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Book Review: East of Eden April 17, 2007
Having read this book in addition to The Grapes of Wrath, Of Mice and Men, and The Pearl, I think I've read enough of John Steinbeck to count him as one of my favorite authors. Steinbeck supposedly considered East of Eden his most ambitious and epic book, and I have to agree. I didn't find it as powerful or emotionally rousing as The Grapes of Wrath, but this tale of how two generations of a ranching family walk the path between good and evil was still really, really good.
Like many of his other works, East of Eden is set in turn of the century (well, not the most recent turn of the century, but the one before that) in agrarian California. The Salinas Valley where most of the novel's action takes is a pretty blatantly telegraphed metaphor for the fine line between good and evil, with the dark and brooding mountains on one side and the light and fluffy clouds on the other. This kind of lack of subtlety is endemic to the rest of the book, which is essentially a multiple retelling of the story of Caine and Able from the Old Testament: Two brothers each offer sacrifices to God, who favors one and tells the other one that he totally sucks, leading one brother to kill the other and get banished for it. Steinbeck goes to extreme lengths to make sure that YES WE GET IT, this story is a metaphor for THAT story. It even got to the point where I could predict basic plot twists quite accurately and it robbed things a bit of their suspense.
Still, none of that detracted from the sheer quality of Steinbeck's writing. One thing I've noticed that he does better than anyone else I've ever read is dialog. The way that Steinbeck writes exchanges between characters is nothing short of beautiful in its elegance and simplicity. His dialog is very straight forward and bereft of the filler that other writers lean on, like "he said angrily" or "she replied cooly." Steinbeck doesn't need that stuff, because he skilfully drops in all the necessary clues for how things are being said, either from the content of the dialog itself or with sparse adverbs and descriptions of body language. It's masterfully done, like an artist somehow creating a complex scene out of nothing but the careful arrangement of a few clean, strong lines.
The rest of the book is equally well done, and I'm glad to have read something that manages to make you think, even if you can see the plot coming. The central concept of free will in choosing good over evil isn't novel (pardon the pun), but it is neatly wrapped up in an engaging epic story about pioneering ranchers, philosopher servants, and a monstrous sociopath who walks in the skin of a woman. Great stuff, and something I'd recommend to anyone wanting to add something a bit more substantial to their literary diet.
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Tags: Book Review, East of Eden, John Steinbeck, Literature
Comments
Posted by David Morris on April 18, 2007 10:35 PM:
I haven't read that one yet. I've started Grapes of Wrath twice, but got distracted. My favorite J.S. read is The Wayward Bus. I read the whole book through in a day back when I could do so.
Posted by Jamie on April 19, 2007 6:44 AM:
I've never even heard of The Wayward Bus. I'll have to put it on my list. Grapes of Wrath definitely has long bare stretches, but it's epic and picks up substantially once the family gets to California.