East Of Eden
by John Steinbeck
Award: Nobel Prize Winner 1953
Nomination: National Book Finalist 1953, Oprah Book Club 2003
Date Read: March 24, 2001
John Steinbeck may have been one of my first loves. Although I never took to Call Of The Wild, Cannery Row began the obsession and East Of Eden sealed the deal. Also being a Californian, I love reading novels from an author that describes the area I grew up.
East Of Eden is set in the Salinas Valley and details the experiences of two families, the Trasks and Hamiltons. This novel has it all, love and lust, depravity, murder, forgiveness, cruelty and redemption. Steinbeck considers this novel his magnum opus and asserted, "It has everything in it I have been able to learn about my craft or profession in all these years," and mused that all his previous work had been "...practice for this."
Steinbeck largely modeled East of Eden from Genesis, particularly the story of Cain and Abel, deriving the title from Chapter 4, verse 16: "And Cain went out from the presence of the Lord, and dwelt in the Land of Nod, on the east of Eden."
Critics largely panned this novel, responding only to the violence and sexual sadism. The public, however, flocked to this novel, making it an immediate best-seller. East Of Eden has withstood the test of time as this novel is still required reading in high-school English classes and almost everyone I know has read it at some point or another. Although Ralph Ellisons' Invisible Man won the National Book Award that year and the novel remains relevant and important, I would argue that East Of Eden is still a more popular novel.
Date Read: March 24, 2001
John Steinbeck may have been one of my first loves. Although I never took to Call Of The Wild, Cannery Row began the obsession and East Of Eden sealed the deal. Also being a Californian, I love reading novels from an author that describes the area I grew up.
East Of Eden is set in the Salinas Valley and details the experiences of two families, the Trasks and Hamiltons. This novel has it all, love and lust, depravity, murder, forgiveness, cruelty and redemption. Steinbeck considers this novel his magnum opus and asserted, "It has everything in it I have been able to learn about my craft or profession in all these years," and mused that all his previous work had been "...practice for this."
Steinbeck largely modeled East of Eden from Genesis, particularly the story of Cain and Abel, deriving the title from Chapter 4, verse 16: "And Cain went out from the presence of the Lord, and dwelt in the Land of Nod, on the east of Eden."
Critics largely panned this novel, responding only to the violence and sexual sadism. The public, however, flocked to this novel, making it an immediate best-seller. East Of Eden has withstood the test of time as this novel is still required reading in high-school English classes and almost everyone I know has read it at some point or another. Although Ralph Ellisons' Invisible Man won the National Book Award that year and the novel remains relevant and important, I would argue that East Of Eden is still a more popular novel.
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