Talk:Travels with Charley

message: The text being copied into the article comes from http://static.hcrhs.k12.nj.us/gems/americanstudies/TWCwikimodelprocess.doc
--Stbalbach 03:43, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Ok restored. There's a few things your doing in the article that are not according to Wikipedia standards, but that can be cleaned up. I've restored it. --Stbalbach 03:59, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Copyvio

message: You might want to read the Wikipedia:Footnotes page on how to fix up the footnotes.  There appears to be a new php script that has been added semi-recently that I wasn't aware of that can substantially help out with preparing footnotes even better than another system I was going to demonstrate to you.  This allows for professional citations and helps even with the formatting of the footnotes.  There are some manual ways to do this as well that work out pretty nice as well.  It would be nice to clean up the citations that are currently just a simple number.  I think you had some of the citations in the earlier version that were just raw links to web content hosted elsewhere.  This allows you to also include things like ISBN numbers and traditional bibliographic references that are not HTML or web related.  --Robert Horning 02:54, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Fixing up footnotes 

message: I first read this book as a very young man in 1965 or 66 and at the time found it an odd and difficult read, I was after all only 19 or 20 and a soldier serving overseas at the time.  However, some 40 years on there were two small parts of the book that remained lodged in my memory. One was the vehicle that Steinbeck used for his journey which I was certain until my re-reading of the book in 2005 - was a British Land Rover.  I remember this because I was of course driving them myself everyday as a soldier.  I also remembered his comments about the noise the tyres made being over sized. Secondly, the description he wrote about the incident at a filling station where a State Trooper or Sheriff or policeman watches him and mistakes Charley for a Black man sitting in the front seat of his vehicle.  The dialogue in the originally published book was far more shocking in its language and in the use of the "N" word than in this 1990's version I have just read.  Can it be that the book has been edited to be more "politically correct" for the new new century....?  Or, did I simply forget what I read?
I would love to know -- —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 82.19.242.122 (talk • contribs).
:I have a first edition and yeah the "n" word is used a bunch of times near the end. -- Stbalbach 18:43, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: comments

message: -Says Steinbeck drove US1 to Wheaton, IL. US1 is an Eastern seaboard road, never remotely close to Illinois!  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mrkvasnicka (talk • contribs) 13:37, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Need help correcting section 2... 

message: Wiki needs an update on what I have learned over the past three years about the nonfictional/dishonest/fraudulent nature of John Steinbeck's "Travels With Charley" (now summed up in the ebook "Dogging Steinbeck" (http://www.amazon.com/Dogging-Steinbeck-Steinbecks-America-ebook/dp/B00A6X9ZR0):
Recent developments in the "Travels With Charley" "scandal" include Penguin Group, the current owner of Steinbeck's works, inserting a disclaimer into the introduction of the Oct. 2 (2012) 50th anniversary edition of "Charley" that warns readers that the book is so heavily fictionalized that it should not be taken literally. The disclaimer in the intro by professor Jay Parini mentions my former paper, the Post-Gazette, but not me. I, Bill Steigerwald, have written about that development in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Reason magazine's web site and the New York Post. 
Plus "Dogging Steinbeck," my book about how I discovered the truth about "Charley" and ended 50 years of what I called "literary fraud," is available at Amazon.com.
From the Oct. 14, 2012 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, here is the article I wrote breaking the news that Penguin Group had confessed the truth --   http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/ae/book-reviews/travels-with-charley-now-officially-mostly-fiction-657495/) 
here is a longer version of the New York Post link:
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/sorry_charley_LNMWjiR3fNhMVaYHt0FXzN
This item from my web site The Truth About 'Travels With Charley' includes a photo of the introduction page that includes the largest disclaimer:
http://www.truthaboutcharley.com/its-official-travels-with-charley-is-fiction/
````  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Xpaperboy (talk • contribs) 15:00, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you for your suggestion. I have added a bit to the section. I'm rather old myself and, for its soporific qualities, listen to C-Span radio at night. I was woken up by your Q&A interview and am now up a bit early listening to it again on C-Span. We probably need to create an article about Bill Steigerwald, if there is anything else notable, although Dogging Steinbeck by itself might be enough. As noted on Q&A Dogging Steinbeck only sells at the rate of 4 or 5 copies a day, perhaps that will change, but as compared to New York City or The Trojan War, is of limited notability. User:Fred Bauder Talk 11:18, 4 March 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Latest news on lack of veracity of Travels With Charley -- Penguin Group confesses 

message: Is there supposed to be a colon?  Amazon does not use one in their listings, and neither does the cover-photo here on wikipedia.  The way the text on the cover-photo is using different fontsizes, it is a pretty clear argument that there is an implied colon.  What did the original book-jacket look like?  Do library-card-catalogs use the colon?  (This is more of a curiosity I have, than an intent to edit the article... I was planning on being WP:BOLD and slicing out the colon found in the intro-sentence, but the colon is also in the article-title, which is a pain to get changed.)  Anybody know the origin and controversy of the dastardly colon?  Thanks. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 04:44, 22 October 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: The 50th Anniversary edition does not have a colon. .
Neither does the image of a cover on this page:  nor this one: . A colonectomy might be in order, but I'd like to see wha others think. David in DC (talk) 12:48, 22 October 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: SCOMN!  (Snorted coffee out my nose)!  Must remember that one!  Montanabw(talk) 02:16, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
replies: text:  You know, if we change the colon back and forth enough times in mainspace, people will show up to complain.  Lots of people.  I sense undying fame here.  *None* of the previous candidates to the throne were for punctuation in the actual title of the article.  Wikipedia:Lamest_edit_wars/Spelling_and_punctuation#Punctuation.  But I'm not starting this war, and if none dare lay down the gauntlet, p'raps we shall all avoid infamy.... :-)    — 74.192.84.101 (talk) 23:53, 6 November 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  colon before subtitle 

message: To the editor: Several things are wrong relating to the discussions about the veracity of "travels." 
Bill Barich did not retrace Steinbeck's trip, but he was inspired by 'Travels.' Barich drove across the USA east to west on US 50; he did not follow Steinbeck's 10k-mile route or fact-check him in any way. 
Geert Mak followed me in the fall of 2010 as we retraced Steinbeck's trip -- we both (unknowingly at the time) left Steinbeck's house in Sag Harbor the same morning, Sept. 23, 2010 --exactly 50 years after Steinbeck set out on his iconic trip. 
But because I was traveling alone I quickly left Geert in the dust (I did not know of his or his book's existence until 2012). When he wrote his fine 2012 Steinbeck book, he effusively praised my drive-by journalism skills and acknowledged that it was my daily road blog in the fall of 2010 that had tipped him off about the fictions and fibs in 'Travels.' He corroborated my findings and subsequently agreed with my conclusions. 
In 2012 Penguin Group asked Parini to re-write the intro to "Travels" that he first wrote in 1997 to reflect my findings and warn readers that what they were about to read should not be taken literally. Parini cautioned readers that they were about to read a highly fictionalized book, not a literally true one, which it had been touted/sold/reviewed and marketed as for 50 years. He mentioned a former Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reporter (me) in the new intro who did some 'fact-checking' and stirred up a controversy about the fictional nature of 'Travels," but he never mentioned me by name. He apologized when I called him on his sloppiness/cheap shot, but the damage was long done. 
As the writer of 'Dogging Steinbeck,' and as the old-fart retired journalist who 'exposed' Steinbeck's fictions and lies, and the lies and deviousness of Steinbeck's publisher, I obviously have a dog in this fight. Suffice it to say that without my mad but careful journalistically honest chasing of Steinbeck's ghost, and my discoveries in libraries and on the road, Steinbeck's book would still be considered a work of nonfiction and an accurate account of his trip. 
All I ask is that the editor make sure that what is written is accurate and that it gives me the credit for "outing" Steinbeck that I am due.
Thanks much
Bill Steigerwald 
(FYI, Susan Shillinglaw is writing a book about Travels with Charley because of me -- I kind of shamed her into doing what she or another Steinbeck scholar should have done decades ago: Read the original draft of 'Travels" and compare it with the book and then with his actual trip. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pa0eWdeLJDY  ) 184.14.211.194 (talk) 19:04, 10 September 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  travels with charley corrections and clarifications ...