Why East of Eden Still Ruins People

Añadido: 2026-05-05

[00:00:10]Her voice came from so near that he jerked his head back. He heard richness in her voice.

[00:00:16]>> Dear, >> she said softly.

[00:00:18]>> I didn't know you would take it so. I'm sorry, Adam.

[00:00:21]>> His breath burst hoarsely out of his throat. His hand trembled trying to turn the key. He pushed the door open. She stood three feet away. In her right hand, she held his colt and the black hole in the barrel pointed at him. He took a step toward her, saw that the hammer was back. She shot him. The heavy slug struck him in the shoulder and flattened and tore out a piece of his shoulder blade. The flash and roar smothered him, and he staggered back and fell to the floor. She moved slowly toward him, cautiously as she might toward a wounded animal. He stared up into her eyes which inspected him impersonally.

[00:01:00]She tossed the pistol on the floor beside him and walked out of the house.

[00:01:07]So that is probably the most melodramatic and violent of many melodramatic and violent confrontations in John Steinbeck's novel East of Eden which he published in 1952.

[00:01:18]It's a family saga set in the Selenus Valley of California where Steinbeck grew up but it's much more than that.

[00:01:24]Steinbeck, of course, he's seen as the great champion of the downtrodden in America, of Californian workers, the dust bowl, depression, America, of mice and men and the grapes of Roth. His most famous books, high school standards, aren't they?

[00:01:38]>> Yeah.

[00:01:39]>> But Tabby, this is the book that Steinbeck regarded as his absolute masterpiece, the book by which he thought he'd be judged. Um, and there's a lot going on in East of Eden, isn't there?

[00:01:49]>> It's a very complex, surprisingly dramatic book. I think >> it's a kind of massive retelling of the story of the opening chapters of Genesis in the Bible, particularly the story of Cain and Abel and a little bit of Adam and Eve in there as well. It's a book about uh good and evil, about free will and destiny. How much are we trapped by um heredity or by sort of cycles that repeat down the generations? And above all, I guess from Steinbeck's point of view, he wrote it as a message to his two young sons. And basically what he was telling them was you're not bound by the past. You're not trapped by history.

[00:02:25]You can choose your own fate and be whatever you want and you're not tainted by original sin or anything like that.

[00:02:31]>> I mean that all seems fairly kind of straightforward but it was very controversial at the time. A lot of critics absolutely hated it. And I keep I'm struck by the fact that a lot of the books we've done so far on the book club have been hated by critics upon their publication. So there's something in that. But it's obviously been enduringly popular. So there was this very very famous film in 1955 starring James Dean of only the second part of the book an Eliia Kazan film and then Oprah Winfreyy's book club Oprah's book club >> championed it in 2003 unexpectedly and then that sent it back up to number two on the bestseller list and she described it as maybe the best book she'd ever read.

[00:03:10]>> Wow. No less a critic than Oprah Winfrey.

[00:03:12]>> No less a critic. I know we're following in some lofty footsteps there. But then part of the reason that we were drawn back to it, or I certainly was, was because there's a there's a Netflix adaptation coming out this year starring Florence Pew as Kathy, who we'll be getting on to because she is surely one of the most >> genuinely evil characters in all literature.

[00:03:32]>> Was she just misunderstood, Tabby?

[00:03:34]>> Was she misunderstood? Yeah. So, let's get into the plot a little bit. And be warned, there will be spoilers, but this isn't, I think, a book in which the plot is really the point. Spoilers won't won't ruin okay. Reading it for you. So, obviously, as you said, it's kind of a massive window into America during a period of of flux. So, the novel's set in California's Selenus Valley, and it chronicles the lives of these two interwoven families, the Tras and the Hamiltons between the start of the 20th century and then the end of the First World War. Um, and we start with the kind of the well-intentioned Adam Tras.

[00:04:11]And he leaves his violent brother Charles to settle in this kind of Edenlike valley, the Selenus Valley. And he brings with him his mysterious but blatantly evil wife Kathy. And she before coming to the TRS, she turned up on their doorstep kind of half dead. She had burnt her parents alive, burnt down their house >> when she was a teenager. Proper teenage rebellion.

[00:04:36]>> Exactly. And we'll explain all that later on, but she had worked as a prostitute before becoming a mistress to a horrible pimp.

[00:04:44]>> Yeah.

[00:04:44]>> Anyway, she's pregnant, possibly with Charles's baby, but Adam believes it's his. And after they move, she's not happy in the Selius Valley and she gives birth. She ends up shooting Adam and running away. And that's the opening reading. Anyway, Kathy goes off. She becomes this sadistic brothel owner.

[00:04:59]>> She's running the worst brothel in the town, right? That everyone speaks of in hush tones.

[00:05:03]>> Exactly. Famously sadistic. She kind of It's famed for using the kind of dark toxic desires of of powerful and rich men against them.

[00:05:13]>> Yes.

[00:05:13]>> Anyway, so meanwhile, a kind of brokenhearted Adam raises his two sons who Kathy has given birth to, Caleb and um Aaron, Cal and Aaron, with the help of his Chinese American servant Lee. and their neighbors, the Hamiltons, who I mentioned in the beginning, who that's Samuel Hamilton. He's an Irish immigrant. He's well-loved. And his family of endless children, I can't remember their names, but let's just >> They're all called Tom Dick and Harry.

[00:05:37]>> Tom, Dick, and Harry. Yeah, they might as well be.

[00:05:39]>> I mean, basically, no one, Massive spoiler, no one really cares that much about the Hamiltons. They take up, you know, do you Okay, totally. Well, >> I love the Hamilton passages.

[00:05:49]>> Oh my Oh my god, I was tempted to skip those. I think they bring some much needed jolity to what is otherwise quite a dark but you know ultimately important story. Anyway, so the twins grow up and they kind of grow into >> polar opposites like emblems of good and evil maybe. Aaron is kind of good, kind, virtuous. Cal is kind of more troubled >> and jealous, isn't he?

[00:06:12]>> He's jealous. He's jealous of his father's love. He's afflicted by guilt over the fact that he knows he has a real strain of evil inside him. Aaron becomes a priest. becomes obsessed with being virtuous and then Cal wins back the family fortune which Adam had lost um in an ill-advised refrigerated lettuce business >> that you'll never read a book that has more about refrigeration in it >> and frankly it adds to the story in my opinion but um and they both see this the affection the same girl Abra finally this tragic conflict breaks out between Cal and Aaron because Cal offers his father his you know recently won fortune Um, Adam rejects it and says, "You should be more like Aaron." In a fit of jealousy and kind of revenge, Cal takes Aaron, who he's discovered the true identity of his mother, Kathy, who's been living as this madam all these years, and takes Aaron to meet her and show him, >> shows him the brothel.

[00:07:10]>> Yeah. Shows him the brothel. Shows him like who he's born of, what's inside him. and and Aaron is so appalled and repulsed by this that he enlists in the First World War and he dies during the battle. Kathy is also affected by this encounter. Um Adam's heartbroken. He has a stroke and on his deathbed he forgives Cal and gives his blessing with this very particular ancient Hebrew word. But what it is, what it all means, we'll be revealing after the break. Before that, I know Dominic, you absolutely love this book. So, for a moment or two, I'll indulge your um your your passion for it. Tell me what you thought of East of Eden.

[00:07:47]>> So, uh I had never read this before. I had read Steinbeck, obviously, but not this one. Um put off partly by the s fact that it's quite long. Um and you have been waxing lyrical about it, about what a brilliant book it was. I have to say I was a tiny bit suspicious.

[00:08:04]>> What? Um, I was a bit skeptical because the last massive book that you recommended to me, Phineas Finn by Anthony Trollup, consumed a giant part of my life, and I wasn't even doing the podcast then. I was reading that for pleasure.

[00:08:15]>> This is basically what I do. I I I seek to entrap you in long, tedious novels to sort of slowly rob you of the desire to live.

[00:08:23]>> I know you love it, so I don't want to rain on your parade. What do you love about it so much? Cuz you've always, you read this a long time ago, did you?

[00:08:30]>> I actually read it for the first time two years ago. So, not ages. And like right right from the beginning, I was >> pretty captivated by I thought and I hate it slightly pains me to use this word because it's a bit vague and it's a bit sort of obvious, but I I genuinely found it to be powerful, but not just powerful, also enjoyable. It felt as though it kind of encompassed everything that that matters and is best and worse about being human. I love the way that Steinbeck writes. I have a real weakness for books like this. Quite masculine pros. set in the, you know, West or Midwest America. And I love the way that even though it's just kind of plain masculine voice, he manages to have very ornate and delicate descriptions interwoven throughout. I loved his descriptions of the land, Selena's Valley. I thought the characters were vivid. Yeah. The biblical stuff's a bit blatant, but it doesn't really bother me. Like all stories are derivative of other stories, and the Bible is surely >> the biggest of all. Yeah.

[00:09:26]>> The source of some of the greatest stories of all time. So, I I absolutely loved it and and I did this time as well. Well, let's kick off by talking about Steinbeck himself. So, so Steinbeck's a really interesting character. He's born in the Selenus Valley in California in 1902.

[00:09:41]>> Yeah. This is almost autobiographical, isn't it?

[00:09:44]>> There's a lot of his family history and there's a lot of kind of therapy, I would say, in the in the writing of this book.

[00:09:50]>> Yeah.

[00:09:50]>> So, he grew up in this sort of frontier valley. It's about 25 miles in land from the Pacific. his father called John Ernst Steinbeck and he was a local government official and his mother Olive was a teacher and she appears in the book doesn't she?

[00:10:02]>> She does. Yeah. Olive Hamilton.

[00:10:04]>> I mean actually I'm quite cuz I'm quite slow. It took me quite a long time to work out that this was Steinbeck's own family, the Hamiltons. 300 pages in or something and and then I started to realize the narrator was John Steinbeck.

[00:10:16]And actually we'll talk about this a bit later about whether Steinbeck is effective in his use of the narrative voice. Anyway, >> m >> so as a teenager he worked on on farms and ranches and he was struck at the time by the terrible conditions of the migrant workers which is something that obviously he was to write about in the 1930s. In the 1920s he studied English at Stanford. He would travel to New York and tried to become a writer and failed.

[00:10:40]He came home back to California.

[00:10:42]Bizarrely he tried to make a name for himself as a manufacturer of plaster mannequins. Then he ended up sponging off his parents for a bit and he went back to writing. Then he had a real breakthrough in 1935 with a book called Tortilla Flat which is about a group of mates who are home in Montterrey in California from the first world war and they're kind of getting up to japes with girls and drinking and stuff like that.

[00:11:04]Then two years after that of mice and men a nolla and then the great sroth 1939 that makes him a massive name. So it was the bestselling book of 1939 it won the pulit surprise. There was a film made by John Ford starring Henry Fonder and then there was a massive backlash against it because the great of Roth is really about the plight of the oakis the people who have moved west during the great depression to flee the dust bowl and people on the right conservatives business owners and stuff but also lots of people in California were outraged by it and tried to ban it. So, you know, at the end of the 1930s, Steinbeck is simultaneously very successful. He's very wellknown. He is a kind of touchstone for it's kind of New Deal, depression, America, kind of very polarized between left and right.

[00:11:48]>> But at the same time, he's very controversial. He's getting an awful lot of flack, not least in his native California.

[00:11:54]>> Yeah. And this all had quite a big impact on his personal life, which was getting very, very messy um by this point. So he'd been married to a woman called Carol Henning in 1930, but by the end of the 1930s, their marriage was really fraying, like in part because of all the pressure the from the backlash to Grapes of Roth. So then he starts an affair with a 19-year-old singer called Gwyn >> Conger.

[00:12:17]>> This is just horribly, it's a horribly toxic back and forth. You know, the two women are fighting for Steinbeck. They both claim to be pregnant. Carol is lying. Gwyn then has an abortion.

[00:12:29]Finally, Steinbeck ends up divorcing his first wife, Carol. He pays her $100,000, which is a it's a massive sum of money at this point, and he marries Gwyn. And by this point, he's 41 and she's 23. So, it's a significant age gap. And he was always afflicted after all this by by massive guilt and actually self-loathing. And you can see this in East of Eden. You can see it in characters like Carl to some extent maybe Adam and the themes of of the novel you know love turning to hatred women who lie and and and manipulate men you know people who love and are therefore betrayed by that love it's a huge um factor in the book and you can see why therefore it is as you said kind of therapeutic his writing it.

[00:13:13]>> Yeah. So amidst all this he goes off to Europe as a war correspondent um for the New York Herald Tribune when America joined the war. uh but he was never really the same afterwards. So he was hit by shrapnel in the head during the allied landings at Salerno in Italy and he almost lost his hearing and then he came home basically scarred by the war.

[00:13:32]He was drinking a heck of a lot. I mean this he's absolutely one of those midcentury American writers like F.

[00:13:38]Scott Fitzgerald who we talked about in our Great Gatsby episode or Ernest Hemingway another of your favorites.

[00:13:43]These people who basically the first thing they do when they get up in the morning is drink a bottle of whiskey or something. Steinbeck is cut from that cloth. Hemingway's great kind of maxim was right drunk edit sober. So, >> right. Yeah, there's a bit of that with Steinbeck. I think he he suspects his wife Gwyn of being unfaithful while he's been away. He's a very troubled and unhappy man. They have two sons in the 1940s called Thomas and and and John John Steinbeck IV, >> which is just mental. Why do Americans do that? No offense to our American listeners. Yeah, American listeners, if they exist, please direct your complaints to Tabby and not to me on this issue.

[00:14:20]>> Sorry.

[00:14:20]>> Um, he's a terrible father. I mean, the irony is that East of Eden is in part a book about fathers and sons >> and also dedicated to his sons, >> right? And the mad thing is, you know, he went to all the the stress of writing a a book for his sons, dedicating it to them. And yet he was he by all accounts I mean just to give you a couple of examples when John IV was three years old there was an accident with a dog when he let this dog into the apartment and the dog relieved itself on the floor and um Steinbeck discovered this and he rubbed his son's face in the dog mess on the floor.

[00:14:55]>> It's so sad to discover this >> to teach him a lesson or this this I think is badly I think this is worse.

[00:15:01]When he was tiny, Steinbeck would encourage him to jump from his high chair into his arms and he'd do it again and again and the boy was always laughing and he trusted his dad and stuff. And then one day, you know, Steinbeck was doing this so he could teach his son a lesson. People will betray you. You know, you can't rely on anybody. And one day he basically pulled his hands back at the last minute so his son fell on the floor with a huge bump.

[00:15:23]And as John IV said later, the great epiphany of my childhood was realizing that my father was an [ __ ] >> But you know, this is actually massively reflected in East of Eden itself because there's this little passage about how that moment when children realize that their parents are flawed and fallible and how it how it shatters you. I just think it's it's very poignant when a child first catches adults out when it first walks into his grave little head.

[00:15:48]That adults do not have divine intelligence. That their judgments are not always wise. They're thinking true.

[00:15:53]Their sentence is just. His world falls into panic desolation.

[00:15:57]The gods are fallen and all safety gone.

[00:15:59]And there is one sure thing about the fall of gods. They do not fall a little.

[00:16:03]They crash and shatter or sink deeply into green muck. And the child's world is never quite whole again.

[00:16:09]I mean, it's so interesting that he can understand these concepts and he can see that he, >> you know, it's his fault and that he's done wrong, but he can't change his behavior. I think that's often the case with serially guilty people.

[00:16:23]>> Yeah, I think that's probably true. Um, by the end of the 1940s, you know, his life really is in a mess because his marriage is disintegrating to Gwyn. He's now drinking very heavily. They've fallen out because he wants to move to the countryside out of New York and she doesn't. And amid all this he decides he wants to write a history of his family.

[00:16:43]And you can see that I think there's an element of nostalgia, nostalgic escapism in this almost. His own family life is a terrible mess. He's basically be you know extremely distant at at best if violent at worst to his own sons. His wife Gwyn ends up asking him for a divorce. So you can see why he would want to look backwards, I guess, and to this sort of idealized um paradise of his own boyhood or and to sort of want to tease out lessons from that that he can pass on to his own sons. But he doesn't write anything until in 1949 he meets his third wife who's called Elaine Scotch. She works in theater.

[00:17:24]They meet at a party and she is your classic, you know, mid-century male American writer's long-suffering wife.

[00:17:32]So she basically says, "I will take care of the house. I'll take care of the the paperwork. I'll do all the the accounts.

[00:17:38]I'll do everything. I'll organize the cleaner and the man who sweeps up the leaves. You are free to write and so crack on."

[00:17:46]>> So in 1951 he starts on um East of Eden and he writes to his editor who's called Pascal Kovichi and he says basically, you know, this is it now. Um that I'm I either write the book or I do not. There can be no excuses. The writing will be spare and lean. The concepts hard. The philosophy old and yet newborn. It may destroy everything for me, but it has to be done.

[00:18:10]>> The way that he wrote this is just mental. It's it's extraordinary actually. And we know this because there's a really nice essay online about it by a guy called David Chrysinger who um of Chicago University. He writes the whole thing in pencil in a notebook. He writes the story on the right hand pages. on the on the left hand pages he writes a series of letter to his editor Pascal Kavichi and every day he kind of gets into the writing by writing a letter to Pascal and it's kind of like brainstorming it's basically more therapy his thoughts about the book his anxieties his ideas for characters even just news about himself and his home life and then he leaps across and continues the story on the right hand page but it it's quite a slow starter for about two weeks progress isn't He's not getting very far with it. And then on the 14th of February, he goes to visit his sons and he's shocked because they're very, very distant with him.

[00:19:05]They're very cold with him. I mean, understandably chucking them out of high chairs and rubbing their face in dog poo anyway. And but he's still very very upset by this and as I say, shocked. And then that night, >> he just pours himself into writing and becomes totally absorbed by it for the rest of the year. He writes the whole book over the next 276 days. There's a massive, massive intensity to it. And he says again and again that it has to be this masterpiece. Puts himself under such pressure.

[00:19:36]>> And he even stops drinking during the week, which for him he's a heavy heavy drinker. Yeah. Where does this intensity come from? You know, why does it have to be kind of so powerful to him? And I think it's because it's this central redemptive idea that comes to him and just animates the entire book and it's a secret wrapped up in the translation of a single Hebrew word which I mentioned when I was kind of explaining the the plot from the book of Genesis. And this for him holds the key to the entire story. And we'll be unlocking that mystery in the second half.

[00:20:11]>> So he finishes the book in November 1951. and he tells his friends it's his masterpiece, the longest and surely the most difficult work I've ever done. He says to his sister Mary and to a Swedish artist friend these very um celebrated lines. He writes, I've put all the things I've wanted to write all my life.

[00:20:27]This is the book. If it's not good, I have fooled myself all the time. Always.

[00:20:32]I had this book waiting to be written.

[00:20:35]and then he spends four months cutting it, which is hard to believe when you discover that the edition that I bought, Tabby told me this was quite a short book and very readable. Um, it's 714 pages long, quite small print, the edition I have. So, it's almost as long as one of my own books. So, he cut it down and then in September 1952, Viking released the book and they basically went to town on that. They said, "This is going to be a major event. He's a, you know, one of America's best known writers and this is the Magnum Opus."

[00:21:04]But nevertheless, the reception is pretty mixed. So it does reach I mean it's popular with kind of the reading public at large. It reaches number one on the New York Times fiction bestseller list in November 1952 and it holds it for 5 weeks. But a lot of critics say that it's far too moralistic. It's too clunky. The good versus evil is, you know, simplistic and a bit sensationalized. The New York Times said that it was clumsy in structure and defaced by excessive melodramatics and much cheap sensationalism. And then the Christian Science Monitor, Steinbeck's obsession with naked animality, brute violence, and the dark wickedness of the human mind remains so overriding that what there is of beauty and understanding is subordinated and almost extinguished. So pretty harsh. Yeah.

[00:21:49]>> But he did win the Nobel Prize 10 years later.

[00:21:52]>> So there's hope for you.

[00:21:53]>> Yeah, exactly. Although then the New York Times kicked him again and said, "Why have the Nobel Committee given an award to a writer whose limited talent is in his best books watered down by 10th rate philosophizing?"

[00:22:04]>> Oo, savage.

[00:22:06]>> Yeah. I mean, you don't want to be reading those reviews. So whether we agree, you know, there are two schools of thought clearly.

[00:22:12]>> Yeah.

[00:22:12]>> There is Oprah Winfrey who speaks for the general public who loved the book, who said, "Come on, don't sneer at this book." Um, and then there are the the the stuffy stuck up highbrow critics, heartless academics.

[00:22:25]>> Yeah. Whether Tabri and I identify with Oprah Winfrey >> or with these sneering ac Yeah. academic critics we shall discover at the end of the episode.

[00:22:34]>> Before we do that, let's get into the into the book itself. And to do that, uh, we need to explain a massive central part of it, which is the biblical story of Cain and Abel. And this is taken from Gen Genesis 4:es 1-16. But God, interestingly, is carefully excluded from the plot. God doesn't really have a part to play in any of it. Even the title east of Eden was taken from Genesis 4:16.

[00:22:58]>> Right? So Cain and Abel basically the two sons of Adam and Eve.

[00:23:02]>> Cain is a farmer. Abel is a shepherd and they both bring presence to their father and Cain's is rejected. Abel's is accepted.

[00:23:10]>> And so Cain is full of bitterness, >> full of anger and bitterness. He's also marked. He has the the mark of Cain on him. It's like a a darkness. It's a sign of God's disfavor basically.

[00:23:19]>> Exactly. Yeah. He ends up being branded as a killer because he's murdered his brother and then he's exiled to the land of Nod on the east of Eden. So Steinbeck basically thought this was the only story in all literature, didn't he?

[00:23:30]>> He thought it was the first story, the major story because it's the ultimate confrontation of good and evil from which all stories derive.

[00:23:38]>> Yeah. All novels, all poetry built on this never-ending contest, he said. And that basically his idea was that this story that this taint of sin repeats through the generations and there's no escape from it or is there we shall discover.

[00:23:53]>> It's kind of original sin, isn't it?

[00:23:55]That all humans are blighted from the moment of birth because Adam and Eve rebelled.

[00:23:59]>> Exactly. And the idea of east of Eden, I mean this is the Selenus Valley and basically some of these characters are trying to create their own Eden in the valley, you know, a paradise. They're trying to start again. So many people did when they moved to America, but they end up just repeating the cycle of betrayal, which is Eve betraying Adam, you know, by messing around with the the snake and the apple and whatnot >> in the Garden of Eden. All that.

[00:24:24]Exactly. And then uh Cain murdering Abel. And these patterns reproduce themselves through down the generations.

[00:24:31]And there's no matter what you do, >> you know, the implication is that you are trapped by them. I guess the Selenus Valley I mean the Selenus Valley itself is a big character in this right the landscape is a character in the story.

[00:24:42]>> It totally is and you can see how important it is to the book and to Steinbach in the alternative titles that he considered before naming east of Eden. It was going to be called the Selenus Valley or down to the valley. I think that was a near miss.

[00:24:56]>> Down to the valley. Yeah. No good.

[00:24:57]>> Or alternatively recognizing the importance of this biblical element it was going to be called cane sign. and he wrote to his editor, I want to describe the Selen's Valley in detail, but in sparse detail, so that there can be a real feeling of it. It should be sights and sounds, smells and colors, but put down with simplicity as though the boys can read the book. That's his son. So, his his intention was to give kind of an impression of the valley, a sense of it.

[00:25:23]And I I think he does that extremely well.

[00:25:26]>> Yeah.

[00:25:26]>> The whole opening mini chapter of the book is a description of the Selenius Valley. And I think that's beautiful.

[00:25:32]But it's also it's like a microcosm of good and evil, a microcosm of of the world, of maybe the nation of America.

[00:25:40]And that's why this opening section, it's full of kind of dualism. Like there's light and dark, mountains, valleys, rain, dry, and this kind of mirrors like the good and the evil in human nature and and I guess in Steinbeck's view throughout the course of American history, it's full of light and dark.

[00:25:56]>> Yeah. when that point about American history. So basically the book covers the time period from 1862 I think to the end of the first world war. So this is the moment when America comes of age as a capitalist power. It's the conquering of the frontier, the decline of the American kind of rural dream which is being eclipsed by kind of industrial modernity. So you have the two families, the Hamiltons and the Tras. The Hamiltons have arrived as immigrants and they're working on the land. And Samuel Hamilton um he's a classic immigrant and he wants to be a farmer but his sons all end up as sort of urban professionals kind of working in advertising or whatever or teachers >> almost in reaction to him and I think that's quite true to life isn't it?

[00:26:32]>> Yeah of course >> and they kind of resent his outsider status so they become kind of apex Americans.

[00:26:37]>> Yes. Exactly. I mean that's exactly what happened to so many first, second, third generation immigrants in this period.

[00:26:43]And then you have Adam Tras. I mean, he's the central character of the book and he's the kind of personification of American history in this period. So, he's the son of an east coast farmer who served in the Civil War. He goes into the American army himself, the US Army, and he fights against Native Americans.

[00:26:57]He basically, you know, cleans them from the landscape, >> but he's a pacifist. He he he refuses to commit violence or to take human life, but he's very brave.

[00:27:07]>> He is. Exactly. I'm being too harsh on him, Tabby. I know.

[00:27:10]>> He moves west. He tries to establish himself as a farmer, but that doesn't really work out. So, he ends up in the city eventually on a town eventually. Uh he does things like he buys a Model T Ford. He dabbles in refrigeration as we've already mentioned. And then his son goes off to the First World War. So, basically all American history is condensed and embodied in this one character and in the life of his family.

[00:27:31]So, that's the that's the sweep of American history. One other thing we should talk about uh before we get into the characters, the style of narration.

[00:27:39]So, I mentioned already I didn't realize the Hamiltons were Steinbeck's own family for some considerable time. I thought they were the narrator's family and I didn't think Steinbeck and the narrator were the same person. And actually, the reason he did that, I think, is because he thought he would write the book as a family history. And then he wrote it very quickly. And I think he still had that idea of it being his family history and he hadn't quite rid himself of that. And so at times, particularly at the beginning, he says, "I don't really remember what what happened. I'm relying on old photographs. I'm relying on kind of family anecdotes and things." So he grounds the narrative in real history.

[00:28:19]And it's almost as though he's pretending to be a historian, but then I think he forgets about that for whole chapters and then the narrator almost disappears and then comes back in whenever he remembers. And I find that a bit patchy and unsustained. And I know that some of the early critics did as well, but Tabby, I know you like this.

[00:28:36]You think it's very well done.

[00:28:38]>> I do like it. I think it's intentional.

[00:28:40]Like someone was putting as much energy and intensity into writing this book. It wasn't just going to start, you know, forgetting >> what he was doing. But I like it because it's it feels loose and free and unrestrained. And as we'll see, freedom and the ability to choose is a big part of this book. It it kind of it melds history and mythology together, which the book does throughout, you know, as you say, it's it's a window into genuine American history, but then it's also, you know, a retelling of the Bible. It moves you from these kind of very intimate reflections or observations about someone to kind of these the big the philosophy at the heart of it and this idea that it kind of encapsulates the heart of a nation over overall. I think it's very very effective. But so let's get on to the major characters >> in the book then. So we've we've spoken a little bit about Samuel Hamilton has a big family. He's an immigrant. Uh he's kind of people are very suspicious of him originally when he comes to the valley and then they grow to love him.

[00:29:41]>> The classic immigrant story, right? He's an Irish immigrant.

[00:29:44]>> Exactly.

[00:29:45]um he you know has this large very boisterous family >> but he never he's he's he's brilliant at inventing things and you know he's pretty ingenious but he never ever manages to make any money and I like that kind of detail of him and so he's always poor but he's always kind of free in himself he has kind of great faith in himself >> so if I was being skeptical I'd say two things I'd say first of all >> everybody skeptical you are being skeptical >> all right fine then um the Hamilton's the stuff with the Hamilton Hamilton's I think a lot of critics at the time in the ' 50s said is redundant because basically everybody who reads East of Eden is really only interested in one of these two families which are the Tras which are the family that the Cain and Able thing >> recurs in and the the good versus evil struggle and the Hamiltons are a kind of slightly stolid counterpoint to that. We we joked at the beginning they're all called Tom Dick and Harry and no one can remember which one is which. And Samuel Hamilton, I would say, you know, he to me he feels a bit of a stereotype that basically the the stoical, wise, hardworking Irish immigrant who, you know, he's unlucky. Um, but he's warmhearted. Things haven't really worked out for him, but he's a great patriarch and he loves his family and all of this kind of thing. For me, he and his family do not feel terribly alive as characters.

[00:31:05]>> I think they do. that each each child has a very different character and each child kind of goes on to you know symbolize something different about that kind of American dream and and also Samuel Hamilton he has a real quirkiness to him which makes him more than kind of just conventional and a bit of a stereotype but then let's get on to the tras as you mentioned they're they're massively the heart of it >> you would agree though Tabby the trs are the are much more interesting than the Hamiltons wouldn't you >> yeah I would I would partly because they're much worse people than the Hamiltons >> of Of course, that's the point.

[00:31:37]>> Isn't it the case in a way then that that makes the Hamiltons kind of more realistic? That their flaws and their weaknesses are not evil. They're just like human foibless. Whereas the Tras are firmly divided into good and evil because they are essentially the second um Cain and Abel.

[00:31:53]>> So you have the first Cain and Abel in the Bible, then you have the Tras, and you have and they're called Charles and Adam. So the C and the A and these there's a massive element of nominative determinism in this book.

[00:32:04]>> Completely is. Yeah.

[00:32:05]And so Cyrus Tras, their father, he's from Connecticut. He's a fake war hero.

[00:32:10]I find him really, really funny because he reminds me of someone that was like briefly in the territorial army or something and then makes their identity having been in the army. So I find that quite amusing.

[00:32:19]>> Exactly. He ends up becoming basically a mate of Abraham Lincoln or something.

[00:32:23]>> Yeah. Well, he claims to have been a big mate of Abraham Malinka and it basically says that all kind of military tactical discussion that goes on is all thanks to him. He uses up his wives though. He has a first wife. This is Adam's mother. She dies. And then a second wife. This is Charles's mother. She dies. And he loves Adam more. Yet he also says of him that he's a weakling who will never amount to a dog turd.

[00:32:48]>> That's a harsh.

[00:32:48]>> Yeah. At least he doesn't rub his face in dog turds.

[00:32:51]>> He doesn't. But he actually says it to him out of this is more some of the poor parenting that that recurs.

[00:32:57]>> Adam. Yeah. Look, he's guilty of constantly letting things happen to him.

[00:33:01]He's not exactly a proactive character.

[00:33:03]He's a massive drifter, but his his blindness and his naivity, it's kind of just a form of radical optimism. He's without malice and well, he's not the most charismatic character. He's a good man. And in a sense, >> I think Steinberg writes him weak because he puts the possibility on the table for readers that goodness in life gets you nowhere.

[00:33:23]>> Yeah.

[00:33:23]>> And ultimately that isn't the case in this book. But he's also the perfect contrast to um his brother Charles who is violent, fairly psychopathic. He's cruel. He almost beats Adam to death as a child. You know, again, echoing Kane and Abel story. Um and but he's not, I think, an entirely one-dimensional villain either because he writes these letters to Adam that are kind of full of of guilt and and and missing like childish missing of his brother. M >> and there's this line for instance that says as with many people Charles who could not talk wrote with fullness he set down his loneliness and his perplexities and I love that because I think there are people in life that you can recognize that in >> Yeah. So you've got these two characters there Kane and Abel effectively and then big twist in the book um Steinbeck introduces the character who really comes to define the book more than any other the character that I think most readers you know that lives in readers minds. Yeah. And this is this woman, young woman called Kathy Amos. Uh she is by far the most memorable character in the book. She could be a psychopath, um a devil in human form. She could be a scathing portrait of Steinbeck's ex-wife, or she could just be a misunderstood, hardworking woman trying to make her way in the world with what assets she has. And we will find out which one of those we think she is after the break.

[00:34:55]Welcome back to the book club, everybody. Now, we love a strong female character on this show, don't we? Uh, Tabby, >> you're wearing your feminist dad t-shirt.

[00:35:02]>> Feminist dad.

[00:35:06]This is So, Kathy, just to be clear. So, Kathy, this person we've talked about, she's psychopathic, she's evil, she's slender, she's blondhaired, she has these um sort of blank staring eyes. I'm looking at her right now, frankly.

[00:35:19]>> Yeah. Yeah. So, I I actually think Kathy, well, maybe it's because I I see myself in her. I don't, by the way, she's awful. I remember when I first read this and coming to the bits about Kathy and meeting Kathy and being like, and it may seem obvious, but nevertheless, it's effective. I was totally chilled by her. So, who is she?

[00:35:35]She is described of having as having been born different, a monster from birth with a malformed soul. And Steinbeck kind of uses the idea of being born with physical defects, but rather than it being on the outside, it's on the inside. There's something wrong with her inside. So there's this wonderful quote and it's I believe there are monsters born in the world to human parents. Some you can see misshapen and horrible with huge heads or tiny bodies.

[00:35:57]And just as there are physical monsters, can there not be mental or psychic monsters born? The face and body may be perfect, but if a twisted gene or a malformed egg can produce physical monsters, may not the same process produce a malformed soul. She's born and raised in a small town in Massachusetts.

[00:36:14]And the kind of cosmic evil that is manifested in her, it comes out right from the first when she's a little girl.

[00:36:22]You know, she's the devil incarnate.

[00:36:23]>> She ent traps a teacher, doesn't she?

[00:36:25]>> There's a real element of the kind of horror story in this, you know, the pretty little girl with a terrifying cold smile who who's got the devil inside her. She manipulates, she harms, she destroys those around her. She frames young boys of her age for sexual assault. She drives a school teacher to commit suicide. She smiles when she hears that one of her school fellows has died. And there are other kind of unnerving details that give her away.

[00:36:49]Like her room is always spotless and never betrays the fact that it's lived in by a little girl. There other children are kind of fascinated by her, but then they look at her with like they look away as if what they've seen is a bit like there's something disturbing there. Most importantly, in fact, about her characterization, she has these chilling, sharp, small white teeth that are con constantly referenced when she smiles. She doesn't drink because she's afraid that it will expose her darkness.

[00:37:14]>> That's a very bad sign. And >> that's a terrible sign. Yeah. And at one point it does. There's this moment when her the pimp that she is the mistress to uh persuades her to drink some champagne and she goes utterly mental. All the wickedness comes up to the surface and like she tells him that he's a big fat slug, that she knows his mind.

[00:37:32]>> Yeah. Brutal. That she can use whatever he feels all of his weaknesses and desires against him. And she does this throughout her life. She spots and recognizes the weakness in people, particularly men, >> when it's sexual, and she uses that against them because she feels no desire. She has, you know, emotionless hazel eyes. She has a childlike figure, and she never develops a woman's figure and like a scary little rose bud mouth.

[00:38:00]And um then over the course of the novel as she gets older, it's like the evil inside her starts to show on the outside because she becomes kind of twisted and crippled, contorted by arthritis. She's just she's a formidably wicked character and I think she's a joy to read.

[00:38:16]>> So at first the only person who really sees through her is um another so-called evil character. So the cane figure in the first half of the book which is Charles, Adam's brother. And Charles says to Adam, basically she's been beaten up by the pimp because that she accused him of being a fat slug. He beats her up. Uh she arrives on their doorstep. She's been beaten within an inch of her life. And they take her in.

[00:38:38]Adam develops this huge fondness for her. Charles says to him, "Please, Adam, throw her out. She will tear you to pieces. She will destroy you, Adam." But Adam can't see it. As we'll as we'll discuss, being able to see clearly and blindness is one of the themes of the book. Can you see the the the complexity of human nature? Or are you doomed to only see the good or only see the evil in people and not to see the sort of um the battle within every soul?

[00:39:06]>> And love is blinding. Love makes you less able to see than ever.

[00:39:10]>> So Adam is blinded by his love. He thinks she's absolutely wonderful. All he sees is the golden hair. And so he ends up marrying her. Although Charles actually ends up sleeping with her and is possibly the father of her twins is never really spelled out. Now, here's the thing. People who have not read the book and who've listened to our description may well say, "I think that what we're describing is not necessarily a real person, but a pantoime villain, a bit of a caricature." So, when Steinbeck says, "Some people are monsters, she's just evil."

[00:39:44]I kind of think in a more sophisticated book, the characters would be more rounded than that. You wouldn't just say, "Here's a Denzian villain and who ends up, you know, she corrupts men." Uh you might you might well say this is actually quite a misogynist kind of take on a female character that the big female character of the book is just using her beauty and her sexuality to bewitch men and then to betray them and to you know kill them or to steal all their stuff or whatever she does. I mean she she is a murderous >> I I actually totally disagree because first of all in the real world there are psychopaths you know they don't feel as other people feel and there are murderouses like these people exist they don't exist just in books. Also, I think she is far more than a Denzian villain because first of all, there's no chaos to her. She is patient. She's observant.

[00:40:33]She's socially intelligent. She's also fascinating because she, the character, is kind of skeptical of human goodness.

[00:40:41]Like, she embodies that. She is an experiment in in finding the darkness and the weakness in the heart of every person and manipulating that. And there's a power in that which challenges the book's otherwise fairly simplistic moral thesis. and it prevents it from becoming just a book about simple moral optimism. But also the other thing that makes her far more interesting is that when her son Aaron comes to see her, she is appalled by how appalled he is to find her as his mother. She's not necessarily guilty, but she is appalled and horrified by his horror of her. It actually frightens her. And that's another thing. She has vulnerabilities that make her three-dimensional. She experiences fear. She loses control.

[00:41:22]She's forced to confront growing older and like losing the facade that allowed her to be manipulative. And so she she realizes there there are limits to what she can achieve. She's kind of nevertheless admirably kind of irreducible. And she doesn't have this thing that a lot of pantomime villains have, which is kind of an unrealistic goal. There's no moral flimsy moral justification to her. She's just kind of an animal as I think some psychopaths are. Her desires are anim animalistic.

[00:41:50]It's money. It's comfort. It's, you know, basic things like that. And in terms of like Steinbeck's women are often quite sexist, like they're they're often defined by what they do in society. So they're either kind of prostitutes or wives and mothers.

[00:42:03]>> Yeah. And literally either a mother or a [ __ ] I mean, to use the old kind of cliche. I mean, that's what she she rejects one and embraces the other.

[00:42:12]>> But but I think that's still a little bit dismissive.

[00:42:15]I I agree. his women are kind of defined in terms of their potential or otherwise for sexuality and motherhood. Like Liza Hamilton is your ultimate like domestic mother. She's virtuous. She's strict.

[00:42:26]Kathy is pretty attractive. She's a temptress. She's depraved. But I would say that the mothers and prostitutes themselves, while they may be those things, they're far from one-dimensional and they have kind of iron wills. And there's actually this line, I believe a strong woman may be stronger than a man, particularly if she happens to have love in her heart. I guess a loving woman is indestructible. And it's almost like through Kathy, Steinbeck acknowledges that women do often fall into these two categories because Kathy sees the way that women that women are defined by men and she uses it against them. You know, she knows that Adam sees her as like a perfect motherly, beautiful, kind woman.

[00:43:02]You know, the other men who see her as a [ __ ] and a prostitute, she uses that against them and she takes their money.

[00:43:07]You know, she she charts her own course throughout.

[00:43:11]So in a way she's a critique of st standard notions of of femininity.

[00:43:16]>> Okay, fair enough. I take the I take that point. But the so the key moment the the sort of pivotal moment we started with it. She basically exposes her true nature to Adam. She's had these two boys. She doesn't want to really be their mother. She doesn't want to be his wife. She she says to him, "I'm going."

[00:43:32]He tries to stop her. She shoots him.

[00:43:34]That's what we began with. And then she walks out. He then brings up the two boys, the Cain and Abel, Cal and Aaron on on his own. And the question that hangs over the second half, are they ever going to find out the truth about her? And I guess, is the Kane and Abel pattern going to recur with these two boys as well? Which brings us to the two boys, Cal and Aaron?

[00:43:55]>> Horrid Henry and Perfect Peter. That's what I kept thinking of.

[00:43:58]>> Yeah, completely. What Steinbeck does is he he makes it absolutely obvious to you. I mean, nobody could ever accuse him of excessive subtlety.

[00:44:07]>> Even with the even with the names, this bloke is going to be Kane. This bloke is going to be Abel. The bloke who is Kane has got dark hair. The bloke who is able is blonde and very good-looking and all this kind of thing.

[00:44:18]>> All the canes have got some sort of scar or disfigurement.

[00:44:22]>> So, do you think that these two characters are a bit onedimensional?

[00:44:26]Surely you do.

[00:44:27]>> I I do think I have to say I think Aaron is massively on one-dimensional. He's a bit tiresome, bit of a charact caricature. He's blonde, he's beautiful.

[00:44:36]He becomes obsessed with passionate purity. I actually when I came to reread it this time, I could barely remember anything about him because there's nothing very memorable about him. But there's a bit more to Cal, his twin brother.

[00:44:47]>> Yeah, actually you're right about that.

[00:44:48]Cal is much more >> probably the most complex character in the book really because he knows that there is darkness and evil in him and he spends all the whole course of the book trying to fight it and struggle with it.

[00:45:00]>> He's tormented by his own self-nowledge, isn't he? Because Cal is aware of the this thing about can you see yourself and other people clearly. Cal really can. He can see that there is darkness in his soul and it really troubles him.

[00:45:12]He can be very manipulative and very cruel. And yet at the same time, we're told he longs for his brother to love him >> and his father >> and his father Adam. And unusually in the book, one of very few such moments, he prays to God to help him overcome the evil in his soul. Dear Lord, let me be like Aaron. Don't make me mean. I don't want to be.

[00:45:32]>> If you will make everybody like me, why?

[00:45:34]I'll give you anything out in the world.

[00:45:35]And if I haven't got it, I'll go and get it. I don't want to be mean. I don't want to be lonely for Jesus's sake.

[00:45:40]Amen. It's quite a moving moment actually.

[00:45:42]>> It's really moving.

[00:45:42]>> Um, and it's one of the few moments I would say in the book where somebody sees themselves clearly and they wrestle with their nature. Cuz Kathy never wrestles with her own nature. She accepts it. She just basically says, "I'm an evil person. I'm going to be evil."

[00:45:54]>> She uses it.

[00:45:55]>> Yes. Um, and the other person I guess that they live with which we should talk about is this guy called Lee. So Lee is he's the sort of servant of um, Adam.

[00:46:05]He's a perhaps a slightly dodgy character.

[00:46:07]>> Yeah. So he is Chinese American. He speaks in this kind of pigeon English which we discover is put on because he's playing a part that people want him to play.

[00:46:20]>> It's what Americans expect him to be.

[00:46:23]>> Yes. And then once he's sort of unmasked, actually you can speak very good English. What are you doing speaking this pigeon English? He then assumes uh his natural guise which is of a a a sort of stereotypical mystical man of the east who dispenses Chinese wisdom at regular moments during the book and you know I don't know some pe readers may find that powerful and moving. I found Lee's Chinese wisdom a little bit annoying to be honest with you. It's a bit like a succession of fortune cookies. I found it quite powerful because he's like he's the only ballast in these boys' lives and I like the conversations that he has with their girlfriend Abra Abra >> I don't know is it Abra >> but I did yeah I agree I got a little bit sick of his sections after a while like that vast portions of the book are given into just given over to just conversations between him and Adam >> but they're sort of philosophizing >> yeah philosophizing >> it's as though Steinbeck has slightly included the literary criticism about the book in the book I think Yeah.

[00:47:22]>> So, this narrative will stop and people will then characters will have a conversation and they'll sort of say, "Well, what does this story all that's what Lee is there for, right?"

[00:47:31]>> But you have other books where that happens. I mean, that happens in 1984, doesn't it?

[00:47:35]>> When they're reading from the Goldstein's manifesto a little bit, but I feel it's a massive I'm giving myself away here, but I think Orwell is a much better writer than John Steinbeck.

[00:47:44]Anyway, >> wow.

[00:47:45]>> I mean, let's talk about actually what the book does mean. So Steinbeck wrote it um for his sons. This is a huge element of the book and actually the relationship between fathers and sons runs through it. So you've got you start off with um Cyrus who's the war fake war hero and his sons and then you have Adam's sons uh Cal and Aaron and so on.

[00:48:07]And this idea that the Cain and Abel story in particular, the love of one son being rejected by his father and that makes him embittered and he takes out on his brother that that just repeats down the generations. Did you like it? Do you think it was well done? Uh I I I thought it was quite well done with the with the first set with Adam and Charles when they were young and their father Cyrus because that is basically what drives Charles you know that's what that's what fills his heart with darkness in a sense is his jealousy over the fact that Cyrus says to Adam at one point and he suspects this I love you better and actually there's this moment when I mean before he calls him dog turd a dog turd there's this moment where um Cyrus takes Adam out and says you know I need you to enlist and just so you know I love you better and I actually I was very moved by that. I was almost found myself weeping. Something about these hard men of 20th century America saying soft loving words. It really it was very tender.

[00:49:01]>> See, I think what's something that you really like, there's no question about this. You like basically very spare hardboiled pros written by a man in which, as you say, hard men are struggling with steep sentimental emotions. Exactly. I do. That really speaks to it does speak to me. Yeah.

[00:49:21]Yeah. Sometimes it's hard for for those of us with, >> you know, wills of steel and hearts of stone, >> right? Of course, >> it's tough out there.

[00:49:29]>> So, I I was moved by that and I thought it was a great motivator for Charles's evil. I was I was kind of less convinced by the second generation. So, this is Adam and his two sons. I thought the point there was kind of cow. Yes, he feels rejected by Adam, but I suppose Adam doesn't it doesn't feel like he necessarily prefers one to the other. It just feels like he's brokenhearted by Cathy's betrayal. And also, it is interesting that fathers and sons are such a major theme in the book because obviously Steinbeck had a very strange relationship with his own sons, but he also had a very strange relationship with his own father. He was also kind of a man of sunken ambitions. He owned a business that went vast and you know, he turned into that kind of father himself.

[00:50:07]So, this must have been very therapeutic for him writing all this.

[00:50:11]>> I mean, Steinbeck's not terribly interested. We already mentioned he's not terribly interested in in motherhood. So, either you're a stereotypical mother like the Hamilton's mother, Liza, who's this sort of um she's like a mother from a kind of little house on the prairie or something. But let's get to the real sort of struggle at the heart of the book, which isn't necessarily father sons or mother's sons or whatever. It's actually good versus evil. This is what Steinbeck always said was the point of the book. And I quote, I believe that there is one story in the world and only one. Humans are caught in their lives and their thoughts and their hungers and ambitions blah blah blah blah blah in a net of good and evil. There is no other story. A man after he's brushed off the This is so kind of American pros in the 1950s. A man after he's 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? Now I I may sound like I'm mocking that and I slightly am because I don't think that is the only story you can tell and I don't think that's the only subject of all literature >> of course but it's it is a massive one.

[00:51:14]Yeah.

[00:51:14]>> I mean the big Russian authors like Toltoy Dsteski all those guys they're they're constantly grappling with the question of you know the evil in every human heart and how to live a good life and stuff like that and never no one ever criticizes them for >> I know you think I know you I can see I I could see what you've written in your notes. I know you think I've got double standards on this. I'm asking double standards. But also, I mean, the thing is, yeah, it may not be the only question. I don't think it is the only question, but just because it's >> kind of takes on this like mythical greater than life quality in the book, it doesn't mean that, you know, in the dayto-day in people's like lives, going about their daily business, it isn't something that everyone grapples with to some degree. It's just that you are, I think, too cynical like in this way. You don't think ideas govern, you know, human lives or the course of human history. you're you think it's stuff like, you know, how much food people need or how the economy is doing and stuff. So, this is this idea wouldn't chime with you very well, but I actually think I I like it. I think I think just because it may be a bit cliched, it doesn't mean it's not valid or true.

[00:52:16]>> Okay, fair enough. So, we've already said that uh whether you can see good and evil clearly is a big theme. Like basically characters who are rewarded, who are successful are those who can see both the beauty and the ugliness in people. So actually even Adam who has deluded most of the book because he can only see the beauty. There is a moment when he goes to see his ex-wife at her brothel. It's a very >> forgotten about that.

[00:52:41]>> Um it's a it's it's actually quite a powerful scene and he says to her, you you know you think you're so great because you just see the evil in people and you are cynical and all of this.

[00:52:50]You're the Dominic Sambrook of brothel owners.

[00:52:54]>> So that casts us in our true roles on the show. You are the Kathy of this podcast and I am the eternally kind and optimistic Adam Tras.

[00:53:01]>> Well, Adam says to Kathy, you know, you know about the ugliness in people, but you don't know about the rest. You see only one side and you think more than that. You're sure that that's all there is. There is a part of you missing. And I suppose by Steinbeck's own lights he's quite right that he and Kathy are polar opposites and each of them only sees one side of human nature. And the clarity with which somebody like Cal um Adam's son can see the complexity of human nature and he wrestles with his own demons that elevates him. It makes him more successful as a character uh because he is alive to both the good and the evil in human nature. He wrestles with this um darkness within himself and he's frightened isn't he that he will be trapped by his own nature that you know that that the he he basically sees the Cain and Abel pattern. He thinks gosh I'm Cain and I'm doomed to evil and doomed to I'm trapped by my nature.

[00:53:57]>> Yeah. And do you think that's do you think people really think that about themselves? Maybe.

[00:54:01]>> I I think that is genuinely something that people battle with. I think some people go through life terrified of of there being something inside them that isn't that has bad impulses. So I I think that is true to life and I that's why Cal is such a relatable character. I think for anyone you're lying if you think that you're good all the time.

[00:54:20]You're definitely not being honest if you say that you don't wrestle with yourself from time to time. But then the thing is the other wonderful hopeful part of this novel is that basically the crux of it all the secret he've been alluding to throughout. It's all about freedom. It's about how we are in fact >> free to choose not to be the darkness inside us but rather the good side of us. And this is basically encapsulated by this word timshell. It comes from a key line in Genesis when God is talking to Cain and God says to Cain, "If thou doest well," this is the King James version, "Shalt thou not be accepted and if thou doest not well, sin lith at the door and unto thee shall be his desire and thou shalt rule over him. Thou shalt rule over him is basically if you're good, you will rule over sin and if you're you're not, you won't." And basically the three characters, Samuel Hamilton, Lee, the Chinese American guy who's basically a bit of a caricature, and Adam, they sit around for hours, don't they, talking about these about Cain and Abel and about this sort of what does it all mean?

[00:55:27]>> Biblical interpretations. Yeah.

[00:55:29]>> Biblical interpretation. It's like your your divinity degree at Edinburgh, Tabby.

[00:55:33]>> Yeah. I was born for this. So Lee, the Chinese bloke, he says to the others, "Right, I've taken this I've taken this bit of the Bible to my Chinese elders and they've consulted some sort of rabbitical authorities and they've studied, they spent two years studying the meaning of the Cain and Avil story so they can report back." And basically the key word here is timshell. Um, which the King James translation says is thou shalt, but in reality it should be thou mayaest. And as Lee says to the other characters, that gives you a choice. It might be the most important word in the world that says the way is open. Thou mayaest. Why? That makes a man great.

[00:56:13]That gives him stature with the gods.

[00:56:14]For in his weakness and his filth and his murder of his brother, he still has the great choice. He can choose his course and fight through and win. And Lee basically says, so Lee is given the role of the sort of dispenser of wisdom, >> prophet almost. Yeah.

[00:56:28]>> Yeah. Exactly. And he says, this is what separates us from animals. We have the choice of good and evil. We're not trapped. We're not predestined. You might think you're going to be Cain, but actually you thou mayest means this word timshell means you could choose to be a good person. You're not defined by your heredity or by the the the the role that you feel like you've been given. And this is amazingly exciting.

[00:56:55]>> And he says this to uh Cal basically to say that you're not trapped. You're not you don't have to follow in the footsteps of of Cain just because your name is Cal and you're you're you've got you know wickedness in your family. You can choose to be a good man and this kind of liberates him. And obviously Stein you can see the appeal of a concept like this to someone like Steinbeck Steinbeck you know a man that had made mistakes throughout his life.

[00:57:22]He'd had a you know toxic and tumultuous personal life. He had had a negative relationship with his father and then had a negative relationship with his sons. You can see how emancipating and liberating this would be for a man like that. And then, you know, he's writing this for his sons. So, to be able to tell them, you don't have to have the same relationship with your sons. You don't have to make the mistakes that I made. God, like you can see how um >> liberating it is.

[00:57:48]>> How liberating that would be. Yeah. I find it liberating.

[00:57:52]>> But you know the irony, Tabby? I hate to be the person who's constantly raining on your parade. I mean, I don't really, but I'm pretending I hate it for the purposes of pleasing pleasing the listeners.

[00:58:00]>> Um, Ste was wrong. Like, that word is not, it doesn't even exist. It's not even a word. Tim Shell. The word is actually Tim Schiel. And, uh, I read an article about this in the Jewish Review of Books by Sheila Tulliter.

[00:58:14]And she said, you know, actually the original version was right and that Lee and Steinbeck are quite wrong. You know, >> oh ye of little faith, do not think that I have not contemplated your every single Trixy little argument you'd have to destroy this book. It's intentional.

[00:58:30]He's doing it intentionally. He's not like rewriting biblical interpretation.

[00:58:35]He's just he's creating a philosophy and an idea in his book. You know, it's more than a word. He's creating a magical word in a way, a way to reshape the way that we see human nature and get put some more positive spin on things. I think he intended it to be mistransated.

[00:58:52]>> Okay, so when we get to the very last scene in the book, so which is basically >> I actually cried the first time I read this.

[00:58:58]>> Oh, Tabby, >> I'm going to have to really dial down what I was going to say now.

[00:59:02]>> No, no, let loose. Let rip.

[00:59:04]>> No, I Oh, well, Adam is dying, isn't he?

[00:59:09]And Cal comes in. So Cal who basically has conspired or colluded in and Aaron's death he he by by forcing Aaron to confront the truth about his mother he effectively drove him to enlist in the army in the great war.

[00:59:24]>> Aaron has been killed. The sort of telegram has arrived. Adam has had a stroke. He's lying in bed. He's dying.

[00:59:31]Lee brings in Cal the the bad guy basically and says, "Help him, Adam.

[00:59:35]Help him. Give him his chance. Let him be free. That's what a man has over the beast. Free him. bless him. And Adam does bless him. He whispers that word, timshell, thou mayaest. Meaning, >> yeah, >> you're not trapped by, you know, uh, by by fate. You can choose to be a good person. Set yourself free and be a good person. I forgive you. All of this. And well, clearly, I was about to say, do you find it moving? But clearly, if you were cry, I mean, you weren't crying at the at the pros. You were crying at the >> the message.

[01:00:05]>> The message. Yeah. So, you did so you do find this moving. I do find it moving firstly because you know the idea of forgiveness is always moving >> whether that's like in war and peace or whatever when Natasha's forgiven on the deathbed or anything like that and then you know it's a father dying heartbroken and then finding some degree of kind of hope and redemption in his weward prodigal son. So, I do find that moving.

[01:00:28]But also, he's not actually being massively moralizing here, Steinbeck. I mean, he is, but he doesn't say, "Here's the moral question, Bill."

[01:00:37]>> It's a story. It's a conversation. It's actually a debate that runs throughout like are humans good or are they wicked?

[01:00:43]Does good get you anywhere in life? And the emotional reality of the book, you know, the death of a father whispering goodbye to his son, I think it outweighs the allegory or the symbolism of the idea of, you know, free will. And I don't think it is preachy. His voice is full of thought and doubt. It's intimate. And, you know, you love the Chronicles of Narnia, which has a big message at the heart of it. And this message is no is no bigger and is just as subtly done, I think, and just as powerful. See, I use that word again.

[01:01:15]>> It's It's that good. It's as good as The Chronicles of Narnia. I mean, that is good.

[01:01:19]>> All right. So, uh I think listeners can tell that we probably don't quite agree on whether this book is a great book or not.

[01:01:26]>> This book has created the tension at the heart of the book club. We've never disagreed so much.

[01:01:31]>> No. So, Tabby stands with Oprah Winfrey.

[01:01:34]>> I do.

[01:01:34]>> And I I stand with the uh New York Times as always. So, we're going to we're going to mark this. What are we going to mark? We We always as part of our own commitment to subtlety, we sophistication, we mark these books out of 10.

[01:01:49]>> Yeah.

[01:01:50]>> So, I'm going to appall you by giving it five out of 10.

[01:01:54]>> Oh, it's the lowest mark we've ever had.

[01:01:56]>> So, the critics in 1952, what they didn't like about it, the highbrow critics, they said they did not like the Hamilton family. They found them redundant, which I do. They found Kathy unbelievable, a sort of um a psycho mad psychopathic prostitute turned madam. um they didn't like Lee's uh profound Eastern wisdom and they found the Kane enable stuff too on the nose and I agree with all of that. I agree with all of those things.

[01:02:22]That said, I know a lot of people love this book and a a lot not so not just you and loads of people do find it moving and they love the kind of family saga element to it and I agree with you about this. I think particularly maybe as a British reader, there is something always very appealing about these books set in kind of California on the frontier, people huing out a new life for themselves.

[01:02:46]>> Uh so that's why I've managed to to find five marks to give it out of 10. Tabby, >> that's kind. That's good of you.

[01:02:54]>> But I know that you are going to give it a massive score and feel free, you know, be my guest.

[01:03:00]>> Well, thanks. Uh I'm going to give it a nine out of 10. As you said, I love books set in this kind of part of America, set during this time period. I love Steinbeck's writing. It's it's kind of it's so simple and spare and plain and yet it conveys incredible delicacy of thought and incredibly delicate descriptions and like this delicacy delivered in this kind of hard masculine voice kind of cuts to the quick. I love the descriptions of the Selenus Valley, you know, moving through the seasons. I like the message at the heart of it. I think it's a hopeful one. the idea that people can change. As you say, I love the family saga element. I actually thought the Hamiltons added a kind of nice >> domesticity to it that otherwise would make it just a book seen from the bird's eye view, maybe. And I read something that said that it captured the vast confusion of life.

[01:03:47]>> And um that's how I feel about it. But I'm I'm deducting a mark because I found uh Aaron and Lee a bit boring.

[01:03:54]>> Our first proper disagreement and the first I hope of many.

[01:03:57]>> Exciting. And by the way, people should uh on Instagram, on X or whatever, we'd like to hear your own thoughts.

[01:04:03]>> Express the fact that you agree with me.

[01:04:05]>> I know they will agree with you. I mean, there's no question they'll agree with you. Um I've I mean, I should never have done this show cuz I'm just hoping I've just opened myself up to abuse from tabby stands.

[01:04:18]>> So, what we've got coming up, I think some books that we'll agree on a little bit more. Certainly, the first one, The Hound of the Baskvilles, is what we're doing next week. Um, and then we are doing um, A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Mass. And we shall probably be discussing the whole genre of romantic and why it appeals to so many people at the moment.

[01:04:37]>> Uh, The Woman in White by Wilky Collins.

[01:04:40]>> Uh, Beloved by Tony Morrison. Uh, Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Wolf. I'm looking forward to that. And after that, and another big change of tone, The Hunger Games. I don't actually know who wrote The Hunger Games. Who wrote The Hunger Games?

[01:04:53]>> Suzanne Collins. Suzanne Collins. That's an indictment of my literary knowledge that I don't know, but I'm looking.

[01:04:58]>> You're just pretending.

[01:04:59]>> I was just pretending. It's one of my favorite books. Um, so so we're we're always keen to hear um your views and if there is by some weird mischre, I'm particularly keen to hear from you.

[01:05:14]All right, Tabby. Thank you very much and goodbye.

[01:05:17]>> Bye.