I haven't read much, but the first two pages of East of Eden seem very basic -- standard American novel -- Steinbeck seeing easy symbolism in natural things -- setting up metaphors for a geographic location to be used throughout the book on the first page -- the prose ......... Very standard.
Yet I am into it. Even if it is nothing special (it feels like Twain..... is it?), I feel as if I want badly to be a part of the naturalism, the agrarian lifestyle and community, the valley with mountain ranges on either side, the sea just over the western ridge, a river, farmland, a sun, green...... I feel as if I want badly to be a part of it -- the natural lifestyle, the dependence on nature, the attunedness to nature, the simple life....
Could I, perchance, come farm with the Steinbecks in a lush green valley with a river with a personality and two characters for mountain ranges for topographic bookends and the sea just a hop, skip and jump to the west? And work for a good portion of every day and read books for the rest of every day? But not philosophy, and nothing foreign.... just good, classic American fiction? And maybe play the guitar on a porch?
Could I know the people in my community by name, and by their unique characters? Could I have this thing I do with the neighborhood boys that is kind of illegal but without which I and my town wouldn't have an identity?
Maybe I should just read East of Eden.
But can I live in East of Eden? Can I please escape the self-consciousness of Camus and instead live in the simple American town? French intellectual culture is burdening my soul.... I need to go play recreationally in the town river, and maybe one of my friends drowns, but that makes us who we are today.
This returns some fond memories of when I read this. The copy I read was one of those Preus books that looked like a catechism. I think I would read it in the caf during some J-term. The place it starts in is exactly as you describe, though it picks up more pulpy qualities later on. Lonesome Dove obviously fits this conversation. For some reason I feel like you may have read this in HS? That's a great book to read on the evening on the porch about cowboys staring at the sunset on a porch.
ReplyDeleteI read Lonesome Dove around 2013. It feels miraculous I finished it, given my sputtering history with novels. I don't think I ever really understood it -- I think I kept expecting something dramatic to happen to justify the book, since I didn't really find the rest dramatic, partly due to McMurtry's plain style. So I didn't really connect with the point of it all. I haven't tried many novels in the last few years, mostly just Tolkien, but I still think it would be difficult for me to get through, and therefore difficult to justify. I wish I could do it though. I see the appeal of porch-sitting reading about porch-sitting, and the appeal of just enjoying Steinbeck without expecting soul-changing experience.
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