Plenty of novelists take on collaborators. Such was the case for John Steinbeck, the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of East of Eden, Grapes of Wrath, and many other important books. It was 1960, and Steinbeck, in his late fifties, was recovering from a stroke. But he didn’t want to start acting like an invalid. Instead, he went on a road trip. He bought a customized motor home, which he named Rocinante, after Don Quixote’s horse, and he and his traveling companion—his black standard poodle, Charley—hit the road on September 23, 1960. The two of them rambled for twelve thousand miles (19,000 km), through thirty-seven states plus parts of Canada, before returning to their New York home in January 1961.
As it turned out, Charley more than pulled his weight on the trip. The big poodle was a tremendously helpful icebreaker when Steinbeck sought to strike up conversations with strangers. If he wanted to chat, all he had to do was walk up to someone with Charley in tow. The dog was also a sympathetic listener; during the long drive the two apparently covered a lot of ground, discussing everything from the foibles of small-town life to racial discrimination. This more than made up for the fact that Charley’s violent reaction to a bear he saw in the road forced their quick departure from Yellowstone National Park.
Steinbeck’s account of the trip, appropriately called Travels with Charley, was published in the summer of 1961 to great popular and critical acclaim. Steinbeck passed away in 1968, but his chronicle of life on the road with his dog lives on. The trailer he used on his journey is preserved for posterity at the National Steinbeck Center in Salinas, California. And his traveling companion, the faithful Charley, is likewise preserved in Steinbeck’s prose. “He is a good friend and traveling companion, and would rather travel about than anything he can imagine,” he wrote. “If he occurs at length in this account, it is because he contributed much to the trip.”