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Fargo, North Dakota
"If you will take a map of the United States and fold it sharply in the middle, eastern edge againt western, and crease it sharply, right in the crease will be Fargo," (104).
"And I found found with joy that the fact of Fargo had in no way disturbed my mind's picture of it. I could still think of Fargo as I always had--blizzard-riven, heat-blasted, dust-raddled. I am happy to report that in the war between reality and romance, reality is not the stronger," (105).
Maple River, North Dakota
"After the comfort and the company of Chicago I had had to learn to be alone again. It takes a little time. But there on Maple River, not far from Alice, the gift of it was coming back," (105).
Aroostook County, Maine
"In due course these people told me quite a bit about themselves. They came over the border every year for the potato harvest," (53).
"These Canucks were hardy people.They traveled and camped by families and groups of families, perhaps even clans," (50).
Bangor, Maine
"Not far outside of Bangor I stopped at an auto court and rented a room. It wasn’t expensive. The sign said “Greatly Reduced Winter Rates.” It was immaculate; everything was done in plastics--the floors, the curtain, table tops of stainless burnless plastic, lamp shades of plastic," (36).
Deer Isle, Maine
"I have demonstrated that I can't describe Deer Isle. There is something about it that opens no door to words. But it stays with you afterward, and, more than that, things you didn't know you saw come back to you after you have left," (43).
Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota
White Mountains, Lincoln, New Hampshire
"Roosters were crowing before I went to sleep. And I felt at last that my journey had started. I think I hadn't really believed in it before," (27).
"I know it is a shame that I had never seen the twin cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis, but how much greater a disgrace that I still haven't, although I went through them. As I approached, a great surf of traffic engulfed me, waves of station wagons, rip tides of roaring trucks," (99).
Church in Vermont
"All across the country I went to church on Sundays, a different denomination every week, but nowhere did I find the quality of the Vermont preacher. He forged a religion designed to last, not predigested obsolescence," (61).
"'Nobody can get lost in Minneapolis,' the cook said, 'I was born there and I know,'" (101).
Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin
"I had heard of Wisconsin Dells but was not prepared for the weird country sculptured by the Ice Age, a strange, gleaming country of water and carved rock, black and green. To awaken here might make one believe it is a dream of some other planet, for it has a non-earthly quality, or else the engraved record of time when the world was much younger and much different," (98).
Discussion Questions
Niagara Falls
Deerfield, Massachusetts
"I promised my youngest son to say good-by in passing at his school in Deerfield, Massachusetts," (22.)
"I prefer to draw a curtain over my visit to Eaglebrook school. It can be imagined what effect Rocinante had on two hundred teen-age prisoners of education," (22 and 23).
1. How do these passages explore the binary between the authentic and the inauthentic?
2. What is the significance of imagery used? i.e. the plastic in the passage from pages 36-38?
3. What do you think Steinbeck is trying to say about authenticity? What is authentic to him?
4. What other instances in what we've read so far deal with this binary?
"Another official came out. 'We advise you not to cross the border with him, then.'
'But I'm just crossing a small part of Canada and reentering the U.S.'
'We understand,' they said kindly, 'You can take him into Canada but the U.S. won't let him back,'" (66).
Chicago
"Chicago broke my continuity. This is permissible in life but not in writing. So I leave Chicago out, because it is off the line, out of drawing. In my travels, it was pleasant and good; in writing, it would only contribute to disunity," (95).
Steinbeck and Charley
Rocinante
Sag Harbor
"[Rocinante] was delivered in the summer to my little fishing place in Sag Harbor near the end of Long Island," (6).