John Steinbeck a 1955 movie directed by Elia Kazan and starring James Dean. In 1960, Steinbeck bought a pickup truck and had it modified with a custom-built camper top – which was rare at the time – and drove across the United States with his faithful 'blue' standard poodle, Charley. Steinbeck nicknamed his truck "Rocinante" after Don Quixote's "noble steed". In this sometimes comical, sometimes melancholic book, Steinbeck describes what he sees from Maine to Montana to California, and from there to Texas and Louisiana and back to his home on Long Island. The restored camper truck is on exhibit in the
John Steinbeck they do sympathetic humour and keen social perception". Many critics complained that the author's best works were behind him. "The New York Times" ran an article by Arthur Mizener titled "Does a Writer with a Moral Vision of the 1930s Deserve the Nobel Prize?" that claimed Steinbeck was undeserving of the prestigious prize as he was a "limited talent" whose works were "watered down by tenth-rate philosophizing". Many American critics now consider these attacks to be politically motivated. The British newspaper "The Guardian", in a 2013 article that revealed that Steinbeck had been a compromise choice for the Nobel Prize,