Hello, readers!
Welcome to our 7-week group reading of John Steinbeck’s classic, East of Eden. Steinbeck is among the most well-known American authors and his titles are often recognizable even to non-readers: The Grapes of Wrath, Of Mice and Men, Cannery Row. But it’s his 1952 epic, East of Eden, that he considered his masterpiece and the culmination of his life’s work:
"It has everything in it I have been able to learn about my craft or profession in all these years."
"I think everything else I have written has been, in a sense, practice for this."
“Much the longest and surely the most difficult work I have ever done... I have put all the things I have wanted to write all my life. This is 'the book.' If it is not good I have fooled myself all the time. I don't mean I will stop but this is a definite milestone and I feel released. Having done this I can do anything I want. Always I had this book waiting to be written.”
It’s always interesting to me when an all-time great writer has a clear favorite from their own body of work; it often means they’ve put more of themselves into that story than any other. For Dickens, it was David Copperfield; for Twain, it was — oddly — the little-known Joan of Arc; for Steinbeck, East of Eden was his clear magnum opus. That alone makes it worth a deep dive.
Today, we’ll look at just a bit of background and context before jumping into the reading next week. Know that this is truly just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Steinbeck and analyzing his work. There are entire scholarly journals dedicated to studying his canon; so think of these write-ups for the next seven weeks as more of a starting point than as anything conclusive.
Before we jump in, here’s the reading schedule again, if needed.
A bit about Steinbeck: “I shall have really lived”
I’ll have more to say about Steinbeck in the coming weeks, but for now it’s worth sharing just a bit about the man himself. As with any great novel, knowing the human behind the words adds context, color, and another level of understanding to the story.
Steinbeck was born in 1902 in the California’s Salinas Valley. The simple fact of being born at the turn of the 20th century, in this part of America, would shape much of Steinbeck’s experience and writing. It was an era of earth-shattering, almost incomprehensible change. As biographer William Souder eloquently notes:
“One world was ending; another, beginning. The promise of the new century was that nothing would remain the same for long, including America’s place in the world. With the Victorian Age barely over, the Steinbecks’ baby boy hurtled into a future he would help to write. Before his second birthday, Wilbur and Orville Wright would fly. And within months of his death, Neil Armstrong would walk on the moon. In between, John Steinbeck tried to tell the story every writer hopes to get right, which is only how it was during one small chapter of history. It is not much to ask, but the hardest thing on earth to do.”
From a young age, Steinbeck was standoffish and bookish, set apart from his lighthearted friends and classmates. For him, books were “realer than experience.” His sole ambition, from as soon as he could rationally think about it, was to become a great writer. As a young man, he attended Stanford on and off, dipping in and out of writing classes as his interests dictated; Steinbeck never graduated, but found a lot of value in his classes and in the feedback of his professors.