After visiting the Steinbeck National Center in Salinas, California in the Spring and contacting William Ray, the Editor of the author’s website, Steinbecknow.com, I proposed to submit an article to him on my experiences of teaching Steinbeck to middle and senior-age lifelong learners at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at the University of Richmond, in Virginia. I consider the Steinbeck Center to be the best museum dedicated to the works of a single author. Besides having a comprehensive overview of most of Steinbeck’s important works., it also serves as a community center for Salinas. For example, the day I visited, the museum featured artwork by the children of local migrant workers.
I also think that the SteinbeckNow website is one the most through ones that focus on enhancing our the present-day understanding of classic literature-even beyond Steinbeck. I was initially drawn to it by an article that was submitted on another one of my favorite authors, Edgar Allan Poe. As I did not quite agree with the point of view of that article, Dr. Ray allowed me to write a response. I don’t want to re-stir the controversy here, but you can follow the lively conversation if you go back to posts submitted in April 2018.
Since working at the Osher program, I have taught classes on Of Mice and Men, The Grapes of Wrath, The Dust Bowl, and Travels with Charley: In Search of America. During these classes, students have also asked me to lead class future classes on East of Eden, Cannery Row, and Tortilla Flat, and I agreed to consider offering them in the future.
Dr. Ray was quite interested in having me write about how lifelong learners were relating to Steinbeck’s works, many decades after they were published. What still interested them about his books? Why did they want to read them, or re-read them? Which issues and themes did they still consider relevant today and why?
I decided to begin with writing about my recollections of teaching Travels with Charley, which I first taught in the spring of 2016. Students, then, thought it peculiar that I would start my classes with Steinbeck’s last book. But, we found it easy to relate to, since they were at about the same average age(58) as Steinbeck was when he published the book in 1962. After submitting a few different drafts for my article, Dr. Ray kept sending them back, asking me to pare down descriptions of passages of the book, which he said, “readers of the Steinbeck.now were already familiar with.” Instead, he wanted me to offer more reflections on our classroom experiences and interactions. His other editing suggestions and clarifications were also quite useful in helping me to shape the article that was ultimately published today.
For example, I wrote that Steinbeck traveled with his dog, Charley. Ray corrected my generality by saying that it was his wife, Elaine’s dog. I first noted that Charley was a pedigree and that students in my class thought that Steinbeck had been elevated the status of dogs quite a bit since they were considered as dispensable “stray mutts” in Of Mice and Men.” Ray refined my pedigree reference by noting that Charley was a “poodle.”
By agreement with Dr. Ray, I am not planning to re-post the same article on my site, but I can send the link and encourage you to read the May 18, 2018 article on Lifelong Learning-Travels with Charley at http://www.steinbecknow.com
I am also asking readers to their responses on the Steinbecknow website, or on this site in the Comments section below.
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