East of Eden in Between the Lines

Oct 23, 2008 Chloe rated it really liked it

Shelves: fiction, classics, doorstops, immigrant_song, california

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. This is not a review. These are the crazed ramblings of a man just coming off a serious Steinbeck binge:

Wow. What an amazing book. It's one of those books that I know I'll be referring back to again and again over the coming years. It's the first book in years where I felt compelled to dog-ear the pages of sections that I especially enjoy. My absolute favorite, though, has be from the first section of Chapter 13:

"Sometimes a kind of glory lights up the mind of a man. It happens to nearly everyon This is not a review. These are the crazed ramblings of a man just coming off a serious Steinbeck binge:

Wow. What an amazing book. It's one of those books that I know I'll be referring back to again and again over the coming years. It's the first book in years where I felt compelled to dog-ear the pages of sections that I especially enjoy. My absolute favorite, though, has be from the first section of Chapter 13:

"Sometimes a kind of glory lights up the mind of a man. It happens to nearly everyone. You can feel it growing or preparing like a fuse burning toward dynamite. It is a feeling in the stomach, a delight of the nerves, of the forearms. The skin tastes the air, and every deep-drawn breath is sweet. Its beginning has the pleasure of a great stretching yawn; it flashes in the brain and the whole world glows outside your eyes. A man may have lived all of his life in the gray, and the land and trees of him dark and somber. The events, even the important ones, may have trooped by faceless and pale. And then- the glory- so that a cricket song sweetens his ears, the smell of the earth rises chanting to his nose, and dappling light under a tree blesses his eyes. Then a man pours outward, a torrent of him, and yet he is not diminished. And I guess a man's importance in the world can be measured by the quality and number of his glories. It is a lonely thing but it relates us to the world. It is the mother of all creativeness, and it sets each man separate from all other men.

I don't know how it will be in the years to come. There are monstrous changes taking place in the world, forces shaping a future whose face we do not know. Some of these forces seem evil to us, perhaps not in themselves but because their tendency is to eliminate other things we hold good. It is true that two men can lift a bigger stone than one man. A group can build automobiles quicker and better than one man, and bread from a huge factory is cheaper and more uniform. When our food and clothing and housing all are born in the complication of mass production, mass method is bound to get into our thinking and to eliminate all other thinking. In our time mass or collective production has entered our economics, our politics, and even our religion, so that some nations have substituted the idea collective for the idea God. This in my time is the danger. There is great tension in the world, tension toward a breaking point, and men are unhappy and confused.

At such a time it seems natural and good to me to ask myself these questions. What do I believe in? What must I fight for and what must I fight against?

Our species is the only creative species, and it has only one creative instrument, the individual mind and spirit of a man. Nothing was ever created by two men. There are no good collaborations, whether in music, in art, in poetry, in mathematics, in philosophy. Once the miracle of creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but the group never invents anything. The preciousness lies in the lonely mind of a man.

And now the forces marshaled around the concept of the group have declared a war of extermination on that preciousness, the mind of man. By disparagement, by starvation, by repressions, forced direction, and the stunning hammerblows of conditioning, the free, roving mind is being pursued, roped, blunted, drugged. It is a sad suicidal course our species seems to have taken.

And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about. I can understand why a system built on a pattern must try to destroy the free mind, for that is one thing which can by inspection destroy such a system. Surely I can understand this, and I hate it and I will fight against it to preserve the one thing that separates us from the uncreative beasts. If the glory can be killed, we are lost."

EoE got me thinking about an offshoot of a discussion that we had in the 1001 group about A Clockwork Orange. Over there we were talking about the ability to choose good or evil being key to a healthy morality. In this book I think a similar topic was addressed. Who is the more holy? The person to whom goodness comes naturally and who never really has the capacity for mortal sin? Or is it the person who recognizes within themselves the easy capacity for sin and then must constantly toil to avoid it? Whose constitution is stronger? The one who is never tempted to misdeeds or the one who is always?

****SPOILERS****
Sure, in the end Cal was unable to avoid what seems more and more to be his destiny in killing Aron, but I still think that he is the more worthy of the two brothers. This fratricide may be overcome, as Lee mentioned when he, Samuel Huntington and Adam had the dialogue about Timshel/thou mayest.

I loved this book. It's going to stick with me for a while after reading, I can already tell. ...more

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Nov 09, 2008 Kellie rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2008-reads, classic, fiction-literature, library-wide

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Apr 21, 2009 Marlaina McCauslin rated it really liked it

Shelves: fiction, classics, historical-fiction

this book was one of the best books written by John Steinbeck that I have read since Of Mice and Men. I love the plot line, how it deals with two totally different families and blend them so well with the bible story of Cain and Abel. Its awesome!

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Dec 17, 2008 Peg rated it it was amazing

Another version of Cane and Abel - so well done as only Steinbeck can do. I read this last January in my annual read of books that I should have read already. Sat down and became totally absorbed. I don't know what book I will read this year yet but I'm hoping it will be at least half as good. ...more

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