#1592 Geert Mak and John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley

Bill Steigerwald, who wrote the most important book on Steinbeck's trip, Dogging Steinbeck, is a friend of mine. We don't always agree, but I think we both, like each other. Can't wait to have him in Rosanate. I'm gonna pour him a little cup of coffee, if he drinks coffee, or tea, or whatever he likes, and then I'm gonna say, as Steinbeck did, Bill, may I sweeten that coffee just a little? I'll take out some nice whiskey or something, and we'll have a long talk, and the first question I'm gonna ask him is, so how do you feel about being the bad boy of the Steinbeck world?

And he's gonna laugh out loud, and we're gonna be off and running, and even though we're probably gonna get into an argument, and possibly even a heated one, I think we're gonna wind up being friends. But today, just now, just minutes ago, I finished an interview with Geert Mack. Geert Mack is a Dutch journalist and nonfiction writer. His book, In America, Travels with John Steinbeck, is by far and away the best book ever written about Steinbeck's 1960 journey, even though the book isn't really that much about Steinbeck. It's really about America, but it's a spectacular analysis of America in 2010,, partly through the lens of Steinbeck's earlier journey.

And so, getting a chance to interview Geert Mack is just like meeting Michael Jordan in a certain way. And so, I loved it, and he was fantastic. He's got a great sense of humor. He's wise, he's thoughtful. You know, he saw some of the same problems in Steinbeck's published book that Steigerwald saw, but without the sense of righteousness and anger.

And now he's writing a book on the New Deal, on FDR's administration, very beautiful temperament. And we had just a magnificent conversation. I hope you love it as much as I did. And the first thing I'm gonna do is send it to my friend, Ross Eagle, who is a Steinbeck guy, Steinbeck scholar in North Carolina, and he's gonna be so pleased, I think. And I think I'll be talking again with Geert Mack.

I'm gonna write to him now. I got his email, and I'm gonna write to him and ask him if I could check in with him at certain points along the journey. And I invited him to come over to Bethany to have dinner with Steigerwald and with me. I doubt that that's something that he can just pick up and do, but it would be thrilling if he did. He's in his 70s, but in seemingly very, very good health.

Anyway, you can hear my sense of joy and excitement, because this is just one element of things that are coming together. I've been talking now with photographers. I've been talking with people at the Nixon Presidential Library and the chances that I can have a meeting with some of them on a yacht just off the coast of California. And I've got friends along the way who are doing field research for me. And Russ Eagle's going to write some descriptive pieces to go along with the essays that I post on our site, ltamerica.org.

We're not out there yet, but the word is starting to get out a little bit that I'm doing this, and people are starting to come to us. And I think it's going to be just an unbelievable adventure. I'm preparing for it, as I have prepared for nothing previously in my life, reading up a storm, going back through, travel with Charlie again and again and again, day-by-day outlines. I've been working on the maps, trying to figure out when I stay strictly on Steinbeck's Trail and, when I veer a little bit, other things that I want to see along the way. Now, how much time is this really going to take?

How do I really have conversations with the American people? And one of the things that Geert Maack said that so impressed me was that the American people want to talk. He said, Europeans aren't that way, or certainly not that much, but Americans are filled with hospitality and cheerfulness and will talk and are eager to tell their story and eager to talk about things. I hope that's true for me too, because I'm so eager to go out and really sense the mood of the country and to meet extraordinary people. And by extraordinary, I don't mean published poets and ceramicists, I mean just Americans who have lives and a point of view and have thought about things and have an idea of what America should be, and then an idea of what America is and how it can be better and so on.

And so that's important that I be able to report back. And of course, I have something that Steinbeck didn't have. I have voice recorders, and so I can ask people if it's permissible for me to record what I hear from them. And, if so, excellent. Anyway, I want you along for the ride.

We're working on an interactive map. There'll certainly be maps. There'll be daily posts on Facebook. So the LT America Facebook site, you should become a friend too. There's also my Facebook site, but the main platform for all of this will be ltamerica.org.

Go there, see what we've already done and what we're going to be doing. It's going to be really remarkable because in 2024, the technologies are in place for us to report in real time. It's not like going on a journey in 1960. where all Steinbeck could do is he could maybe talk himself into an interview at an AM radio station, but he didn't. He was interviewed a couple of times along the way, particularly in San Francisco and Monterey, but he was traveling, as he said, incognito, whether that's strictly true or not is unclear.

But he wasn't seeking out media opportunities and he had no way to post anything. He wrote some letters to Elaine, and we really depend upon those. Then there's the original manuscript of Travels with Charlie, which is in the J.P. Morgan Library in New York City. And it's quite different from the published version.

And then there's the published version from 1962.

. And then what his son said and the things that Steigerwald found in meeting people who had met Steinbeck, and this happened to Geert Mack to a certain degree too. So we have a body of information. We have AP photographs and other photographs of that, but we don't have a photograph taken by Steinbeck. Today, of course, he would have a cell phone and he would have taken 5,000 photographs.

And, however imperfect they would be as artwork, they would be absolutely indispensable to any understanding of that journey. But it was what it was in the time that it was on a pre-interstate America, in a truck without proper power, steering or air conditioning. Those are things I'm needing to notice. It's just getting so exciting. This is the big opportunity of this decade of my life.

And I promise you, I'm not going to fail to rise to the occasion with lots and lots and lots of help from others, including people in the LT America world, our little 501C3.

. And, by the way, if you can help, gas cards, help with the dissemination. If you're willing to contribute to the success of the Travels with Charlie tour of 2024, my gratitude, our gratitude will be superb. So anyway, let's go to this show. My interview with Geert Mack of the Netherlands about his 2010 retracing of John Steinbeck's Travels with Charlie journey.

Thanks for listening.

Hello everyone. And welcome to this special edition of listening to America. I have the enormous pleasure today of speaking with Geert Mack. He's in the Netherlands. I'm, of course, in North Dakota.

I've been following his work for a long time. He's a journalist, a writer of nonfiction, a professor and award-winning writer. And he has two really extraordinary books among many others. One is called In Europe, which is a book about the history of the Netherlands which sold hundreds of thousands of copies and won a significant number of awards. And then, more recently, in 2010,, he followed John Steinbeck's 1960 Travels with Charlie tour of the United States and wrote a really splendid book about it called In America, Travels with John Steinbeck.

So welcome, Geert.

And so, and Steinbeck was always an inspiration for me already when I traveled through Europe. That was also, I stole his idea, in fact. So I said, yeah, let's do it also about United States. And I found out that just in 2010,, it was exactly 50 years ago that he made his trip. So indeed, this exact, the same morning, 50 years later, I started from Sac Harbor to do the same, yeah, to make the same trip.

But it was also strange because I found out very soon that he also honestly said he made up some stories. I'm an admirer of John Steinbeck, but his son said it too. He had the dream to talk with people and to meet people. And in fact, he was very, very shy. He was a shy man.

So I thought he couldn't, it was one day and he had met, I remember he met a very interesting guy and he had a long talk with him, and then he traveled 200 miles and so on and so on. And I thought, you cannot do that in one day.

But still, it is a fascinating book. And it was sold very well in that time. And the Americans loved it. And while it was not exactly good journalism, but Americans, everywhere you saw it, they thought, yeah, this is our country. This is the way we live.

This is the way we are thinking. So it was a very good mirror of the United States in that time. Yeah, for sure.

It was really, it was a truck. And the roads were also not so fantastic. This was really hard working, hard working.

Everywhere in the United States, people having breakfast in the diners and every morning and the fuel stations, these kinds of places. And it's a very good place to talk with people, especially elder people. How was the situation in 1960?? Yeah, how do you think about the United States now? And it was very good.

When my wife joined me, sometimes I did it alone, but when my wife joined me, she talked to the woman. And it was very, when we were together, it was very easy to make contact with people. And when you're traveling around and driving around, she was often also, she saw other things than I did. Not one pair of eyes, but two pair of eyes. So it was different, yes, but it helped us a lot.

And I never regret it when she joins me. And then the other hand or so, it has to be a little bit fun to travel around, so yeah.

But he, the first version of his book, I read it in the library in New York. I saw the manuscript. And there, his wife is also full in the book. Suddenly, it became also all, I understand very well that his editor and his agent said, oh, don't do that, because suddenly it was a very, an elderly couple traveling around, as it was like, it was a very bourgeois and dull. All the adventures was gone.

So it was certainly another book. And that was, I think, the reason that his agent said, oh no, put Charlie, his dog, we're in the forefront. Let his wife, let her stay at home.

I traveled really a lot, did a lot of travel through journalism in the United States, yes.

John Steinbeck, huh? Yeah, some journalist from the Pittsburgh Post, it was, yeah. I thought, my God, there is my story. It is gone.

So I, of course, I found out immediately by internet that it was Bill Steigerwald. But we had, yeah, my story was more about United States and less about Steinbeck, and more about the country and the differences. But yeah, I admired Bill enormously because he did it really alone, and he slept in his car, and my trip was rather well-financed, so I couldn't take hotels and these kinds of things, and Bill was sleeping in his car all the time. And really, he did, in fact, what Steinbeck, that was the trip Steinbeck promised his readers he should do, and he never did. But Bill Steinbeck, well, did it.

And he was, of course, a very good journalist because, and he is, he found out all kinds of places where Steinbeck bought stuff. He really, he had a good journalistic job, really.

It was a very good day, yeah.

Welcome back to Listening to America with Clay Jenkinson. I'm discussing John Steinbeck's 1960 Travels with Charlie. journey with Geert Maack of the Netherlands, and he's in the Netherlands. He's in Amsterdam today. Geert, back to the problem of authenticity and veracity in Travels with Charlie.

So Steigerwald wasn't the first person to realize that there's some fictionalizing in the course of the book, but he sort of was nasty about it, and he lost a lot of respect for Steinbeck and said, how can we rely upon him? Most of these incidents didn't occur. He made up all the dialogue. He slept in motels more often than he slept in the rig. His wife was with him for 40% of the time, and so on and so forth, and that really upset a lot of people in the Steinbeck community, but the thing is, his book is extremely important because more than anyone, more even than you, he tracked down every location and tried to find the old motels and the trailer courts and the campgrounds.

like in every community, there are, of course, believers. We are very different, Bill and I, but I agree totally with him. Steigerwald is a very good journalist, and Steinbeck was a lousy journalist, not a journalist at all, and you can't say when Steinbeck would have said, this is a travel story, and honestly, it is a kind of part, is a little bit fiction, perhaps, and it is not a journalistic travel or trip, then there wouldn't have been a problem. For instance, also Hemingway, he made also a lot of stuff.

People were less, let's say, strictly about that at the time.

And now, yeah, there is really,

and I think it is good. As an old journalist, I think it is very good to be clear about that, to say, okay, really, I tried to write about what's happening, but exactly how it is, and other writers can say, I write a very good story and use a lot of traveling. I find a lot of material, and I write a story about it. So the story, Steinbeck's story about America was very good. Really, his impression was very good.

He picked up the mood of the day, and the Americans agreed with that. But as a journalist, I repeat myself, yeah, he was a lousy journalist. He was not a hero at all. He made himself a hero, a lonely hero. Really, he was so homesick.

He was longing for his wife. He was afraid to talk with people. That was the reality.

So these long, deep conversations were factual impossible. I found, for instance, some notes from a friend of him, of a letter, and he joined Steinbeck somewhere from California to Arizona, part of the two days.

And when he was in Alice, North Dakota, I'm a North Dakotan, when he was there, he looked around at the vast plains and said, nothing like that could happen in the state of North Dakota. But I can tell you, Garrett, that that did, those sorts of things did happen. Now, maybe they didn't happen to Steinbeck, but there used to be itinerant thespians and elocutionists who would go around to the schools in the Midwest and talk here and talk there. So it's not out of the realm of possibility. And why would he make up, answer this question, why would he make up an encounter with an itinerant actor in North Dakota?

It's beyond improbability. So doesn't that give it more authenticity? Yes, it's strange.

romantic figures like this, but I know very well when you are making, when you're traveling around, you meet interesting people. He made, Steinbeck, made up a lot of stuff, but it's very well, very well possible that he met this guy indeed in North Dakota. In North Dakota, it's not cliche. It's totally, very unexpected. Sometimes you have situations, you think I cannot almost write it down because nobody wants to believe me.

But that is the reality. Oh yeah, and it is also a kind of thing you will not invent, which is, it is not a cliche. In this time, it is very well possible, just because it is so, almost very, so strange that it happened indeed.

But I think, and that's another side of the story, he needed also, in other cases, the show, because he was, when he wrote this book, he was in a total midlife crisis. He had been ill. He had a writer's block. Everything went wrong. And he wanted to show that he was a real man and a real writer and a real American, and alone on the prairie and so on, of course.

Part of this book was also to show for himself that he could do this.

And Steinbeck buys also Bill Steigerwald and says, yeah, he's a very good American. And I say, wow, for us, that's a part we, sometimes we don't like too much when it is too much. Yeah, this is also what us Europeans attracts with. This is different, but it attracts us. But Steinbeck was also, and in that way, he is, very inspiring for us Europeans.

He was also a very human writer. He writes all the time about humans. In this trip, he was afraid of his fellow Americans. But yeah, in the past and before, he was, he's fantastic books about, of course,

the 30s and East of Eden. And, of course, Of Mice and Men, Anselm, Anselm, Cannery Row, it is so well-written and so well-observed, too. The stations, real observations. And in the same times, it is a book, it is a story. In that way, he's for every writer, he's very, very inspiring everywhere in the world.

But I found in the archive, for instance, the stories, letters, letters who were written by a famous reporter in that time, famous, Lorena Hickok. Of course.

Because Steinbeck wanted to make a show, that he was really a lonely reporter talking with everybody, and much of this loneliness, that was part of the show. And often, I don't trust it. Again, these strange meetings, well, that's very well possible, but you will never know. It's also possible that he met someone, a lot of travel writers are doing that, in fact, somewhere, someone in, let's say, New Orleans, while in reality, he met someone in California or something like that. Everything is possible.

So he placed one person from one place into this story. That's very well possible, too.

Bill was very, at the end, he was very anti-Steinbeck. as a journalist. He felt almost offended. He liked Steinbeck as a guy, and he bought a gun, and Bill thought that is fantastic. This is my guy.

So he was very disappointed. And I'm not so disappointed. I said, okay, this is a man, a kind of midlife crisis. He wants to make a show. Okay.

So I was not so shocked at the end. And I know how travel writers are working. And I'm more like Bill Stein. I'm a real journalist. So I never make up something.

I try to find what's, when it rains in my book, it has rained. I don't, I want to write, I look very well. I look at the details. And I think the reality, the story, the reality brings such a good story already that you don't make up things. You don't fake things.

It is not necessary.

You could see in 2010, already, the Trump revolution coming. And it was all, well, in 1960, people have so difficult life, difficult times, but they know their kids, their boys and girls, it would be better and better. The future would be better for them. All kinds of things. And in 2010,, people were pessimistic.

They thought that the future of our children will be worse. And that is really, that it did, it was the end of the big American promise. And that is, of course, that is a very deep change and a very deep difference between 1960 and 2010..

That's only become much more pronounced in the years since.

So, yeah, that this, what happens in the United States is really also very difficult to see. And at the moment in Europe, we all think we have, now we have to do it ourselves. And it is with reason. We couldn't be, also our army, we cannot be dependent of United States forever. We are, Europe is rich and grown up.

We have to do it ourself. I agree totally with that. But our formation is gone. And yeah, you are going to vote in November again. But yeah, we wish we could vote too.

And for us, it is not, of course,

which guy will lead the country, but this is also who will lead the Western world. Or not lead, we'll see.

We'll be back in just a moment.

Welcome back to Listening to America. Across from me, at least virtually, is Geert Maack, the distinguished journalist from the Netherlands. His book, In America Travels with John Steinbeck is of 500 and some pages. One of the things that's interesting to me about this book is that you did what Steinbeck did, what Steinbeck wanted to do. In other words, he wanted to go out and really explore what America was, its mood, its people, its voices, its regionalisms, its cuisine, the changes.

He said he had been away from the heartland so long that he no longer really understood his own country. And then he went out to do this, but in a sense, he sort of faked it, because he rushed around trying to catch up with Elaine. His health wasn't good. He probably did not sleep in the truck. very often.

He sort of went through the motions of that journey, but then he went away and wrote a really interesting short book about it, but he never really did what you did, which was to try to really wrestle with American ideas.

I took Nat Charlie with me, with my wife, and in the backseat, a lot of fellow Europeans. What is this America? So there is a lot of history in the book, for instance, and there are lots of, so I'm introducing also a lot of things that you have. for Americans, they are normal, but for Europeans, not. And that is another way of thinking of Steinbeck.

Steinbeck wrote for his fellow Americans. I'm writing for my fellow Europeans, and how, what are the differences, what is common to us, how the country's changed, and so on, and so on, and so on. Different attitude.

That's really, in Western Europe, the problem is always triumph. For Americans, it is often a kind of exceptionalism. We are a special country, and we are so good. The Americans often don't see what is really happening in other countries. For instance, I was in the read, I was very angry about the war in Iraq, also because that was the Bush government, who said, we have the right to invade, and so on, and of course, it was an enormous mistake, and you see the same happening now with around Russia and Ukraine.

What's happening now in Russia, that is really, it is a criminal state. It is disgusting, let me be clear about that. The Dutch and the British Empire, especially these two, was also terrible, really. Very imperialistic, but there was one good thing. They, even already in the beginning of the 20th century, they were very involved with the countries, and they knew quite a lot about those countries, and the problem is with the American public, doesn't know, they don't know their empire.

Because that is so now, even Navalny would have been against it. It was not Navalny in that time, but so yeah, that is, but yeah, we were living now in, it is a dangerous time. And I think also we have to, we see also now, as when you see America as an empire, it's an empire in decline. And when an empire is in decline, it is always a very dangerous situation.

And I'm worried because I'm now writing about the Roosevelt times and also everything around it. And this, in some way, of course, you can agree about Roosevelt, and he made also mistakes.

But in fact, it was a very inspiring time. And also the way he didn't become a socialist. People now in America say, oh, was he even a communist? No, he saved capitalism, in fact.

When you're out there, Geert, on day 12 or day 37 or whatever, you're traveling 10,000 miles the way he did. When you look at the vastness and essentially the emptiness of America, what was it like for you and your wife to wander through Montana or Idaho?

It is such, from the Maine to through, indeed, the Dakota, still California, and the nature also. With Americans, it's always everything is bigger, greater, faster, but there's also the American nature. And I must really tell, Steinbeck was also crazy to be afraid of people, because how the political differences are, Americans are fantastic to talk with. It is, for a journalist, it's an El Dorado. Everyone wants to speak.

The hospitality is enormous.

That is the good thing. And I really, I really hope that the Americans pick up this attitude again also, not only to turn Europeans, we travel around, but also to each other. And give also each other's ideas some hospitality.

You are such an open country. Please, come back.

But I'm a little bit, I spent a lot of time with friends in California. Really, I was and am part of the family. So, the Bay Area is also a favorite place. But also Maine.

It's really, when I mention those places and those names, every time my heart jumps up. Really, both, yeah.

So, I wish also Americans travel, if possible. But, yeah, and here in Europe, where quite a lot of people I talk with, they followed, yeah, they went on holiday and followed my book and rented trucks and cars. And, yeah, I think Steinbeck and I and Steigerwald, we got a lot of followers, yes.

But, it is, of course, since the 60s, that it's changed a lot, really changed a lot. But the old attitudes are deep. And so, I understand very well the problems.

And, but when I see, for instance, in the 30s,

I'm writing about it now, Jesse Owens, he won. the Olympic, black guy won the Olympic Games in 36.. In the Nazi Germany, he had a fantastic time. Really, oh, how interesting. He came in New York back, he take a day parade, and he was, he went to the Waldorf Astoria for a great honorary dinner, but he had to take the escalator for goods.

It was not permitted that the black guy went into the head entrance of the Waldorf Astoria. That was 1913..

How American I am myself?

I think I was, I was,

I think a big, great part of my journalistic life was always involved with America, American newspapers.

In Europe, we say he is a continental guy, or he is an Atlantic guy. I'm a typical Atlantic guy.

And I learned, yeah, I think you said it already, in North Dakota and in the plains, I learned a lot about space and how important that is. And how it makes your spirit, can you make your spirit more free? Yeah, I learned that too. And Americans learned me also a lot about hospitality, really, and about friendliness, and about civilized behavior, not with firearms, but civilized behavior in traffic, compared with Europe. Really, of course, you see in the movies, always Americans shooting and driving like hell, but in reality, in our, compared with Europe, the Americans are very civilized in traffic.

You learn these things, you learn too.