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East of Eden
Well it looks like East of Eden was a heavy favorite.
We will begin on November 1st. I will post weekly reading dates very soon. I think a month will give us enough time to get the book and get ready for some good reading!
I love East of Eden. I started it once and stopped after the first chapter. It starts with a whole chapter describing a valley, or something like that. Later somebody insisted I gave it another try, and I am very glad I did. It is now one of my favorite classics/author.
I love this book. Certainly in my top 5 of all time!
However, after I read it I was on such a high from it that I watched the James Dean movie. It SUCKED. I'm not even sure how they got away calling it "East of Eden". It should have just been called "James Dean is full of Angst pt V"
There is so much meat in this book and they trimmed it all down to showcase James Dean and not the story.
If you like James Dean you might like it but if youre looking for it to be a good representation of EoE youll be disappointed I think.
I finally finished VF. I am taking in some light reading until then and I will be refreshed and reading to read E of E.
What did you think of the end Rebecca? I thought it ended quickly. I agree that the last hundred of so pages were the best.
Just ordered it from Paperbackswap.com. Really looking forward to this one! I have read several Steinbeck (and liked them all), but never E of E. See you Nov 1st!
Having not participated before, I'm not sure how the "chunky" read discussions work. Do we start on November 1 with discussions, so need to read before then, or do we have a reading schedule and discuss sections, or . . . ???
Elizabeth, Did you get the book ordered on Amazon? and Beth, thanks for the heads up that it's available on PBS!
Actually, I tucked my head into my local Waldenbooks yesterday after I voted (local election) and they had a copy!
I recently joined this group, and I am looking forward to reading this with everyone! My copy will be here Friday!
Meg wrote: "Elizabeth, I just got my copy from PBS and will be posting the schedule shortly."
Which copy did you choose?? There were several available on PBS and I wasn't sure which would be better.
OK I have an old version of the book from penguin publishing.
Here's the schedule:
November 1 - start reading!
November 8 - Chapters 1-10
November 15 - Chapters 11-17
November 22 - Chapters 18-23
November 29 - Chapters 24-32
December 6 - Chapters 33-42
December 13 - Finish book
Hope this schedule works for everyone, and most of all enjoy reading. It will be great reading an American author!
Oh and to clear up any confusion, the date next to the chapters mean that those chapters should be read by that date. So on November 8th you will have completed the first 10 chapters.
Thanks again, Meg. By the way, when I purchased this book, my husband, who is NOT a fiction reader, said, "great book - we read it back in high school". Since that was oh so many years ago, it must, indeed, be a good one. I am SO looking forward to this it.
Hi Meg - thanks for the schedule. I already started and am really liking it so far! We leave for a 3 week cross-country vacation on Nov 5th, so I hope to read it before we leave and then, I can log on along the way and participate in the discussion. "see" you in November!
A very brief blurb from Wikipedia:
East of Eden is a novel by Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck, published in September 1952.
Often described as Steinbeck's most ambitious novel, East of Eden brings to life the intricate details of two families, the Trasks and the Hamiltons, and their interwoven stories. The novel was originally addressed to Steinbeck's young sons, Thom and John (then 6½ and 4½ respectively). Steinbeck wanted to describe the Salinas Valley for them in detail: the sights, sounds, smells, and colors.
The Hamilton family in the novel is said to be based on the real-life family of Samuel Hamilton, Steinbeck's maternal grandfather.[1:] A young John Steinbeck also appears briefly in the novel as a minor character.[2:]
According to his last wife Elaine, he considered this to be a requiem for himself—his greatest novel ever.[citation needed:] Steinbeck stated about East of Eden: "It has everything in it I have been able to learn about my craft or profession in all these years." He further claimed: "I think everything else I have written has been, in a sense, practice for this."
Oh and Tera, there is an 8 hr series of East of Eden, where Jane Seymour was one of the actors. Sounds a lot better than the James Dean version!
Hi All:Are we still reading East of Eden? I noticed that there is a new book in it's place (on our bookshelf)....
Hi Roberta,
Yes, we are still reading East of Eden, starting Nov. 1st. It is an "extra" read for the group though, one of the "chunky books". The books listed on the bookshelf are the books that win the vote for the main reads for the month (there are two main reads each month).
I read East of Eden when I first moved to the Salinas Valley. It was interesting to see how much and how little has changed.
East of Eden is one of my favorites! Even though I've read it before I would love to join in the discussion here and there.
From sparknotes:
John Steinbeck is perhaps the quintessential California novelist. Born in Salinas, California, in 1902, he went on to create a body of work that is closely connected to the land, people, and history of his home state. As a young man, Steinbeck worked as a hired hand on farms and ranches throughout the Salinas Valley, forming lasting impressions of the land and its people that would influence virtually all of his later work. Meanwhile, his father, a local government official, and his mother, a former schoolteacher, encouraged his burgeoning interest in writing. After finishing high school, Steinbeck started at Stanford University in Palo Alto but left before finishing his degree in order to pursue work as a reporter in New York City. He returned to California the following year, supporting his writing endeavors with a steady income from manual labor.
The first three novels Steinbeck published—Cup of Gold (1929), The Pastures of Heaven (1932), and To a God Unknown (1933)—were critical and commercial failures. He persisted in his writing, however, and attracted more positive notices with Tortilla Flat (1935), a collection of stories about the ethnic working poor in California. Of Mice and Men (1937) brought him increased acclaim, and then The Grapes of Wrath (1939) earned him widespread fame and the Pulitzer Prize. The story of a family of migrant farmers making the difficult journey from Oklahoma to California during the Great Depression, The Grapes of Wrath was hailed as an instant classic and a landmark of socially conscious American fiction.
Steinbeck’s novels are acclaimed for their combination of realistic naturalism and moral optimism—two qualities not commonly found together. Steinbeck portrayed the pain, poverty, and wickedness of the world with unsparing detail while at the same time maintained a belief in the “perfectibility of man.” This optimism pervades Steinbeck’s fiction, leavening even his gloomiest accounts of the Great Depression with a powerful sense of hope.
The sweeping California epic East of Eden (1952) is considered Steinbeck’s most ambitious work and the masterpiece of his later artistic career.
Great review of him. I agree with the statement "acclaimed for their combination of realistic naturalism and moral optimism—two qualities not commonly found together. Steinbeck portrayed the pain, poverty, and wickedness of the world with unsparing detail while at the same time maintained a belief in the “perfectibility of man.” This optimism pervades Steinbeck’s fiction, leavening even his gloomiest accounts of the Great Depression with a powerful sense of hope."
I know some friends who have read his work and were left feeling depressed but I didn't have that reaction at all. The combination they speak of is exactly what I found and appreciated so much in his work. It wasn't sugar coated but yet somehow there was hope and drive. very gifted to be able to pull both off so well.
I've finally located a copy of East of Eden at my library, so I'm looking forward to reading it with all of you. It has been on my to-read list for ages, so I'm thankful for the motivation to read it.
Tera wrote: "I love this book. Certainly in my top 5 of all time!
However, after I read it I was on such a high from it that I watched the James Dean movie. It SUCKED. I'm not even sure how they got away ..."
I must be honest, I have never seen the whole movie. I am humbled by your review and vow never to watch it in its entirety! It's just that, James Dean was so cute! And tragic. Cute and tragic, a compelling combination. Must....stop...rambling.....
Meg wrote: "Some of us are suckers for cute bad boys, there is nothing wrong with that!"
So true Meg
I just got theEast of Eden mini series from the library. I am courious to see how true it is to the book
SETTING
The book takes place from turn of the 20th century to WWI. PBS is doing a documentary to help Americans understand the great recession. It might be a great tie in to this book to understand fully what has happened in America during this time. If you miss any of the series you can always catch it on hulu.com
To help viewers better understand the Great Recession, PBS' American Experience series is revisiting the Great Depression with a five-part documentary package The 1930s, starting Monday night (9 ET/PT, times may vary). Tonight's The Crash of 1929 premiered in 1990 and was last broadcast after Wall Street's 2008 meltdown; Hoover Dam (Nov. 9) and Surviving the Dust Bowl (Nov. 16) premiered in the late 1990s; race-horse documentary Seabiscuit (Nov. 23) first aired in 2003. But paired with the previously unseen Civilian Conservation Corps (Nov. 2), this is the first time PBS has packaged them as a series.
Sounds like it would offer a wonderful wealth of information Meg. I am looking forward to learning. My grandmother lived during the depression it really impacted her life. I am anxious to learn about what might have influenced her life as a result of living during those times.
I think it might be hard to understand the Great Depression from East of Eden given the time frame. The Depression happened from the bubble(s) that came in the 1920s following The Great War (as the first world war was called). This pre-War time period is interesting, however, because so many new inventions, like cars, telephones and electricity, were becoming more commonplace.
I was thinking about the Great Dust Bowl. You don't think that will give any insight to Steinbeck's America?
I think the Dust Bowl was more in Oklahoma and the mid-west. People (farmers especially) from that area were moving to California because the ground was fertile and things would grow. I'm not sure exactly when the drought, and thus the Dust Bowl, started, but I think it was coincident with the Depression and that, in fact, the Dust Bowl, exacerbated the Depression. (LOL Don't quote me on that, because I'm a bit fuzzy on the connection.)
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East of Eden (other topics)Middlemarch (other topics)
