![]() ![]() Perhaps we can chalk it up to yet another case of the age-old affliction that is ‘Being Ahead of the Times’, but today, East of Eden is considered Steinbeck’s magnum opus…Īs seems too often to be the situation, readers then and now hailed the book for the very reasons the critics failed it. ![]() From its unorthodox narrative structure, to its towering characterizations, to its unfettered morality, the talking heads of the day panned East of Eden for being too grandiose for its own galoshes. Published in 1952, it parables the biblical tale of Cain and Able as experienced through the lens of two families as they struggle and triumph against a backdrop spanning the American Civil War to WWI, primarily in the setting of Salinas, California.įollowing its release, the book fast became the bestselling novel in the United States, but at the time critics did not share the public’s enthusiasm. The above quotation was drawn from the foreword provided by John Steinbeck for his novel East of Eden. ![]() ![]() Pain and excitement are in it, and feeling good and evil thoughts-the pleasure of design and some despair and the indescribable joy of creation.” “Nearly everything I have is in it, and it is not full. ![]()
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