Writing the Journey: June 1999
"Ernie Pyle's Travel Dispatches from the 1930's"
Charles Harrington
Indiana University at South Bend
charring@iusb.edu
Ernie Pyle's dispatches present a formative type of American travel literature, involving adventure combined with the rediscovery of essential America during times of stress or malaise. Although the Great Depression is always a strong unspoken sub-text, Pyle concentrates on colorful characters and what is right with America. It was what people wanted to hear, and Pyle was exceptionally good at it. In this respect, he established an enduring form of American Road Trip.
Since Pyle, such books of travels have appeared regularly, but the best have appeared during times of stress: Steinbeck's Cold War journey with Charley, William Least Heat Moon's "blue highway" travels in the years of late-seventies "malaise." And, of course, Charles Kuralt's years of dispatches from On the Road fit the same category, as do the several walking books by Peter Jenkins. Pyle was the first.
Charles Harrington
Dept. of English
Indiana University South Bend
South Bend, IN 46634-7111
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Updated May 23, 1999