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

Confused Notions of Good and Evil in einsteinium of Eden   eastern of Eden is an epic novel close individual ethics - whether men and women have the power to choose among good and evil.   East of Eden, to be polite, it is not Steinbecks best novel. Not by a long shot. Steinbeck had wrestled with a moral question and lost. It was as though he had been thinking about brio, tho not too 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 calculate Steinbeck as a hard boiled writer. Well, if a comparison with bombard 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 deputes of East of Eden that sound like something out of Freshman Composition I. almost of the syntax seems like scrambled eggs - All around the briny 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 sapiently limited by hurry. All of which sounds a bit like Charlie Chan explaining life to No. 1 son. Steinbecks East of Eden now has been adapted for television set 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. fo r itself. ABC boasts in a press release that the 1955 film feature 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, nowadays (Sunday) is the 50th anniversary of Deans birth.