When I read that John Steinbeck had made up much of the material that appears in Travels with Charley my first thought was: Why didn't he make up more?
I reread the book a few years ago, when the Florida Center for the Book asked me to give a talk on it, and was appalled by how few people the novelist talked to in his drive from New York to California and back. It was not a journey around America but a journey around Steinbeck's head.
Now it comes to light that he talked to even fewer people than I had imagined, inventing characters to give the book "color" (or to get at, as protective, pusillanimous academics are saying, "a greater truth").
This makes the book even more of a failure. Granted, some great travel books resort to invention; Robert Byron's The Road to Oxiana comes immediately to mind. But at least Byron did it not only artfully but hilariously - two adverbs that cannot be used when talking about Steinbeck's "classic."
Still, the greatest travel books are brilliant depictions and interpretations of reality. I asked Colin Thubron once, in an interview, about invention, and he said he doesn't need to do it because the things he comes across in his journeys are more startling than anything he could dream up. But then he doesn't travel with a spouse and stay in a luxury hotels.
Yesterday our friends Don and Joanne gave us a tour of Palm Beach. We drove A1A north, at one point turning down the narrow streets of Briney Breezes, the white, trailer-like houses all looking the same except the one with the large statues of the Blues Brothers sitting on a bench.
Soon, the houses got much bigger. We passed Trump's Mar-a-Lago and Jimmy Buffett's mansion, also overlooking the ocean. (Two song lyrics came immediately to mind: "Wasting away again in Margaritaville" and "Only in America.")
We parked at The Society of the Four Arts and strolled through the Chinese garden, a woman telling us that the tree on the right is the type that Chanel No. 5 uses for its perfume. In the nearby courtyard we found a table for our picnic lunch: sausage, cheese, hummus, crackers, white wine, strawberries and oranges that we had brought in a knapsack. We took a postprandial stroll through the sculpture garden, where Hania and Joanne posed for pictures sitting on the laps of Roosevelt and Churchhill.
We drove to the Flagler Museum and, instead of going in, we walked down to what Don and Joanne called "The Tree in the Mind of God." It was a 130-year-old kapok tree, according to the woman sitting nearby. When a man passing remarked on the roots - some taller than us - she corrected him by calling them "buttresses." Even without leaves, it had a stunning majesty.
This was a good cue for our next stop, Bethesda-by-the-Sea. I'd been to the Episcopal Church before, but I'd forgotten the gargoyles, the somber, austere elegance of the interior - made even darker by the intensity of the outside light - and the exquisite blue of the stained glass window behind the altar. And I'd never strolled through the garden in back, with its pool of koi and little nook where Don said he sometimes reads. It was a beautiful example - the stone walls and the lush foliage - of subtropical classical.
Back in the car we drove past the old Kennedy house, the Catholic church the family used to attend, the drugstore across the street (still there) where they would sometimes go after Mass. We drove by Bernie Madoff's former residence (getting a redesign) before parking for a stroll down Worth Avenue. Don pointed out the Everglades Club, noting that it had kept Kennedy out.
A few shops were open, but we didn't enter them; we just felt the air-conditioned drafts through their open doors, inhaled the perfumed air of their interiors. Then we got in the car and drove across the bridge, no poorer than when we'd arrived.
Tuesday evening four of my students, traveling together, went to the wrong classroom. I've been so focused on capturing the spirit of a place that I've overlooked the importance of finding the place.
No matter how many years I go, I always find something interesting at Cruise Shipping Miami.
The trade show seemed smaller than usual. "It gets smaller every year," someone told me. "This used to be the only one. Now other countries have them."
But it was not without its surprises. The Finnish Father Christmas was a no-show this year, but four Danish boys in redcoats played fife and drums and, over in Iceland, a young woman sang ancient folk songs a cappella. (A business student, she also gives "singing tours" of her hometown, she told me later, which end with a performance in the town church.)
Liudovika Pakalkaite offered me chocolate-covered Lithuanian cookies baked in the shape of mushrooms. I declined, but took her business card, which featured a picture of a beautiful wood carving at a place called Witches' Hill (near the port of Klaipeda).
May Britt Hansen's Norwegian business card carried a picture of her paddling a kayak. (Not exactly cruise shipping, but definitely nautical.)
At the Flanders booth I was assured that Belgium would survive. "It's the politicians and the media - the people get along fine." Then I was handed a gorgeous postcard of an old Art Nouveau poster for the Red Star Line ("Antwerpen-New York").
A young woman in a green and red hanbok (a dental student at Nova Southeastern) greeted visitors to the Korea booth, while next door the Japan booth sat empty, with a sign explaining that representatives were staying home to help with the recovery from the earthquake.
At lunch I sat next to the president of a Turkish tourism company in Istanbul, and told him of my delightful stay many years ago at the Buyuk Londra (just up the street from the more celebrated, and expensive, Pera Palas).
The large Italy and France pavilions were moved this year to the technical section. Stopping by Sicily, I mentioned that I had been in Palermo in August researching a story on the anti-Mafia organization Addiopizzo. "We belong to it," the young woman told me.
Not far away, a young Korean designer explained the pictures being projected onto a screen. They were of a futuristic cruise ship her firm had designed, and it included a vertical farm on the top deck and a five-story aquarium into which swimmers - though only those in wet suits, I think - would be propelled from the swimming pool. You heard it here first.
I usually don't spend much time in the press room, but even there I heard something interesting as Stuart Newman - the doyen of Florida PR people - told of getting his start by writing up reports of his high school football practices for the Fort Lauderdale News. Ever the professional, he then handed me a press release about one of his clients.
Quite possibly the loneliest person in the hall was the representative from Libya Safari Tourism Services. So of course I stopped to chat with him. He told me that, at a recent travel show in Germany, his booth had been mobbed by newspaper, TV and radio reporters.
I ended the day, as I always do, at the Holland pavilion. For the second year in a row, the wonderful band 4Tuoze Matroze had not been invited ("too expensive" I had been told last year) and in their place was a cheap sound system. But a charming young Irish woman handed me a chicken satay in peanut sauce, introduced me to her husband, and said that if I'm ever traveling in the west of Ireland I'm welcome to stay at their house. You can't ask for more than that from a trade show.
You're at your computer writing a story, even though you already have half a dozen out looking for a home. You're composing a sentence and hoping that before you get to the end of it there will come a message from an editor, a publisher, an anthologist, your agent. You're wondering why you became a travel writer.
Then in the evening you go out for a bite after your travel writing class. One of your students says that she lived in Mexico City, in Coyoacan, the neighborhood where Frida Kahlo lived. You mention that there is a wonderful restaurant there, San Angel. Then she says that before Mexico she lived in Spain, in Oviedo, the capital of Asturias. "Isn't that the city," you ask, "that has a statue of Woody Allen?"
The social advantage of being a travel writer. But it only works with other travelers.
The year began with a Polish-Jewish-Chinese wedding in the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens. Walking from the ceremony to the reception, I got talking to a man who said he wrote for The Nation, and used to write for The New Yorker. I asked his name. "Jonathan Schell," he said.
A filmmaker sat at our table, one of a number of guests who, like the groom's mother, were expelled from Poland in 1968. Soon, the mother was being hoisted in a chair, along with the bride's mother, on the dance floor. Rambunctious circle dances broke out, followed eventually by a sedate tea ceremony. At one point a Chinese man, a relative of the bride, sang "O Solo Mio."
The five-year-old French boy at the neighboring table was dressed in tails. The groom's brother told us that he took the boy to F.A.O Schwartz and offered to buy him anything he wanted. He asked for a Louis XIV wig.
I hope I get invited to his wedding.