Reading East of Eden, Part 1

A friend of mine for whom I have great respect has long suggested I read the John Steinbeck novel, East of Eden, and listed it as one of his top books of all time. Since it wasn't a part of my personal library and my trips to a public library have been rather non-existent as of recent personal history, reading this book wasn't likely to happen. Instead, what little free time I had to read was spent skimming articles in my Google Reader (set yours up if you haven't done it yet!) and re-visiting "candy books" (such as Ian Fleming stories). Needless to say, these reads didn't require much thought, and hence produced little insight...

For Christmas, I received the Steinbeck Centennial Edition of East of Eden, complete with artificial deckle edge (or rough cut?) pages. I was excited to begin to reading, but concerned that I might be getting into the book with expectations too high. After thinking briefly about this supposed dilemma, I tried to set all other thoughts aside and just being to read.

Which wasn't hard to do. I was drawn into the story right from the beginning. I suppose that having spent some of my teenage years about 90 miles from where the story takes place I had little trouble imagining the Salinas Valley, the oak trees, and the river that comes and goes with the seasons. It occurred to me as I read Steinbeck's descriptions that I had seen (and was thus able to remember now 10 years later) these trees and hills and river, but had not noticed them, nor the many other things that Steinbeck associates with these aspects of life in the Salinas Valley.

I found myself not wanting to put the book down and managed to finish reading it fairly quickly. It stirred up thought in me, and I scribbled down notes while I read in a little notebook I got while visiting the Body Worlds exhibit in SLC. I didn't give this book and its themes the amount of thought they deserve (pardon me, I was on Christmas vacation), but I hope to share over the next few posts what did come to mind.

Although I've never fancied myself much of a literary critic (I'll leave that to the English majors out there), I've decided to share my thoughts. In short, I found the novel compelling and a must-read. I have read good books, intriguing books, books that make you think, fun books, and informative books. Despite the vast number of pages I've read (likely in the hundreds of thousands; I set a record in third grade during the March of Dimes reading contest and beat out 8th graders in both number of pages and difficulty of material) and the broad array of topics which have graced the pages (from spy thrillers to legal fiction and historical non-fiction; from academic articles and classic works of political science to magic how-to books; from how-things-work books to encyclopedia sets (ours at home was the New Book of Knowledge) to introductions to accounting and computer programming and histories and how-to's of code making and breaking; from biographies and autobiographies to various "sets" and "trilogies" to poetry and plays; and from religious and scriptural writing to the musings of philosophers), very few times have I turned the final pages on a book and thought to myself,

"This was a great book. I came away changed in some way, and now feel sad that I have to set its pages down. I look forward to picking this up again from my bookshelf and participating in another transformation."

East of Eden, to me, is such a book.