At the beginning of Part 2, Steinbeck’s narrator goes on about how horrible the 19th century was, glad it is over, time to wash our hands of it and start fresh. But he repeats this lovely bit before moving on to the thirteenth chapter:
Oh, but strawberries will never taste so good again and the thighs of women have lost their clutch!
I can’t wait to use that.
It is Fall of 1952, Dwight D. Eisenhower has just become president of the United States with Nixon as his running mate, the Korean War has not yet ended, and John Steinbeck publishes East of Eden. The Salinas valley is a rich agricultural area, “America’s Salad Bowl,” and most of my memories are of travels to Monterey, 101 to 156 to 1 (so I didn’t have to drive over the Santa Cruz Mountains.) It is sad that I read very little Steinbeck while so close to his hometown.
East of Eden takes place between the turn of the 20th century and the end of WWI. It is rumored that Steinbeck considered this novel to be his greatest work and the title, after several attempts, is drawn from the biblical story of Cain and Abel.
And Cain went out from the presence of the Lord, and dwelt in the land of Nod, on the east of Eden.
Genesis 4, 16.
This short story deserves a second reading. It has an interesting narrative voice that relates a story of a friend’s memory. Throughout the reading I couldn’t help thinking that the door in the wall is meant to represent opportunity. It is a peculiar telling.
Charles Ryder is on the move in A Twitch upon the Thread, which delivers a remarkable sentence just two pages into chapter one as he travels through Central America:
I used to stuff a bundle of letters into my bag and read them when I felt inclined, which was in circumstances so incongruous — swinging in my hammock, under the net, by the light of a storm-lantern; drifting down river, amidships in the canoe, with the boys astern of me lazily keeping our nose out of the bank, with the dark water keeping pace with us, in the green shade, with the great trees towering above us and the monkeys screeching in the sunlight, high overhead among the flowers on the roof of the forest; on the veranda of a hospitable ranch, its chain on the mown grass — that they seemed voices so distant as to be meaningless; their matter passed clean through the mind, and out, leaving no mark, like the facts about themselves which fellow travellers distribute so freely in American railway trains.
When I get to the period I have to read it again, if only to admire the lovely jab at American small talk. As soon as I convince myself that Charles Ryder is vapid and shallow, a character is introduced — his wife! — who is even more shallow. Who will win my trust? At least she writes letters when her spouse is away.
