John Steinbecks East of Eden - Confused Notions of Good and Evil :: East Eden Essays

Confused Notions of Good and Evil in easternmost of nirvana   East of Eden is an epic novel about individual ethics - whether men and women have the power to choose between good and evil.   East of Eden, to be polite, it is not Steinbecks take up novel. Not by a long shot. Steinbeck had wrestled with a moral question and lost. It was as though he had been thinking about life, but not withal deeply. East of Eden was a third-rate best seller, the story of two American families over three generations, seven decades from the Civil state of war to World War I, told in a book that confuses us with contradictions, that lacks fictional concentration and that wanders in and around too many themes. Clifton Fadiman once said it was wrong to describe Steinbeck as a hard boiled writer. Well, if a comparison with eggs is necessary, East of Eden is an overdone omelet. Steinbeck himself worried about its weaknesses. In a letter to his editor, he said, Its kind of a sloppy sounding book, but its not sloppy, really. Well, it was sloppy. Begging the forgiveness of the people who gave Steinbeck the Pulitizer and the Nobel Prizes for Literature, there are portions of East of Eden that sound the like something out of Freshman Composition I. Some of the syntax seems like scrambled eggs - All around the main subject the brothers beat. - The wrinkles around them (his eyes) were drawn in radial lines inward by laughter. - In human affairs of danger and delicate success, conclusion is sharply limited by hurry. All of which sounds a microchip like Charlie Chan explaining life to No. 1 son. Steinbecks East of Eden now has been adapted for television by ABC, an eight-hour presentation beginning tonight (Channel 5, 8 to 11), tomorrow (9 to 11) and Wednesday (8 to 11). This is no cheapie. Ten years in the making, East of Eden was shot on location at a cost of $11.2 million, with Savannah, Ga. standing in for computerized axial tomography scenes and Salinas, Cal. f or itself. ABC boasts in a press release that the 1955 film starring James Dean covered only a small portion of East of Eden, while the 1981 film attempts to depict the entire novel. Ironically, by the way, today (Sunday) is the 50th anniversary of Deans birth.