today. How much has changed along the back roads of America? My experience of the United States is limited to tourist trips, clattering along on Amtrak and riding the occasional bus, driving faltering rental cars from Super 8 to Motel 6. So I’m not the best judge. But obviously there’s been progress of sorts. I’ve never seen a bus as battered as Juan’s. The diners along the highway are all polished aluminium and paragons of hygiene, even though the calorific content hasn’t changed much. Maybe the scruffy, down at heel joints are still there, hidden in the quarters of town where nervous tourists never tread. Perhaps I’ve just looked in the wrong places.

What hasn’t changed is human nature. Alice choking back the rage in her throat because she knows what it can lead to. Well, who hasn’t been there? Pritchard, secure only in the cosy folds of the like minded; exactly the criticism levelled at politicians today, certainly on this side of the Atlantic.
This book has been compared to Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, and comparisons with The Prologue are obvious; a parade of characters revealing their inner selves as they set off on a journey. But that’s where the comparison ends. With Steinbeck, the pen pictures are there, but the characters are developed through the unravelling of the drama. And drama there is, with the swollen river threatening destruction to the bridge, the coach and its passengers

Above all, this is a book about emotions – anger, resentment, frustration, lust, amusement and hope. If the bashed up bus is wayward, then more so the characters. By the end, some of them have gone right off the rails.

Next time you take a bus, you’ll look askance at your fellow passengers. Behind those impassive faces, who knows what they’re really thinking?

A bumpy ride with John Steinbeck

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about John Steinbeck’s account of his foray into the Soviet Union, in A Russian Journal. Having seen what he thought of the USSR, I wondered what he would make of his homeland. So I turned to Travels with Charley.

After spending ten years living in Europe, Steinbeck returned to the United States and, in an effort to re-connect with the land and its people, set off on a three months road trip in a state of the art campervan, accompanied by his French poodle, Charley. Starting in New York, he travels to Seattle, then down to California and home via Texas and New Orleans.

The result is an uneven book. By the half way point in the text he has reached no further than Chicago. Then follows a rush to the west, reflections on the California of his youth, and finally his thoughts about Texas and racial segregation in the deep South. Descriptions of scenery is sparse to say the least. He marvels at the richness of Wisconsin and, in the failing light of evening, sees the Bad Lands of North Dakota as the Good Lands. But red tape bars him from Niagara and he hardly gets to see Yellowstone. Charley is spooked by the roadside bears and he beats a rapid retreat.

As Steinbeck discovers, travelling in a campervan is a solitary experience. You only get to meet people when you come to a halt. So, although he has his encounters – with truckers, mobile home dwellers, Canuk potato pickers – for much of the time he has only himself, and the irrepressible Charley, for company. Not that this can prevent his descriptive genius from shining through. He ‘whitened his sepulchre’ to attend a church service led by a hell and brimstone preacher, gets into a tangle with customs officials when attempting to enter Canada, and brushes with a monosyllabic state trooper in Maine.

Usually he reserves judgement on the people he meets, but his patience is tested to the limit by his experience of racial hatred in New Orleans; first the taxi driver who blames everything on the Jews for stirring things up, and the women who line up to hurl abuse at the children arriving for school. Finally he loses his cool with a man to whom he has given a lift, and he unceremoniously kicks him out of his van. Steinbeck has reached the end of his tether, and he is glad to head for home.

In the course of his travels, Steinbeck gets to reflect on the experiencing of visiting places. What one person will see from one perspective, another person will see quite differently. As for revisiting your past, you can experience it only through the spectrum of memory. In travelling with Steinbeck, we get to see the country through his eyes. What we get is hardly a comprehensive guide, but there’s rarely a dull moment.

Travels with Steinbeck

Ever since being forced at school to read The Grapes of Wrath, I vowed never to read John Steinbeck again; not unless I wanted to be really depressed. But the other day I was looking for a travel book to read. The bookshop had its ‘hilarious’ self-satisfied accounts of house moving to Tuscany, and superficial jaunts of the sort that would make Wilfred Thesiger turn in his grave. But I was looking for something different.

 

I then came across A Russian Journal by John Steinbeck. It was certainly different. Just as the Iron Curtain was falling across Eastern Europe, Steinbeck travelled through the Soviet Union, accompanied by a war photojournalist, Robert Capa. They visited Moscow, Stalingrad, the Ukraine and Georgia, observing the lives of ordinary men and women. Frustrations abound. Aeroplanes fail to arrive or are hopelessly late, people who promise to meet them fail to turn up, there are barriers of language and the inevitable bureaucracy. At the same time, they are treated with extraordinary generosity wherever they go.

 

Steinbeck and Capa rile each other, and lose their tempers with the unfortunate translator who is assigned to accompany them. They complain about the sheer exhaustion of eating, drinking and travelling to excess. Their journey is set against the background of devastation caused by war, and there are poignant moments. In Stalingrad a child is seen visiting his father ever day – at the cemetery. A shell shocked girl emerges from a hole in the ground that she has made her home.

 

Inevitably, Steinbeck’s compassion for the people shines through at every turn, as does his sense of humour. His car is falling to bits, but it is a superb water heater. Orders are orders and must be obeyed; it is easier to change a sentry than to change the sentry’s orders. Meanwhile, Capa’s photographs capture the lives of the people, harvesting, dancing, wrestling, queuing, and hanging washing amidst the war torn rubble.

 

This is more than a travel book. It is an insight into a past world, and into the mind of an exceptional writer.