#1622 Clay's John Steinbeck America Tour Resumes

Listening to America

History, Politics, Unitedstates, Society & Culture, American

4.6 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 21 October 2024

⏱️ 60 minutes

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Summary

Guest host Russ Eagle interviews Clay about the third phase of his 2024 Steinbeck "Travels with Charley" tour. Russ was in North Carolina, Clay, at an RV park in eastern New Mexico on the legendary Route 66. They discussed Steinbeck's purpose for his 1960 truck camper Odyssey. Did he achieve his goal? Why wasn't Steinbeck interested in America's National Parks, many of which he could easily have visited? What was Steinbeck's state of mind as he set out to search for America? How important is his aristocratic French poodle, Charley, to the book's success? Clay also covers his recent cultural tour of Literary England and a visit to Arches and Canyonlands National Parks in Utah in search of the legacy of Edward Abbey, the anarchist and wilderness lover who wrote Desert Solitaire in 1968. And Clay's so-far unsuccessful search for America's best gumbo.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello everyone and welcome to this introduction to this week's listening to America
0:05.0	podcast.
0:06.7	I'm on Route 66 now, just about to enter the panhandle of Texas.
0:12.4	I'll be going to Amarillo later today and then
0:15.6	things get a little complicated because I have some speaking engagements around
0:19.4	the country. I'll park my airstream at a friend's place in Amarillo.
0:25.0	Phase 3 began a couple of weeks ago now.
0:29.0	I left Bismarck, North Dakota and drove to Vale,
0:32.0	where I did some work for the Vale Symposium.
0:35.0	Then on to Arches and Canyonlands National Parks in Utah.
0:40.0	Amazing.
0:41.0	I went to Arches for the first time, I don't, 35 years ago, and I haven't been to Canyonlands since 1985 or so.
0:52.0	Canyonlands is one of the greatest of our national parks.
0:56.4	Arches is magnificent like all the other national parks. It's being loved to death and
1:02.1	in fact we had to have a reserved entrance time to go into the park.
1:08.0	It's autumn, however, and the sense of chaos and hypervisitation of the National Parks is no longer the same thing it would be in July.
1:20.0	The school children are home, the family vacations are over.
1:24.0	It's mostly senior citizens now who have the leisure
1:27.8	to make autumn trips through the great universe
1:31.7	of America's national parks and foreigners.
1:35.0	There's something amazing about how people from Europe and Asia love to come into the American West.
1:42.0	I'm sure they love New York City,
	...

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