John Steinbeck with Charley

From the novel, Travels With Charley

Excerpt #1

It is my experience that in some areas Charley is more intelligent that I am, but in others he is abysmally ignorant. He can’t read, can’t drive a car, and has no grasp of mathematics. But in his own field of endeavor, which he is now practicing, the slow, imperial smelling over and anointing on an area, he has no peer. Of course his horizons are limited, but how wide are mine?

Excerpt #2

I need a dog pretty badly. I dreamed of dogs last night. They sat in a circle and looked at me and I wanted all of them.

John Steinbeck was an acclaimed novelist. His novels, East of Eden, The Red Pony, Of Mice and Men, and The Grapes of Wrath for which he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in , are considered western classics. The book, Travels with Charley, was about a road trip with his poodle, Charley.