from the same as above. reminded me of bukowski's wariness of his own success doing the same to him.
JOHN STEINBECK
Robert: I liked Grapes of Wrath, thought it was really good. Then I tried to read Travels with Charlie that he wrote, I think in the '60s, and found it rather dull and uninteresting. I thought his life had become so comfortable and middle class that he lost touch with whatever was his original force of inspiration back in the '30s. He must have really hung out with those people. I also read that book he wrote about the west coast, I think it's called Cannery Row. It was good; not as good as Grapes of Wrath, but it was good. And I've also read interviews with him later when he was old and retired and he didn't have much of interest to say, I don't know. Lost it. It can happen when you experience success. It happened to me (laughs).
Alex: What happened to you?
Robert: You get successful, you give a lot of interviews, you're constantly dealing with business and money and all that stuff I talked with you about when we were in Chicago. You just slowly lose touch with your original source of inspiration. It has something to do with being involved with real, common life; that's what makes any kind of story writing interesting to me. And then you get successful and you get separated from real life. It just happens. When I say real life, I'm talking about the common, everyday life of most people. Then you start getting treated like royalty "” like you're something special "” and it's not the same. And you're no longer the observer, you are the observed. That puts you in a whole different position in society; a whole different perspective. Now you're hunted, you're looked at, you're watched, you're admired, you're vilified, whatever. But you can't just go out and be part of the world as an observer anymore. It's hard. It's hard for me anyway. So for someone like Steinbeck, when he wrote Grapes of Wrath, he obviously had some involvement in that world, with common people, their struggle, the terribleness of their situation. He understood it. He must have lived in it somehow or other. And then he got so successful, so recognized that by the time he wrote Travels With Charlie he was like this self-conscious, successful person that travels across America with his dog. And it's just not very interesting. He just travels the highway with this dog and he's not involved in real life or the lives of real people. The book starkly reveals this.
