The Books: “East of Eden” (John Steinbeck)

Daily Book Excerpt: Adult fiction:

East of Eden, by John Steinbeck

There’s one sentence in East of Eden about springtime coming to Salinas Valley in California (I looked for the sentence, and can’t find it) and the image is that the flowers become so gold that you could almost believe the color is molten, that you could dip a spoon into the flower and scoop out some liquid gold. To me, that’s what the entire book feels like. Pure molten gold. So good you want to savor it, you want every word to last, you don’t want it to end. It’s just words on a page – in the same way that the flowers are just yellow …. but all together, it takes on a palpably fluid and tangible essence.

There is so much in it. It has minutia, conversation, details, and it has grandiosity to a Biblical level. It goes into family drama, the personalities of multiple people – fully drawn, complex … and it also rhapsodizes about the development of the West, and all that that means. So much. There is the history of California, first of all. There is also the history of two families – the Hamiltons and the Trasks … side by side … and man, you couldn’t get two families with more divergent energies than those two! The book goes through three generations. You get to know Samuel Hamilton as well as you know anyone in your own life. Same with Adam Trask. And Charles Trask (shivers). Not to mention Cathy – a demonic force who comes into their lives from the east (east of Eden?) – leaving a trail of destruction behind her, nothing that can be pinned on her, but she’s a wrecker. You also get a parable of good vs. evil. I think Steinbeck truly believed that good prevails. Even if it takes many lifetimes. Even if it seems, at times, that evil wins out … I think he felt that there was a morality at the heart of man, an essential goodness … that could not be killed. His books can be quite dark, but there is an optimism there that cannot be destroyed, and that is never as clear as it is in East of Eden, which – with all its tragedy – has one of the most hopeful endings of all of Steinbeck’s books (perhaps of any book!). People like Cathy are not malevolent because they’re just born bad, and they like to stir up shit (although that is true with Cathy as well – but that’s a symptom, not a cause). Someone like Cathy is malevolent because goodness actually disturbs her, she doesn’t understand it, and so it cannot be allowed to stand. She is an alien from another planet. She would make a great dictator. She would understand Pol Pot, and Stalin. She is tone-deaf, when it comes to conventional morality and any kind of softness. She has learned to lie, and make the correct cooing noises that sound relatively human so that no one will pick up the scent … but she looks around the world, sees everyone behaving in a way she finds incomprehensible (she only understands selfish motives), and will do whatever it takes to get whatever she wants. Steinbeck obviously sees that most of us are mixed bags – we all have good and evil, and if we are moderately healthy (meaning spiritually) – we can allow the two things to battle it out within us. If you are too good (like Adam Trask), you risk being naive, stupid, and forgiving towards those who do not deserve it. Look out. Don’t be TOO good. Because then you’ll have demons like Cathy and Charles walk all over you.

By the end of the book, we have another set of brothers – Cal and Aron … again, with the good and evil, but by this time, perhaps it’s been watered down – not so intensely stark as it was in earlier generations. Cal FEELS he is all bad, but that is only in comparison to his brother, Aron – the golden boy, who has his father’s unconditional love. But Cal is obviously not all bad. It is his own psyche he must struggle with, his motherlessness state – his curiosity about who his mother is (it is Cathy, of course) – and how he feels that he must have some of Cathy in him. There’s got to be a reason he has these bad thoughts, and wants to steal Aron’s girlfriend, and all the other stuff.

Even to lay out the book like this does it a disservice, because reading it calls to mind the “feast of reason and flow of soul” from Alexander Pope. It is intellectually rigorous, yet it has a LAZY pace – and I mean that in the best way. We are not in a race to the finish. Life is long. There is time. There is time for long philosophical conversations – where the characters hash out things – not things that have anything to do with plot, or story – but with ideas. There is great passion in the book, and terror as well.

The character of Cathy scared the shit out of me from the first moment I met her, and she scares me still. She comes up often in my brain, as a marker, a reminder. I have many questions and thoughts about people who seem blatantly amoral – people who seem as though they are missing something. Where does that come from? Their environment? They weren’t taught well? Or is it (as Steinbeck suggests) that monsters are possible? Psychological monsters. Cathy is “off” from the moment she is born. She looks at her parents and feels no attachment or familial feeling. Even as a tiny child, she looked at them and knew they would be obstacles. She is terrifying.

I suppose some people would find the themes of the book too black and white, too starkly oppositional – but I don’t find it that way at all. Perhaps because it is NOT a condensed story, it has no urgency – so I never feel like Steinbeck is hammering me over the head. Yes, we have three generations of brothers – with the “good” brother having a name starting with A, and the “bad” brother having a name starting with C – Cain, Abel, yeah, we got it Steinbeck … but again, because of the length and the unrushed pace of the book, I always felt more like I was just meeting people, not symbols or allegories.

I think a lot of what helps is that there is another family we also get to know – the Hamilton family, a huge sprawling Irish family who lives on the nearby farm. Steinbeck’s actual mother’s name was Olive Hamilton – and there’s an Olive Hamilton in the book who marries a Steinbeck. So. Obviously, Steinbeck is blending fiction and autobiography here. The Hamiltons are just – God, I love those people. Many of their stories will stay in my brain forever. Olive Hamilton getting a ride from a barnstormer. The dressmaker daughter, fun-loving, awesome, and the heartbreak which changed her whole life. Liza, the matriarch – a tough humorless woman who does her best to keep her dreamy husband in line, with all his pipe dreams. She’s an amazing character. The family: hard-working, faithful, loyal, tempestuous, impractical – the immigrant experience (the Irish immigrant experience) writ large.

And then, of course, there is Lee, the servant at the Trask house – a Chinese man – who befriends Samuel Hamilton. I can barely speak about Lee without getting a lump in my throat. He is one of my favorite characters in all of literature. He speaks pidgin English, and then one night – on a long buggy ride home with Samuel Hamilton – he finally breaks out of it, and speaks like normal, in perfect English. Yet he maintains the broken English for most people, because he finds it easier to get along with them … He says that if he spoke properly other people wouldn’t understand him. An amazing commentary on racism and how it colors how we see others. We can’t even hear them. But Lee … I don’t even know where to start. He’s in most of the book, since he comes to the Trask house early on and is there to the end – through generations. He is a philosopher, he’s no dummy, but he’s not a wise sage with all the answers – just a man who thinks deeply, and has ideas about the best way to live. I freakin’ LOVE Lee. And I love Steinbeck for creating him, because sometimes I just pull down my copy of the book and read over some of the long conversational passages between Lee and Samuel – where they sit and discuss the Bible, and good and evil, and the words you should choose to live by if you want to live a good life.

Like I said, if you are anxious for plot or things to happen then East of Eden is not your book. But man, it has enriched my life immeasurably to read this book time and time again. It makes me think. It makes me proud of America, but in a really humble and sometimes complicated way. Because, like anything, it is a mixed bag. You must take the evil with the good. If you put your hands over your ears and shout LALALALA at the thought of evil … then you are even more vulnerable to it. It is those who are slightly cynical, slightly distant (like Lee, like Abra, another great character who doesn’t enter until the last third of the book) – who have the best fighting chance. They have not been totally corrupted, yet they are nobody’s fools.

I guess what I’m really trying to say is that I just love all of these people. Not Cathy. No way. That bitch is on her own, she scares me … but everyone else? It’s just a pleasure to hang out with them. It’s not always fun – they go through hell … but don’t we all.

It’s a deeply human book, one of my all-time favorites.

Here’s an excerpt. You can see here how Adam, with all his good intentions, is blind to reality and cannot sense that … well. I suppose we are all blinded by love to some extent, so I do not judge him too harshly. But you can see Samuel Hamilton looking at Cathy, first time meeting her, and knowing that something is not quite right. It’s a chilling scene, the most chilling part being Adam’s utter oblivion – which seems almost willful. Like – he is CHOOSING to not see what is going on. He chose to be blind from the start. That is Steinbeck’s complexity. Adam is not just an idiot, a moony-eyed moron who can’t conceive of evil. No. He DECIDES to not believe in it, even when faced with it headon. It’s a choice. Free will. His brother Charles, bad to the bone, looked at Cathy and knew exactly what kind of monster he was dealing with. But Adam? Adam fell in love. Nightmare.

EXCERPT FROM East of Eden, by John Steinbeck

Because the day had been hot, Lee set a table outside under an oak tree, and as the sun neared the western mountains he padded back and forth from the kitchen, carrying the cold meats, pickles, potato salad, coconut cake, and peach pie which were supper. In the center of the table he placed a gigantic stoneware pitcher full of milk.

Adam and Samuel came from the wash house, their hair and faces shining with water, and Samuel’s beard was fluffy after its soaping. They stood at the trestle table and waited until Cathy came out.

She walked slowly, picking her way as though she were afraid she would fall. Her full skirt and apron concealed to a certain extent her swelling abdomen. Her face was untroubled and childlike, and she clasped her hands in front of her. She had reached the table before she looked up and glanced from Samuel to Adam.

Adam held her chair for her. “You haven’t met Mr. Hamilton, dear,” he said.

She held out her hand. “How do you do,” she said.

Samuel had been inspecting her. “It’s a beautiful face,” he said. “I’m glad to meet you. You are well, I hope?”

“Oh, yes. Yes, I’m well.”

The men sat down. “She makes it formal whether she wants to or not. Every meal is a kind of occasion,” Adam said.

“Don’t talk like that,” she said. “It isn’t true.”

“Doesn’t it feel like a party to you, Samuel?” he asked.

“It does so, and I can tell you there’s never been such a candidate for a party as I am. And my children – they’re worse. My boy Tom wanted to come today. He’s spoiling to get off the ranch.”

Samuel suddenly realized that he was making his speech last to prevent silence from falling on the table. He paused, and the silence dropped. Cathy looked down at her plate while she ate a sliver of roast lamb. She looked up as she put it between her small sharp teeth. Her wide-set eyes communicated nothing. Samuel shivered.

“It isn’t cold, is it?” Adam asked.

“Cold? No. A goose walked over my grave, I guess.”

“Oh, yes, I know that feeling.”

The silence fell again. Samuel waited for some speech to start up, knowing in advance that it would not.

“Do you like our valley, Mrs. Trask?”

“What? Oh, yes.”

“If it isn’t impertinent to ask, when is your baby due?”

“In about six weeks,” Adam said. “My wife is one of those paragons – a woman who does not talk very much.”

“Sometimes a silence tells the most,” said Samuel, and he saw Cathy’s eyes leap up and down again, and it seemed to him that the scar on her forehead grew darker. Something had flicked her the way you’d flick a horse with the braided string popper on a buggy whip. Samuel couldn’t recall what he had said that had made her give a small inward start. He felt a tenseness coming over him that was somewhat like the feeling he had just before the water wand pulled down, an awareness of something strange and strained. He glanced at Adam and saw that he was looking raptly at his wife. Whatever was strange was not strange to Adam. His face had happiness on it.

Cathy was chewing a piece of meat, chewing with her front teeth. Samuel had never seen anyone chew that way before. And when she swallowed, her little tongue flicked around her lips. Samuel’s mind repeated, “Something – something – can’t find what it is. Something’s wrong,” and the silence hung on the table.

There was a shuffle behind him. He turned. Lee set a teapot on the table and shuffled away.

Samuel began to talk to push the silence away. He told how he had first come to the valley fresh from Ireland, but within a few words neither Cathy nor Adam was listening to him. To prove it, he used a trick he had devised to discover whether his children were listening when they begged him to read to them and would not let him stop. He threw in two sentences of nonsense. There was no response from either Adam or Cathy. He gave up.

He bolted his supper, drank his tea scalding hot, and folded his napkin. “Ma’am, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll ride off home. And I thank you for your hospitality.”

“Good night,” she said.

Adam jumped to his feet. He seemed torn out of a reverie. “Don’t go now. I hoped to persuade you to stay the night.”

“No, thank you, but that I can’t. And it’s not a long ride. I think – of course, I know – there’ll be a moon.”

“When will you start the wells?”

“I’ll have to get my rig together, do a piece of sharpening, and put my house in order. In a few days I’ll send the equipment with Tom.”

The life was flowing back into Adam. “Make it soon,” he said. “I want it soon. Cathy, we’re going to make the most beautiful place in the world. There’ll be nothing like it anywhere.”

Samuel switched his gaze to Cathy’s face. It did not change. The eyes were flat and the mouth with its small up-curve at the corners was carven.

“That will be nice,” she said.

For just a moment Samuel had an impulse to do or say something to shock her out of her distance. He shivered again.

“Another goose?” Adam asked.

“Another goose.” The dusk was falling and already the tree forms were dark against the sky. “Good night, then.”

“I’ll walk down with you.”

“No, stay with your wife. You haven’t finished your supper.”

“But I –”

“Sit down, man. I can find my own horse, and if I can’t I’ll steal one of yours.” Samuel pushed Adam gently down in his chair. “Good night. Good night. Good night, ma’am.” He walked quickly toward the shed.

Old platter-foot Doxology was daintily nibbling hay from the manger with lips like two flounders. The halter chain clinked against wood. Samuel lifted down his saddle from the big nail where it hung by one wooden stirrup and swung it over the broad back. He was lacing the latigo through the cinch rings when there was a small stir behind him. He turned and saw the silhouette of Lee against the last light from the open shadows.

“When you come back?” the Chinese asked softly.

“I don’t know. In a few days or a week. Lee, what is it?”

“What is what?”

“By God, I got creepy! Is there something wrong here?”

“What do you mean?”

“You know damn well what I mean.”

“Chinee boy ju’ workee – not hear, not talkee.”

“Yes, I guess you’re right. Sure, you’re right. Sorry I asked you. It wasn’t very good manners.” He turned back, slipped the bit in Dox’s mouth, and laced the big flop ears into the headstall. He slipped the halter and dropped it in the manger. “Good night, Lee,” he said.

“Mr. Hamilton –”

“Yes?”

“Do you need a cook?”

“On my place I can’t afford a cook.”

“I’d work cheap.”

“Liza would kill you. Why – you want to quit?”

“Just thought I’d ask,” said Lee. “Good night.”