I hope this might open a discussion about what from our own time might not age well. The book has parts that are, of course, problematic, in that they don't age well.

Charley is always our favorite character, and while in Oregon, I worried when he got sick along the way and had to endure a rather substandard vet. For the most part, I'm delighted at Steinbeck's way with prose, his wit and insights, and of course, his dog. Right now, I'm in the last 1/4 of Travels, published in 1962. For an 8 week, mid-semester, one credit course, this seemed like a great idea. I decided to start with a short reading/discussion of what memoir is (with thanks to Mary Karr's The Art of Memoir) and then work backward from Mike's book to Steinbeck, with side ventures with Luis Alberto Urrea's Wandering Time and Joan Didion's South and West. The good folks at Awst Press helped me secure 16 copies for my class, since the bookstore could not (if ever a place for the shrug emoji, it might be here). I was asked to teach one and decided to create a class around Mike Ingram's 2022 book, Notes from the Road. The Honors College at WVU has some lovely one credit courses that are book clubs around a subject. I'd read Grapes of Wrath in high school and East of Eden in an American lit survey, and Travels was something I decided to read over the summer of my own volition. I am rereading Steinbeck's Travels with Charley: In Search of America for the first time since reading it in college. I stood reverent in front of the masterworks, and I connected deeply with the quiet, solitary women in so many of them. But Vermeer stands out to me as the magic of the journey, one I might even call a pilgrimage. I of course saw much more, and took a two-day sojourn in Iceland because it was open for me to do. I went to Amsterdam specifically to see this. Looking up to the Rijksmuseum-the first building to be built as a museum specifically-one sees the high turret, the blue sky, and the huge closeup of one of Vermeer's women in the lustrous yellow and ermine-trimmed coat, a shining pearl dangling from her lobe and strand tied about her neck. To say I am changed by the experience seems understatement, but like the quietness in many of Vermeer's portraits, the change is soft, subtle, if monumental. I went to Amsterdam to see the Rijksmuseum's exhibit, Vermeer, brining together the most of this artist's small catalog in one limited-run showing. Because to capture the whole of it would be impossible in a single sitting. They may come out a bit here, a bit in other writing, and so on. Having just returned to Amsterdam, knowing where but not exactly when I am, I've got a lot to say about my trip.

Deep creek memoir