In 1960, John Steinbeck decided to set off across America, to revisit the country he’d spent his life writing about, in a speciality made camper that he nicknamed “Rocinante” after the horse in Don Quixote.
With his dog Charley he traveled from Maine to the Pacific Northwest, down into his native Salinas Valley in California, across to Texas, up through the Deep South, and then back to New York. This trip across the country in the twilight of his life resulted in his most personal piece of writing, Travels with Charley: In Search of America.
You can see “Rocinante” at the National Steinbeck Museum in Salinas.
“Introverts are not necessarily shy. Shy people are anxious or frightened or self-excoriating in social settings; introverts generally are not. Introverts are also not misanthropic, though some of us do go along with Sartre as far as to say “Hell is other people at breakfast.” Rather, introverts are people who find other people tiring.”
Extroverts are energized by people, and wilt or fade when alone. They often seem bored by themselves, in both senses of the expression. Leave an extrovert alone for two minutes and he will reach for his cell phone. In contrast, after an hour or two of being socially “on,” we introverts need to turn off and recharge. My own formula is roughly two hours alone for every hour of socializing. This isn’t antisocial. It isn’t a sign of depression. It does not call for medication. For introverts, to be alone with our thoughts is as restorative as sleeping, as nourishing as eating.”
The Middletown studies, originally begun by famed researchers Robert and Helen Lynd in the early 20th century in Muncie, Indiana, sought to create a portrait of every aspect of modern American small town life, from work to family to leisure to religion, to, in their words, “present a dynamic, functional study of the contemporary life of this specific American community in the light of trends of changing behaviour observable in it during the last thirty-five years.” Click on the link above to learn much more about this fascinating (and still ongoing) anthropological project, which has beautifully captured the gradual changes of everyday American existence over the last century.
N.B.: I learned about these studies recently — from Peter Davis’s incredible six-part Middletown documentary series from the early 1980s, something of a cinematic continuation of the project. Two of the three entries I’ve seen so far — SEVENTEEN and SECOND TIME AROUND — are among the best nonfiction films I’ve ever seen. Seek them out.
‘The Stampede’ by Frederic Remington, featured on the cover of my paperback edition of Lonesome Dove, which I spent nearly all of my free time reading two years ago. While it’s not the original art, the painting perfectly captures the spirit of the novel.
From MODERN ROMANCE (1981), after breaking up with his girlfriend, Albert Brooks decides he’s going to start a new life, one in which running will be featured prominently.
The salesman at the athletic store gives him the hard sell and convinces him that if he’s serious about running he has to purchase a multitide of overpriced and unnecessary accessories.
This ESPN.com profile follows All-American Pitt Center DeJuan Blair around his native Hill District on Inauguration Day. The Hill District is one of the most important neighborhoods in Pittsburgh. It was a center for jazz and cultural in 1930’s and 40s, but fell on hard times in the 60’s and 70’s thanks to urban renewal projects that razed more than 500 buildings in the Lower Hill, displacing more than 8,000 residents.
Just once I knew what life was for. In Boston, quite suddenly, I understood; walked there along the Charles River, watched the lights copying themselves, all neoned and strobe-hearted, opening their mouths as wide as opera singers;
counted the stars, my little campaigners, my scar daisies, and knew that I walked my love on the night green side of it and cried my heart to the eastbound cars and cried my heart to the westbound cars and took
my truth across a small humped bridge and hurried my truth, the charm of it, home and hoarded these constants into morning only to find them gone.
