Day 118: West in Eden

I've been enjoying Steinbeck's East of Eden lately. I have to confess, I've never really read Steinbeck before. But when I moved to New York, Emile and I moved into this apartment in the East Village that a Dutch lesbian recently moved out of, leaving the country in a hurry (visa issues, we're told) and in her rushed departure, she left behind all her furniture - convenient for us - and a few books, including a copy of East of Eden as well as a book about the ghettos in America.



So now, three years later, I'm finally reading the book that was left for me. I also watched the James Dean movie version (hello, James Dean. I get why the ladies were all up on you now. Foxy). What a gorgeous inter-generational story of California, of humanity! The 1955 film version cuts it down to some of the basics, omitting a lot of salacious drama, but also some of the more fascinating characters (Lee, Samuel Hamilton, etc). But I have found something really beautiful in reading this classic story of California's founding and growing years, how people came here for new futures and built themselves out of nothing, struggled, survived, and ultimately thrived in this amazing place. There is something parallel about my own westward journey. Yes, I love New York - I have to, I always will, I miss it. But I love the west, and I love Steinbeck's vision of the historic West.

I also love words. I am incredibly grateful for the ravenously rich English language, and the delight of that language being well handled. So I will share some of my favorite pieces with you, as they've brought me joy.

I love Steinbeck's description of nostalgia (end of chapter 12), which ends with, "Oh, but the strawberries will never taste so good again and the thighs of women have lost their clutch!" (129). How great is that?!

Everything about this exchange is perfect, too, when Adam describes falling in love with Cathy:
"I'll want to hear," Samuel said. "I eat stories like grapes."
"A kind of light spread out from her. And everything changed color. And the world opened out. And a day was good to awaken to. And there were no limits to anything. And the people of the world were good and handsome. And I was not afraid of it anymore" (168).

In the end, though, it's Steinbeck's description of the story of the world that I find most captivating.

A child may ask, "What is the world's story about?" And a grown man or woman may wonder, "What way will the world go? How does it end and, while we're at it, what's the story about?"
I believe that there is one story in the world, and only one, that has frightened and inspired us, so that we live in Pearl White serial of continuing thought and wonder. Humans are caught - in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, in their avarice and cruelty, and in their kindness and generosity too - in a net of good and evil. I think that this is the only story we have and that it occurs on all levels of feeling and intelligence. Virtue and vice were warp and woof of our first consciousness, and they will be the fabric of our last, and this despite any changes we may impose on field and river and mountain, on economy and manners. There is no other story. A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard, clean questions: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well - or ill? (411).

Well, the hard, clean question is: was it good? Have I done well?