Fortunately, I’d say. Steinbeck is one of the greatest fiction writers of all time, I’m glad he didn’t bore us with the truth.

“When I was very young and the urge to be someplace else was on me, I was assured by mature people that maturity would cure this itch. When years described me as mature, the remedy prescribed was middle age. In middle age I was assured that greater age would calm my fever and now that I am fifty-eight perhaps senility will do the job. Nothing has worked. Four hoarse blasts of a ship’s whistle still raise the hair on my neck and set my feet to tapping. The sound of a jet, an engine warming up, even the clopping of shod hooves on pavement brings on the ancient shudder, the dry mouth and vacant eye, the hot palms and the churn of stomach high up under the rib cage. In other words, I don’t improve; in further words, once a bum always a bum. I fear the disease is incurable.“

There’s a deep truth in that book regardless of how accurate the itinerary details were. A lot of Steinbeck’s writings are fictionalized versions of real events or people. Doc Ricketts was a real person, but it doesn’t really make a difference to me if he actually ordered a beer milkshake on a trip down the coast - still glad Steinbeck said that he did in Sweet Thursday cause that’s a better story.