"The Salinas Valley is in Northern Caliofornia. It is a long narrow swale between two ranges of mountains, and the Salinas River winds and twists up the center until it falls at last into Monterey Bay."
Thus begins Steinbeck's epic. When I read the first few pages I thought the writing was almost like that of a poem. Steinbeck's writing was brilliant and beautiful. I simply wondered where the poetic magic would end and where the real exposition would start. What still baffles me is that it never did. He writes dark, heavy, and beautiful- for 600 pages.
I'll just get straight to the punchline now and say that East of Eden is the best work of fiction that I have ever read. This book rocked my world- and I'm not really a fiction reader. In one of the deepest and most profound portions of the book, Lee (the Chinese philosopher-servant) makes a remark to Samuel Hamilton (my favorite fictional character- ever). They're talking about the story of Cain and Abel- what it is about the story that reaches down deep into humanity's past and into the condition of men who find themselves in the fallen world, "east of Eden".
"A great and lasting story is about everyone or it will not last. The strange and foreign is not interesting- only the deeply personal and familiar." He continues, "I think this is the best-known story in the world because it is everybody's story. I think it is the symbol story of the human soul" ... "The greatest terror a child can have is that he isn't loved, and rejection is the hell he fears. I think everyone in the world to a large or small extent has felt rejection. And with rejection comes anger, and with anger some kind of crime in revenge for the rejection, and with the crime guilt- and there is the story of mankind" ... "Therefore I think this old and terrible story is important because it is a chart of the soul- the secret, rejected, guilty soul."
Ironically, this is exactly what Steinbeck has created- a dark but powerful novel that reaches down deep, touching parts of my soul that I had all but forgotten. Still though, these parts make up most of who I am and largely dictate what I do.
While reading East, it quickly became clear that Steinbeck was a genius, with an eye for seeing into people that I doubt will ever be equaled. What makes him so phenomenal though is that along with the keen insight, he also possesses the ability to communicate it through, honestly, the best writing that I've ever seen.
In this book I found an author who saw things much like the way I see them, who even expresses himself the way I express myself. On both counts though, I was so humbled to find someone who did both the seeing and the saying far better than I could ever dream to. Steinbeck was a genius. A master of the human psyche. A man who saw things much like I do. Steinbeck though sees much more deeply and much more clearly than me.
And how could I write an impression without mentioning Samuel Hamilton. "Some men think big and some think little", Steinbeck writes. Samuel would be one of the former. I really don't want to try to describe him here, simply because I know I really won't do him the justice that he deserves. In Samuel, I found the mentor and kindred spirit that I've perhaps been searching for my whole life. He embodies warmth and deep understanding, while toeing the line between simple joy and a heavy soul. A man truly after my own heart.
This book has made me feel feelings that I haven't felt in a long time. Feelings that don't arise from the shallow trough of heartbreak or even the death of characters. They were feelings that arose out of long forgotten hurts and memories that I never dreamed could be part of the universal human experience.
In short, this book has changed me, though I'm not quite sure how. It's a beautiful, though sometimes bleak, story of how life plays out for two families in California around the turn of the 20th century. But maybe it's more than that. Maybe it's a story about the human soul. Maybe it's less about Adam, Cathy, Sam, Cal, and Aron, and more a story about ourselves.
(I realize that what precedes isn't really a review and certainly doesn't contain a synopsis. It's simply an "impression" where I gush about my mancrush on Steinbeck.)
