It is moving at a very rapid pace but everything about it indicates to me that it is going to be a very long book indeed. I know that because every facet I open leads down a long road of character and its effect. Lord this is a complicated book. I hope I can keep all the reins in my hands and at the same time make it sound as though the book were almost accidental.
—John Steinbeck, Journal of a Novel: The East of Eden Letters
The paradox of skill is that the better one gets, the easier one makes it look, but the easier it looks, the more that people think it’s nothing special. The hardest thing in the world is to make something look easy.
East of Eden isn’t Steinbeck’s “easiest” book, but it is one of his best ones. Most people come to Steinbeck in school through Of Mice and Men or (if they’re lucky or unlucky, depending on how one looks at reading a novella versus a long novel) The Grapes of Wrath. East of Eden is one of those “also wrote” books that you comes across later on in life if you don’t stop learning after school ends. It’s also one of those, “I didn’t know he wrote this too!” kind of books. It’s also, perhaps ironically, one of the few books of his I haven’t read… yet.
Last week: A goodbye to George Wendt.
Next week: Yehudi Menuhin on the importance of play.
See the index for what’s been posted and what’s to come.
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