East of Eden (1952)

Austan Eden eftir John Steinbeck er eftirminnileg saga. Sérstaklega fyrir persónusköpun Steinbecks en einnig fyrir forlögin sem persónunum eru sköpuð. Steinbeck vísar ítrekað til sögunnar um Kain og Abel í Biblíunni og lesendurnir eru stöðugt efins um hvort sögupersónur Steinbecks séu bundnir af örlögum bræðranna í Biblíunni eða hvort þeir öðlist frelsi undan grimmum forlögunum.
Sagan snýst um tvær fjölskyldur sem setjast að á svipuðu svæði, ólík örlög ættfeðranna og afkomendanna og tengsl fjölskyldnanna. Persónurnar eru málaðar nokkuð svart-hvítar, þ.e.a.s. illar, góðar, dómharðar, trúaðar skoðanir eru afgerandi einkenni sumra þeirra. Fyrir vikið verða samskipti þeirra enn kröftugri
Ég áttaði mig ekki alveg á því hvort Steinbeck, sem skrifaði bókina með skýrri tilvísun til aldingarðarins Eden og samskipti Evu og Adams, lét konur vera gagngert illa aflið í sögunni vegna þessarar sköpunarsögu Biblíunnar eða hvort ástæðan er honum persónulegri og jafnvel ómeðvituð. Til þess þekki ég hann bara ekki nógu vel sem rithöfund en sagan var það ánægjuleg að ég mun lesa meira eftir hann síðar. ( )

Best read of the year! ( )

Here's what I wrote after reading in 1987: "Another good one. Story uses a New England and then Californian setting and a cast of characters that includes the monstrous Cathy, the simply honest Adam Trask, the wise and loving Chinaman, Lee, and the eternally optimistic Sam Hamilton. These characters help Steinbeck illustrate man's struggle between good and evil and man's ability triumph over evil. "Thou mayest. . . choose (his) course and fight through and win "TIMSHEL"." Cain and Abel story of course. ( )

An epic tale in northern California of ignorant, racist, men and women. Steinbeck’s characters are unlikable, intolerable, and weak. However his descriptions of the valley and surrounding area are magnificent. ( )

✍️ Not a review per se – just some notes and observations.

⚠️ TW: racism, misogyny, violence, rape,

🏞 Steinbeck definitely put Salinas Valley on the map!lol

This books encompasses so many different themes to include evil vs. good, human nature, nurture vs. nature, familial attachments (or detachments), and whether we all carry a monstrous part of ourselves inside, and some are just better than others at controlling it and/or hiding it. What, exactly, keeps us from crossing certain boundaries? Love? God? Fear? All of it? None of it?

There is a section that struck me, which is also at the core of the central theme in terms of fathers (God) rejecting what their sons have to offer, consequences therein, and the concept of free will: “The greatest terror a child can have is that he is not loved, and rejection is the hell he fears. I think everyone in the world to a larger 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. I think that if rejection could be amputated, the human would not be what he is.”

Cain felt rejected and struck his brother and the history repeats itself.

📌- Elephant in the room: Racism – When an author uses the vernacular of bigotry, racism, intolerance, whether through fictional characters or as a narrator, it is jarring and difficult to reconcile through our modern lens or context. When he referred to Native Americans as an “inferior race” in the beginning, it jolted me. When he later used direct racial slurs it was quite impactful and uncomfortable. This book exemplifies some of the attitudes towards other races/ethnicities (and women for that matter) of its time, which are offensive and hurtful (and have not gone away). But man, it is also chockfull of information our minds and souls can sink its teeth into…a lot to unpack and digest (preferably slowly!lol) in terms of the complexity of human nature, free will, and good vs. evil. What I’m trying to say is that if you think you can get past these occasional slurs (by the way, by my count it was a handful so it’s not like Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, which can be extremely triggering for some readers) to get to the meat of the book, it will be worth it. But if you can’t, that it totally ok and now you know.
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- Point of view: there was a shift at some point to first person and I did not catch it!lol I was reading alone and then …who’s this?lol
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- 🐎 Horse’s name: Doxology! I *need* someone to name their horse, pony…maybe a dog that looks like a horse..this and tell me!lol

- 📖 New word to my lexicon: “Day-Lazy” – Can’t wait to use it!lol

❤️ Some quotes I liked:

“to a monster the norm must seem monstrous, since everyone is normal to himself…To a man born without conscience, a soul-stricken man must seem ridiculous. To a criminal, honesty is foolish. You must not forget that a monster is only a variation, and that to a monster the norm is monstrous.”
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“When our food and clothing and housing are all born in the complication of mass production, mass method is bound to get into our thinking and to eliminate all other thinking.”
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“You see what is, where most people see what they expect.”
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“It is easy to say she was bad, but there is little meaning unless we know why.”
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“And the books that came into the house, some of them secretly – well, Samuel rode lightly on top of a book and he balanced happily among ideas the way a man rides white rapids in a canoe. But Tom got into a book, crawled and groveled between the covers, tunneled like a mole among the thoughts, and came up with the book all over his face and hands.”
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“She watched his great red happiness, and it was not light as Samuel’s happiness was light. It did not rise out of his roots and come floating up. He was manufacturing happiness as cleverly as he knew how, molding it and shaping it.”
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“Humans are caught – in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, in their avarice and cruelty, and in their kindness and generosity too – in a net of good and evil.”
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“We have only one story. All novels, all poetry, are build on the never-ending contest in ourselves of good and evil. And it occurs to me that evil must constantly re-spawn, while good, while virtue, is immortal.”
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“All great and precious things are lonely.”
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“And now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good.”
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“No story has power, nor will it last, unless we feel in ourselves that it is true and true of us. What a great burden of guilt men have!”
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---“And Cain went out from the presence of the Lord and dwelt in the land of Nod on the east of Eden.”