Kill your idols: "Travels With Charley"

Veteran journalist recreates the trip 50 years later, finds out much of it was fictionalized. Publisher put a disclaimer in the newest edition of the book:

http://www.c-span.org/Events/QA-with-Bill-Steigerwald/10737438500/

http://www.amazon.com/Dogging-Steinbeck-Steinbecks-America-exposed/dp/1481078763/ref=la_B00ARDCCZQ_1_1_title_0_main?ie=UTF8&qid=1362365666&sr=1-1

 

Not much news there, TSP, other than the disclaimer. Public knowledge for at least a decade, probably much longer, that large chunks of it never happened.

Steinbeck was an old man who figured he was going to die soon and wanted one more adventure. He was also a novelist. Few can write both great fiction and nonfiction — Wallace comes to mind, early Twain, but Steinbeck never does. He captures what he sees, but it's always fiction.

 

Never read it, so don't know much about the backstory. Maybe that's why Steigerwald did it, to find out what was true and what wasn't.

Seems like so many of these famous nonfiction books turn out to be mostly fiction. This, In Cold Blood, A Million Little Pieces, Night, even Anne Frank's book is questioned. Maybe we should start threads when one of these books turns out to actually be true.

 

Did Steinbeck ever insist it was "immaculately factual?"

 

Didn't he owe it to Charley to be 100 percent factual?