John Steinbeck's acclaimed travelogue Travels with Charley was fabricated ...as well as boring!

'Travel with Charley' (the Poodle) was really sort of a novel with bad dialogue.

In Dubious Travels - Hit & Run : Reason Magazine

So Steinbeck was getting on embellished his happy wanderings with his Poodle. Poodle? With Steinbeck; that never fit.

This book was popular tripe amongst secondary school English and Social Studies teachers. Fact checking it really matters little in its minor scope and significance. Charles Kuralt copied Steinbeck's travel style, making it more boring, politically relevant and as it turned out, it gave Kuralt opportunity to keep his mistress. That was more interesting. Go to the story link here.

Charles Kuralt, CBS's folksy "On the Road" correspondent, spent years exploring America's out-of-the-way places in search of oddball stories. But the best story may have been the one he never told.