East of Eden

When I’m considering watching a movie I first check the running time. If it’s more than 120 minutes I think twice. Between the screenwriter, the director, and the editor most stories can be told in less than two hours. A significantly longer running time indicates someone who doesn’t know what he or she is doing, or someone in love with his or her own work. There are exceptions, of course, such as biopics or sweeping historic accounts. The same is true for books. Especially in non-fiction many 600-page books could be edited down to 300 pages. But even in fiction the 300-page metric (or so) tends to hold. There are exceptions, of course, such as "East of Eden." I did not mind this book’s 600 pages at all. The first word of the second paragraph tells the reader the story will be told in first person. Along the way that fact needs remembering. "I" as a pronoun, indicating the author, appears just a handful of times. Mostly the narrative seems omniscient. Clearly Steinbeck chose first person as a means to deliver his personal philosophies, present to a notable degree. This deliverance would likely have been awkward in third person. The story tells about the Hamiltons and the Trasks. Adam Trask leaves New England for California. Samuel Hamilton sails from Ireland, only to make his further way clear across the continent. Adam Trask has inherited money, enough to buy a fine ranch. Samuel Hamilton has nothing. His dusty spread, gained by government allotment, is, even in the better years, only marginal. The basic story is simply one of good and evil, but Steinbeck went on for 600 pages because a parable cannot illustrate the fluidity of both good and evil that flows back and forth through human lives. In this fluidity evil inadvertently oozes out of good people and goodness sometimes escapes from an evil life into that very life. Both despite their struggles and because of them, the Hamilton clan possesses a human wealth beyond purchase. Still, illustrating the oozing, Tom Hamilton, son of Samuel, is, genetically, a brooder. His outlook is of his nature, largely unchecked by his nurture, as perhaps it might have been. He never leaves home, which eventually finds a population of one, himself. He is one of those who constantly loses today because he’s always pursuing yesterday – to simply reclaim it, or to hold it static in order to fix the past. When, from outside his own life, yesterday presents itself he destroys it. His destruction is completely inadvertent, and yet a blindness he has that allows the destruction is one of neglect in his nurture. As further example, Cal (Caleb) and Aron Trask (he disliked Aaron) are Adam’s twin sons by a woman who lacks a certain human dimension, which, by that omission, emphasizes her abilities to manipulate and control others, both for her own specific gain and simply because she can. She abandons her sons days after they’re born. Cal wrestles with the omission, which he has inherited to a degree. Eventually his internal give-and-take delivers him to a battered state of understanding. Aron is unclouded by the omission, is a paragon of goodness, and so becomes a victim of unbalance. Steinbeck grew up in Salinas and the Salinas Valley, the setting of the story. His early life mirrors the time of the story. His paternal grandfather did the emigrating from Germany, so there would have been talk of the old country. He was a war correspondent for the Herald Tribune and worked with the OSS. From his experiences we can infer his acknowledgement of the ability in America to throw off ancient ways, also acknowledging that the farther west one travelled the more one could outpace the tentacles of Puritanism that continued to exist in the East. The cliché and reality of California, which continues today, was an even more utterly contrasted state two centuries back, and even one century back. So, I read the last fifty pages of "East of Eden" in the leafy parking lot of a suburban library branch. The building is new and modern, in a well done mid-century way, leaving me to wonder how the plans ever survived the city council, in these days of varying degrees of neoclassicism. It is attached to what was originally a three-story grade school from the early 1940s that is now the city hall and police HQ of this suburban town. Around in all directions are Cape Cod-y homes, both pre- and immediately post-war. These houses are attractive, well proportioned and well built— somewhat humble contrasts to the Barbie castles. Many are barely larger than the master bedroom suites in those ostentatious, multi-gabled clown shows, and yet were coveted by returning G.I.s eager to find normality again. Early fall is at hand right now, with enough leaves on the ground and beginning colors in canopies to confirm the season. Hurricane Delta made landfall yesterday evening on the Louisiana coast. The system has already moved up the Mississippi Valley and will soon turn into the Ohio Valley to deliver a fair amount of rain tomorrow, and so today, a Saturday, has increasingly become overcast. I point out the day of the week, and the season, because it’s the sort of day I lived for as a kid – open ended, unstructured, free, with a certain contemplation implicit to cooler weather and indirect sunlight. As my wife says, the geography of childhood. And, hell, I still live for these days, days extraordinary simply because they are so ordinary, which is to say "Jesus! I’m a sentient being walking around on the surface of a planet!" And that’s what Steinbeck was after in "East of Eden," and that is just what he achieved—basically a Cheever short story x 500. Steinbeck needed six hundred pages to establish for the reader the pace and canter of daily life – i.e., life – in this California valley, and in one of its small towns. He needed that many words to let us into the life and minds and dreams and nightmares of a dozen or so human beings. That many words to expose the tumult behind the face of conformity, a template that makes it easier for you and me to connect on a same frequency. A hallmark of great writing is an implicit prescience, a story as true today as it was during the time of its creation. "East of Eden" was published in 1952, so we can assume Steinbeck was writing the story in the post-war years of the late 1940s and very early 1950s. In the story evil wins when the truly good are ambivalent, unwilling to spend time and effort to stand up to, or even acknowledge, the calculations of connivers. There could hardly be a better description of our present time.

"East of Eden" covers the time from the Civil War to World War I. The period between these two big wars offered a perfect slate for examining the human condition which becomes clear by showing the personalities, deeds and actions of two families, the Hamiltons and the Trasks. Yet this book is not simply a study of good vs evil but rather an ode to how conflicted and complicated human beings can be. And it is a story of how each action will bring on a reaction and then the consequences of such actions and individual decisions. There are three sets of characters covered in the book: the Hamiltons, a relatively poor but loving family headed up by Sam, the family patriarch, whose dreams and deeds were so often in the clouds though he had great personal strength and integrity. The Hamilton children are each covered individually. Secondly, there are the Trasks, a family led by a father who preaches duty over all else including love. He had two sons, Charles and Adam. The third character is the land itself, both back East (of California) where Charles lives and farms his rocky acres and especially in Salinas Valley, California. Steinbeck himself grew up in Salinas Valley and he must have greatly loved it for his descriptions are so vivid as to put the reader there with a gentle breeze ruffling tree leaves while scents of blossoms fill the air and one's fingers can feel the richness of the earth. Much has been made of the Cain/Abel comparison to the story in the Bible and with good reason. The two Trask sons, Charles and Adam are opposites and often at odds with one another. Charles never married while Adam's two sons, Cal (Caleb) and Aron (he did not like two A's in his name) are also of opposite personalities. So the age old question once again arises of whether humans are shaped by nature or nurture since both sets of boys lived with the same father under the same conditions. But how much consideration should be given to the fact the fathers favored one son over the other while the unfavored son knew of it and felt it? So clever of Steinbeck to build such strong characters for we, the readers, to ponder such questions! As each character is introduced the nature vs nurture question arises several times. For instance was Cathy Ames born with an evil mind which continued to develop and guide her throughout her life because she learned from an early age that she could manipulate people? No one stopped her or called her out on her negative manipulations and carefully crafted lies. No one asked her to be nice instead so she saw no reason to behave any other way. Cathy (who later called herself Kate) was very petite, extremely pretty and very clever making it difficult for those around her to look for negatives and, if any were found, they were disregarded. So was she (and most other people) born blank slates while the environment/nurture shapes the person? Or in the final analysis is it a combination of both nature and nurture? However, even Cathy/Kate had a few positives such as wounding her husband, Adam Trask, rather than killing him which she later admitted she aimed the wounding shot. As long as those around her completed their tasks to her satisfaction, she paid them what she agreed to with no effort to cheat them even though she was so powerful in her position that she could have done so and gotten away with it. Small things to be sure yet out of character for her overall since she had no scruples against cleverly murdering those who had something she wanted. And once meeting both sons at high school age, why did she favor the nicer one over the one who was more like her? Would the one who was more like her overcome his negatives as he matured? Although Steinbeck did an excellent job of developing and showing the personalities of each character perhaps one of the most pronounced was Lee, the Trask's live-in caretaker. Not only was Lee a learned and intelligent man, he had the inner strength to keep Adam and his two sons, Cal and Aron, reasonably functioning while dealing with his own nuances. There is the old adage: 'like likes like' and so it was with Lee and Sam Hamilton. They enjoyed sparing intellectually and respected each other greatly even though their lives otherwise varied significantly. It is through the development of each very different personality that Steinbeck really shines. Each person has his or her own weaknesses and strengths and his or her own individualism. There was also focus on how all the Hamilton children matured into such different individuals. Did those children differ that much from the Trask children and if so how and why? How each character from both families behaved based on their own personality is so realistic as to give the reader pause at times to stop reading and consider how it could be so. "East of Eden" is a book to be savored, to be absorbed and considered and remembered long after one reads the last page. I read modern love stories and mysteries for pleasure while also over the years having read many of the 100 best books of all time (also a pleasure!). Many of those books are 500 pages or more (East of Eden is 600) which gives the author space to develop characters while letting the reader sort through the angst and/or happiness to draw their own conclusions. Such as that cannot be rushed. It is my opinion that Steinbeck, within his characters, covered the majority of personality strengths and weaknesses found among humankind and he is to be commended for that accomplishment. "East of Eden" is highly recommended for those who like personality driven stories. The 600 pages will disappear before you know it and there you will sit strongly disappointed that the story ended while wishing it to continue. Steinbeck is a great story teller, one so deserving of the Nobel Prize for literature. What an honor that he left behind novels like this one for readers to savor for generations to come. This is true apparently due to his understanding of human nature and his eloquent and expressive use of language, also outstanding. The book could not have ended any other way in my opinion. It is after all up to each individual to choose their own path. A review should not give away too much about a story so know that this book is complex and full of showing to build each character through their deeds and many actions toward one another and to others. I loved this book so much that while I had already read "Grapes of Wrath" I will now read his other books and doubtless re-read this book as well, something I rarely ever do. After all, one remembers the good books while the others are easily forgotten. It will be a very long time before John Steinbeck is forgotten. His literary life will parallel that of Dickens and all those other long-lived writers we love so much centuries after their demise!

Very long book but amazing

good

Very pretty book with a beautiful deckeled edge. Only flaw it came with is a slightly smashed corner on the top left - barely noticeable. It is a bit smaller than I was expecting but the size doesn't take away the beauty of this edition.

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