K-SCORE: 78
Author John Steinbeck
Classic works of literature appeal to only a certain small subset of the population. The reason for this is embodied in Steinbeck and his famous novel East of Eden. Steinbeck exemplifies a rare gift for eloquent prose, insightful ideas, carefully earned sentiments, and believable, fully-fledged characters leading realistic lives. By the last page, if you make it that far, you’ll be convinced of his brilliance. It’s important to remember, however, that the man cared nothing for pacing, had no concern for redundancy, and had no imagination. East of Eden is one of the least creative stories I’ve ever consumed. It’s the Adam and Eve tale, followed up with the Cain and Abel tale. The novel is set in the Salinas valley of California, where Steinbeck lived most of his life, and there is even a family in the novel with the last name Steinbeck.
“once enough of them are dead, the novel picks up tremendously”
The biggest problem with East of Eden, apart from the fact that it’s a boring slog of a read, is that the novel spends countless paragraphs describing the deep and multigenerational cast of characters in the Hamilton family, yet the entirety of the conflict has little to do with any of them. The most interesting of the Hamiltons dies, or rather fades away, about two-thirds of the way through, and you’re left with scraps of Hamiltons that just persist in the pages for reasons known only to Steinbeck. I think (and I’m sure those with their post graduate degrees in English can verify this) that they must have really existed, and Steinbeck simply wanted to write about them. He was definitely a potent observer of the human psyche and there are a lot of well-delivered truths in East of Eden that come from his descriptions of the Hamiltons, but otherwise, they’re irrelevant. Once enough of them are dead, the novel picks up tremendously, and you can focus in on caring about Cal Trask, the best of his characters, and his conflict in understanding that he has evil coursing through his blood, understanding the tragic pattern of behavior he inherited from his parents, and his desire to overcome that.
East of Eden, for however much I gained from reading it, is not a novel I can really recommend to others though because it never makes you want to turn another page. The scope is large enough that it spans many characters over decades of time. Cal Trask isn’t born until halfway through. And while you’re plugging along these personal histories, there’s rarely an overarching conflict to hook you and make you wonder what will happen next and it’s never fun. This comes from the genre and era of literature where the sweet and innocent develop “a terrible sickness when the rainy season” comes by and “the old town doctor said there was just nothing to be done about it” and eventually “she passed.” Or, a note comes by when “the train finally rolls in” and the news inside is that your long lost “brother suffered a heart attack this past winter.” And though you never cared that much about those characters to begin with, melancholy drips off every page.
If you can look past that, and you don’t care about originality, and you don’t care about the pace of a narrative, and you like WWI era stories set in California, then East of Eden is probably for you. But if all that’s the case then you’re an English teacher how the hell did you wind up on my website where I once threw a review for Serendipity in with a review for Underworld as if they were part of the same series, where I once changed the name of every female character in critically acclaimed work to Crazy Woman, where I once tried to mathematically prove why The Hobbit is a ninth as good as The Lord of the Rings, where I once listed out everything in my inventory at the end of my time playing The Witcher 3, where I once posted an entire review in poorly Google translated Chinese, and where I once listed 35 better ways to kill theater people than what can be found in the B horror movie Stage Fright. Seriously, how did you find me? Welcome!