Reviews with content warning for Fire/Fire injury - East of Eden

This book destroyed my mind, but in the best way possible. Its lessons are lovely and continue to still be applicable to the modern day. One of the biggest surprises about this book was just how modern it felt. When Steinbeck said this was his magnum opus he was not joking.

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pigeonpersona's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

This is an amazing book, and I'm so glad I read it. This saga of families, couples, siblings, and the town of Salinas is an extremely well thought out journey. It felt so real, and deals with emotions that are universal. It's relatable now, nearly 70 years after its original publishing, and I'm sure it will remain relatable for audiences in years to come. When people call this Steinbeck's magnum opus, I'm tempted to agree.

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kefeshe's review against another edition

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I generally don't read classics because if how racist they are. This was the same unfortunately, I just got to a point where there were far too many slurs for me to continue

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sherbertwells's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional hopeful slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

“Every little boy thinks he invented sin. Virtue we think we learn, because we are told about it. But sin is our own designing” (326)

The quest for the Great American Novel has always been quixotic, but the victors are best identified by analyzing the many, many failures. The 20th century’s handful of successes (basically just The Great Gatsby, Invisible Man and Beloved) are particularly worthy of admiration because so many authors have tried and failed to rise to their challenge. And based on my own subjective and ornery understanding of literature, I think I can identify the mystery ingredient in the best attempts:

The Great American Novel presents its audience with something original and totally irreplaceable.

For all its talk of original sin, John Steinbeck’s East of Eden is the opposite of original. It tilts valiantly at one of the oldest stories in the popular consciousness: the biblical fall of man and the murder of Abel by his brother.

“I think this old and terrible story is important because it is a chart of the soul—the secret, rejected guilty soul. Mr. Trask, you said you did not kill your brother and then you remembered something. I don’t want to know what it was, but was it very far apart from Cain and Abel?” (329)

The trials of the Trask family are characterized by the hard-edged masculinity of white American farmers and the daddy issues of mid-20th century modernist fiction. From Adam’s hopeless affection for a cold-hearted woman to Cal’s inferiority complex, the men in East of Eden are ready to scream their ISSUES to the sky. If wallowing in those emotions is your thing, this 700-page novel might be enjoyable. But James Dean⁠—Cal in the 1955 film adaptation—isn’t exactly my type.

East of Eden introduced me to the first literary character to share my sexual orientation. I knew that the label “asexual” is relatively new, but figured that if I read enough, I’d eventually meet someone like me. When I read that the character Cathy “had very little of the [sexual] impulse,” I felt the little shiver of excitement that I assume others feel when they see someone attractive. Then I read onward.

“What freedom men and women could have, were they not constantly tricked and trapped and enslaved and tortured by their sexuality! The only drawback in that freedom is that without it one would not be a human. One would be a monster” (93)

East of Eden is a horny book. In a vacuum, horny books are A-OK. But Steinbeck frames sexuality as the center of humanity’s fallenness, and the rest of the story suffers as a result.

The Trask family’s constant waffling between desire, envy and guilt doesn’t so much demonstrate a universal truth as it reveals a contemporary preoccupation. Catherine, the unfeeling shapeshifter provokes obsession wherever she goes, is the worst part of it. As a human woman with realistic emotions she is a failure. As a latter-day devil, she is ridiculously inadequate. Steinbeck’s whole system of morality is inadequate for the novel’s lofty goals.

East of Eden is not l relatable nor profound, but DULL. It doesn’t even feel particularly Biblical.

It feels like the Oscar-bait of another era.

Independent of this conflict, some glimmers of interest remain. Steinbeck’s self-insert narrator intersperses the trials of the Trask family with his own childhood anecdotes, which don’t wallow in masculine angst like the rest of the book. Although Cathy is the worst of East of Eden’s women, some minor figures are well-drawn. The best character is Lee, Adam Trask’s Chinese-American servant whose solid advice and selective performance of racial stereotypes highlights the messy relationship between Steinbeck, his characters and the American Dream™. He delivers probably the least-bad take on American Exceptionalism that I have ever read.

“Maybe it’s true that we are all descended from the restless, the nervous, the criminals, the arguers and the brawlers, but also the brave and independent and generous. If our ancestors had not been that, they would have stayed in their home plots in the other world and starved over the squeezed-out soil...We all have that heritage, no matter what old land our fathers left” (689)

This idea, perhaps, is the reason that the Great American Novel is still being written. It is why, despite every failure, authors like Steinbeck have the chutzpah to keep putting pen to paper. It is also why I have the unmitigated gall to dislike it and explain myself online.

For both of us, the quest continues.

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