Braddy Reads East of Eden

Man, is Steinbeck depressing or what?

I've been doing less reading than usual. Between singing rehearsals all throughout the last quarter of 2013 and house... stuff... I've not really had the time. But now it's a new year, and a new month, and a new selection from my book club. So it's time, I guess, to take that reading rainbow for a ride.

This is actual the second time my book club has chosen to read a Steinbeck novel. It's not terrible hard to see why: Steinbeck is a stupendous writer, even if all he seems to write about is misery and discomfort. I've never walked away from a Steinbeck novel feeling anything other than enlightened, although perhaps a bit dirty, as well.

East of Eden is almost definitely my new favorite Steinbeck novel. It contains one of the most interesting meditations on morality I've ever read. Admittedly it took a long time for me to really get into the novel - it felt like the first several hundred pages were all set up , and it takes a LOT of patience to get the payoff.

I really hate long novels.

Ultimately, though, East of Eden has given me a lot to think about. Like the stories from the Bible on which the novel is loosely based, East of Eden affirms that men and women all,have the capacity for good and evil, and their reasons for cleaving to one or the other can vary. Sometimes, vice can lend one strength, while virtue can lead them down treacherous, sinful roads. Yeah, I'll be thinking on that one for a while.

By the way, I read the Penguin edition of the novel, and the back of the book kinda made me laugh:

Set in the rich farmland of California's Salinas Valley, this sprawling and often brutal novel follows the intertwined destinies of two families-the Trasks and the Hamiltons-whose generations helplessly reenact the fall of Adam and Eve and the poisonous rivalry of Cain and Abel.

That, by the way, is literally the entire plot of the book. Spoilers, indeed.