Gold in its purest form.

I am on a golden roll of amazingly fantastic books!! East of Eden by John Steinbeck was our book club pick for this month. I almost didn't read it. You see, it's an old friend...and I ALMOST didn't re-read it... and that would have been tragic.


East of Eden is an epic story about good and evil. It tells the story of two families: the Trasks and the Hamiltons. It spans 3 generations and retells the Biblical story of Cain and Abel set in the Salinas Valley of Northern California.


Perspective...life experience...testimony. Do they change who we are? Do they change our world view? Most definitely. The first time I read East of Eden I had just turned 17 years old. It was summer vacation and I was looking for a good book to read. This book had such a powerful impact on me that I clearly remember where I was when I read it (laying on the couch in our living room) and the feelings it provoked. At this time I had only the smallest fleeting shadow of religion and virtually no knowledge of the Bible, and not much interest in philosophy. This was about 4 months before Stacey and I met the Nolan sisters and I returned to church. The discussion between Samuel, Lee, and Adam about the story of Cain and Abel was so profound to me that I began scribbling in the margins, underlining/highlighting things, and actually "pondered" on the nature of man. I grabbed my scriptures untouched since my baptism and turned to Genesis and began to read. God works in mysterious ways...and the spirit recognizes truth. Free will...of course...that made sense to me. "Thou mayest..." I had no understanding of Mormon Doctrine and Free Agency. But something rang absolutely "true" to me...that we have a choice and it is that choice that defines who we are. Powerful stuff for a religionless, scriptureless, self-involved 17 year old.


Fast forward 18 years and what a difference those 18 years have made. What a gift it was to read this book again farther down the road of life. At 17 years old I identified with the rejected child and at 35 years old I felt more the emotions of a parent who doesn't ever want her children not to feel loved and accepted. When I came to the chapter on the discussion of Cain and Abel I wasn't blown away by the "truth" of "thou mayest..." I felt more like..."Yep! That's how it works". But I was struck again by how powerfully important free will is. Isn't that why we fight for freedom and for the freedom of those around us? Without freedom there is no free agency and without free agency there is no plan of salvation. It IS the oldest story...it is what we fought for in the premortal world...and it what we continue fighting for today. Freedom...choice...free agency...the ability to do "otherwise".

At 35 years old I am much more knowledgeable of the scriptures and what is the major theme of the Old Testament in particular? Choice and consequences. Simple huh? Not only that but as is pointed out in the Introduction of East of Eden written by David Wyatt that the Bible "Has only one set of first parents but many Cains and Abels: Ishmael and Isaac, Esau and Jacob, the Prodigal Son and his brother, Satan and Christ--in each one of these twosomes one is somehow lucky, or better, or preferred." (pg. xxii)

Steinbeck says: "The greatest terror a child can have is that he is not loved, and rejection is the hell he fears. I think everyone in the world to a large or small extent has felt rejection. And with rejection comes anger, and with anger some kind of crime in revenge for the rejection, and with the crime guilt--and there is the story of mankind."


Some are put off by Steinbeck and his details and descriptions. I have criticized him myself while reading Grapes of Wrath. I felt like...come on...enough of the scenery let's get back to the story but in East of Eden I loved his details and descriptions. Steinbeck was also criticized by reviewers by leaving the story every so often for his monologues. I must say that at 17 years old I too found it annoying but at 35 years old I loved it. You see I have since developed a deep love of philosophy, politics, and history. I am continually reminded that history repeats itself. Each generation is always surprised that we feel and can relate to the same things as generations past. Many of Steinbeck's monologues that were relevant to the story which takes place in the late 1800's and early 1900's were also applicable to the time Steinbeck wrote the novel, the 1950's, and are still relevant today in 2008.


I particularly loved this quote:

"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 in their tendency to eliminate other things we hold good...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...has entered our economics, our politics, and even our religion, so that some nations have substituted the idea collective for the idea of 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 times 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." (pg. 131-132)


Steinbeck wrote that he worried about his monologues and commentaries that "...had he not too often stopped the book and gone into discussions of God knows what. His only answer was 'Yes, I have. I don't know why. Just wanted too. Perhaps I was wrong.' " I don't think he was.


If it isn't blatantly obvious I LOVE this book!! One of my all-time favorites. Steinbeck is a genius and this book is his crowning glory. I love books that you come away from still have you thinking...for days...weeks. Was Adam Trask like what the original Adam would have been like if he had never fallen and only Eve did? WHY was Cathy the way she was? Are monsters born or created? What happens to Cal and Abra? What happens to Cal's children? Does the cycle continue? Is the cycle broken? Why is there only one lovable woman in the story?


READ THIS BOOK!! If you've already read it...read it again.

I rate it: EXCELLENT!!

I have no words to describe what this novel did to my reading self!

It was my first Steinbeck, and it made me fall in love with his writing, his ideas, his cry for individual freedom and social justice. It made me ache for goodness in a world of evil, and it made me respect the power of storytelling to explain the inexplicable difficulties of family life.

It was the first time I felt scared of a fictional character!

I don't think I have ever been so deeply shaken as by Cathy/Kate, and she remains the villain with whom I compare all other literary villains. And yet, she fascinated me, she was like a snake hypnotising a mouse, and she merged the mythical ideas of Eve and the serpent into one powerful person - destructive and beautiful, exciting and dangerous.

Yet despite the biblical references which dominate the narrative, the monumental family saga has more resemblance with a Greek tragedy than with a Christian tale: facing the shame of failure, most characters choose to exit the stage rather than gaining redemption through suffering. Their lifeline is the freedom of CHOICE, not dogmatic obedience:

"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."

Of all the books I don't have time to reread, this is the one that is tempting me most - like a snake-Eve pointing towards a shiny apple - this is where you will find the knowledge of good and evil, and it is your choice if you read it or not!

It will make you shiver - with fear and admiration for the human imagination!

Read this book if you want to exist to your full potential

steinbeck really slayed with “and now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good.”

This book left me flabbergasted. I genuinely don't know how to feel about it. I could've given it any rating between 2 and 5 stars. Truly no thoughts, head empty. And that makes me mad. Because reading these 600 pages was such a chore. And now after I'm done, I have almost nothing to say? I genuinely think I'm too young or too inexperienced to properly get this book, to take in all of its nuances. Even reading secondary literature of this book is overwhelming.

I mean, I somewhat enjoyed it ... I definitely appreciated it. It made me laugh (Steinbeck is surprisingly funny), it made me gasp (audibly, multiple times, the plot twists in this book are unhinged!) and it tore at my heartstrings. But all in all, it's a book that feels "too big" for me. I don't know what to do with it. I feel like the first half is much stronger than the second half. It really started to drag towards the end, and then, all of a sudden, everything happened at once and major characters started to drop dead like flies. And I was like WHAT IS HAPPENING? All in all, I liked the dynamic of Adam, Charles and Cathy more than the one of Aron, Cal and Abra. I know that the two generations mirror each other but the new generation didn't bring the same juice, if you ask me.

Also, I cannot be the only one who was reminded of Wuthering Heights when reading this book, right??? The parallels are uncanny. Not just the two-fold structure of the two generations who mirror each other. Also the characters and their personalities. Cathy Ames was serving Catherine Earnshaw realness 9/10 times. Cal was giving Hareton. (Also who would've thought that Cal would be the last man standing in the Trask family? That ending had me gooped and gagged.) And Abra was giving Cathy Linton. It's craaazy! Both are stories of revenge, full of lust, sex and desire. And everyone loves a good villain. Emily and John have perfected the art of writing them, especially female ones. Miss Cathy had me gooped and gagged. I will never forgive John by forcing suicide upon her (her ending is so fucking UNSATISFYING and feels so out of character???) but I guess he couldn't let my girly win.

n  “You know, Lee, I think of my life as a kind of music, not always good music but still having form and melody. And my life has not been a full orchestra for a long time now. A single note only—and that note unchanging sorrow.”n

Spanning the period between the American Civil War and the end of World War I, East of Eden highlights the conflicts of two generations of brothers, the first being the kind, gentle Adam Trask and his wild brother Charles. Adam eventually marries Cathy Ames, an evil, manipulative, and beautiful prostitute; she betrays him, joining Charles' bed on the very night of their wedding day. (When I tell you I screamed during that reveal.) Later, after giving birth to twin boys, she shoots Adam and leaves him to return to her former profession. In the shadow of this heritage Adam raises their sons, the fair-haired, winning, yet intractable Aron and the dark, clever Caleb. This second generation of brothers vie for their father's approval. Eventually, in bitterness Caleb reveals the truth about their mother to Aron, who then joins the army and is killed in France.

Steinbeck's epic of good and evil, set against the blueprint of the biblical Cain and Abel narrative, begins as both Adam and Charles vie for their father's recognition and love. In the Trask household, people have always rejected, offended, hated, avenged and, above all, lied. The evil was perpetuated. This should surprise no one, since "we are all descended from Cain", as Steinbeck helpfully points out. And yet Steinbeck is a moralist through and through, firmly believing that man, despite all predispositions, can of his own free will decide against evil and for good.

Like a shibboleth, a code, the Hebrew word "Timshel" (= "Thou mayest...") therefore appears in central passages of the text, which is largely set in the Salinas Valley in California. When Steinbeck was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1962, he said in his acceptance speech, not without pathos: "I hold that a writer who does not passionately believe in the perfectibility of man, has no dedication nor any membership in literature." It is of this perfectibility that he writes in East of Eden. What makes us humans special is that we can make choices, we are able to make decision. Our free will separates us. It's a burden and a gift.

Many of the novel's characters have perfected the art of pretending, the art of acting. Either to protect themselves, like the Chinese-American Lee, who is more philosopher and life counsellor than cook and servant to Adam Trask. (Lee hides his high education from the racist white society, because he knows that his life will be easier if he plays into their prejudices, thus he pretends to be simple-minded and incapable of speaking English without a Chinese accent.) Or to achieve their own goals. Adam's wife Cathy Ames is a master at this, using her charm to manipulate people from an early age. And so, at first glance, she seems to be the incarnation of the devil in angel's clothing, who, with a smile on her face, finds it easy first to cuckold the love-blind Adam and then to leave him and become a brothel owner, by driving the previous owner insane and killing her, mind you. Which is why the second wise man in the novel besides Lee, the farmer Sam Hamilton, never tires of imploring Adam to "take a closer look", to finally see Cathy for who she truly is under her mask.

The women in East Eden are much stronger than the men. They want to be independent, whatever the cost. Cathy effortlessly changes from slyly sweet to hatefully cold. An even more modern female character is Abra, girlfriend first of Aron, then of Cal. In contrast to Cathy, who as a child has already rescued herself from her deficient existence into a fairy-tale wonderland, this is soon no longer enough for Abra. As one of the few in Steinbeck's cosmos, she does not delude herself and can therefore say she is free.

Cathy and Lee are by far the most interesting characters in this novel. Cathy, especially, is super fascinating since female characters like her are rare in classic literature. What I like about her being the "villain" (the "bitch", if you may) is how nuanced Steinbeck develops her character throughout the book. It's clear that from an early age she learned that grown men will sexualise her and there's nothing she can do to prevent it, she can make her "sex appeal" work in her favor or succumb to it: "She was afraid. She needed protection and money. Adam could give her both. And she could control him—she knew that. She did not want to be married, but for the time being it was a refuge." It makes sense that she manipulates Adam into marrying her. It's the only thing a woman in her position could do.

And Steinbeck doesn't go down the easy "Cathy = villain / Adam = victim"-route. Instead, he shows us time and time again, that Adam is at fault as well. He idealised Cathy, makes her into a non-person. He infantilises her, he objectifies her. He doesn't listen to her:

n  Cathy spoke very quietly. “Adam, I didn't want to come here. I am not going to stay here. As soon as I can I will go away.”
“Oh, nonsense.” He laughed. “You’re like a child away from home for the first time. […] So don’t say silly things like that.”
“It’s not a silly thing.”
“Don’t talk about it, dear. Everything will change after the baby is born. You’ll see. You’ll see.”n

Cathy cannot make herself heard. Adam only sees what he wants to see. And so when she tells him that she will leave him after giving birth to their sons (something which he forced her to do, forbidding the abortion), he doesn't believe her. It is only when his refusal to listen to her drives her to harsh actions, aka shooting Adam to get away from him, that he realises what she's just said. More often than not I felt angry on behalf of Cathy. "I've built the image in my mind of Cathy, sitting quietly waiting for her pregnancy to be over, living on a farm she did not like, with a man she did not love." Women like her don't have many choices, and it's commendable how she carves them out for herself.

The problem of the idealised woman is something we also find in the second generation. Aron idealises his childhood sweetheart Abra. But unlike Cathy, Abra is able to free herself of Aron's gaze early on. She tells Cal: "He doesn't think about me. He's made someone up, and it's like he put my skin on her. I'm not like that—not like the made-up one." She knows that what she and Aron have isn't real, because to him, she doesn't even exist, she's a non-person, someone he made up in his own made, his own personal wish fulfilment. Abra frees herself from Aron, breaking up with him, lifting the burden of his expectations and dreams off her shoulders. And so when she finally finds her joy with Cal, Lee rightfully notes: "And now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good." And besties, I damn near cried at that quote. Because it's so goddamn true. Free from Adam's expectations, she can finally be herself, just a simple person, not the perfect woman. She can finally breathe and be free.

So, as you can see, Steinbeck's saga is also one of overlooking and looking away. It is a symbolic story of the human soul. We only see what we want to see. And it's superbly written. There are quotes for days in this book that truly make me weep, e.g. "And there is one sure thing about the fall of gods: they do not fall a little; they crash and shatter or sink deeply into green muck." or "We have only one story. All novels, all poetry, are built on the never-ending contest in ourselves of good and evil."

What I especially appreciate is Steinbeck's ability to give such depth to his characters within such few words. When Lee asks Adam whether he likes his life, Adam answers: "Of course not." And it makes so much sense. Because why would a man like Adam Trask like his life. It's totally pieces. And when he has a new business idea, Steinbeck writes: "
And as is usually true of a man of one idea, he became obsessed." Like, damn, bestie, are you sure you're an author and not a psychology major? Man had me shaking in my boots.

But that's not to say that East of Eden is without flaws. As much as I commend Steinbeck for his (to me) surprising strong anti-racist stance when it comes to the character of Lee, and the interesting feminist implications that characters such as Cathy and Abra offer, he is still giving "white man write book" more often than not, dropping the n-word in all its different forms, literally having a female character, a prostitute, being called "The N***er", and referring to the genocide against indigenous people as "not nice work but, given the pattern of the country’s development, it had to be done." In general, I found the unchallenged attitudes that the characters/narrator holds towards indigenous folks hard to endure: "And that was the long Salinas Valley. Its history was like that of the rest of the state. First there were Indians, an inferior breed without energy, inventiveness, or culture, a people that lived on grubs and grasshoppers and shellfish, too lazy to hunt or fish. They ate what they could pick up and planted nothing. They pounded bitter acorns for flour. Even their warfare was a weary pantomime." Totally unacceptable and should be called out more in modern reviews!

Overall, I am happy that I read East of Eden. It's a novel I will definitely come back to later in life. I'm quite satisfied that I managed to write down some of my thoughts and ideas in this review. I still feel like I didn't get to the bottom of this novel but I might have come a little bit closer through writing this review.

Then the Lord said to Cain, 'Where is your brother Abel?' 'I don't know,' he replied. 'Am I my brother's keeper?'

In the famed Biblical tale of Cain and Abel, the two brothers both make an offering to God. God likes Abel's offer, but not Cain's; out of jealousy, Cain slays Abel, and then is marked by God.

East of Eden is John Steinbeck's rather lengthy ode to that story. It follows two families, the Trasks and the Hamiltons. It's the Trask family, though, that represents Cain and Abel, with two sets of battling brothers.

Steinbeck gets a lot of crap from literary critics. He is their Exhibit A as to why the Nobel Prize in literature is a crock. Steinbeck is a realistic writer; I guess, in order to be accepted by your peers, your writing has to be dense and semi-incomprehensible, ala Joyce. (Don't get me started on this. People who say they love Joyce are just part of a racket - a racket full of people who pretend to understand what no one else can understand, and to enjoy what no one else can enjoy, simply so they can understand and enjoy things that others cannot. It reminds me of that scene in Annie Hall when Alvy is standing behind that guy raving about Marshall McLuhan films).

I like Steinbeck's writing. It's simple and direct, and often elegant in its simplicity. There's no one better at describing a piece of geography, of making you feel what it's like to be in a certain place. Despite his simplicity, he creates complex characters. I never quite knew who to root for, who to like; my allegiances were always shifting.

Thematically, the book is about love, but then again, every story is a love story:

Maybe - maybe love makes you suspicious and doubting. Is it true that when you love a woman you are never sure - never sure of her because you aren't sure of yourself?

Love, in Steinbeck's world, is very complicated, and filled with suspicion and doubt. It also shares the same razor's edge with hate, the two grappling for supremacy.

The sprawling, digression-filled story centers on Adam Trask and Samuel Hamilton. Adam moves to Salinas from the East, leaving his brother Charles - complete with a scar on his forehead - behind. Adam is married to Cathy Ames, who is not exactly a shining beacon of womanhood. Adam buys a ranch near Sam Hamilton and his wife, Liza. Sam is a clever man who is good at everything but making money. He befriends Adam, and Adam's Chinese manservant, Lee. Cathy bears two children. They are twins (natch): Aron and Caleb. (Get it? C and A...Cain and Abel, Charles and Adam, Caleb and Aron...it's called a parable because it's simple). Cathy ends up leaving to open a brothel, and Adam is brokenhearted. He really loved Cathy:

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 anymore.

The book meanders on. You meet characters; the characters disappear or die. There are a lot of subplots spinning around the main thrust of the narrative, which is the eventual - and tragic - replaying of the saga of Cain and Abel, starring Caleb and Aron.

This book is brutal, and surprisingly so. There are some savage beatings, a shooting or two, poisonings, suicides, and other deaths untimely.

Then there's the sex. I guess I should have expected this from the man who gave us Rose of Sharon's breast feeding scene, but still. The use of one word in particular kind of shocked me, not because I'm a prude, but because this book was published in 1952. (The word, for you Seinfeld fans, rhymes with "Dolores").

The characters in this book are all well described and developed, even the secondary characters (which adds greatly to the book's length). The character of Cathy is the exception. She is mostly one-dimensional, a figure of pure evil. By the end of the book, Steinbeck describes her as physically twisted by the ravages of arthritis, blatantly telegraphing what we've known about her soul all along. I liked her. Not her as a person, but the character. Her over-the-top wickedness reminds me of Madame Defarge from A Tale of Two Cities. A short list of Cathy's sins include patricide, matricide, arson, attempted murder, adultery, abandonment, blackmail, fraud on the court, abuse of service, etc. etc. One of the first things we learn about Cathy is that when she was a little girl, she forced two young boys to tie her up and lift her dress, so they could go to town. Thanks Steinbeck!

My gripes are minor. I like Steinbeck's writing, his descriptions, his characters, but this book could've been much shorter. There are entire sections and characters who are introduced in great detail, then dropped entirely. (I'm thinking, especially, of Olive in the airplane).

The second minor gripe has to do with our unreliable narrator. The book is told in the first person, by one of Sam Hamilton's grandsons. He says, right off, that this story he is telling is collected from diaries, memoirs, hearsay, and whatnot. At times, then, he doesn't give you (meaning the reader) certain bits of information, because he claims he doesn't have it. At other times, though, the narrator relates information he couldn't possibly know, unless he is God or conducted a seance. For instance, he gives the reader the last thoughts of a woman who is drowning herself. How did he know that? Then towards the end of the book, the narrator describes a scene without telling us who the person in the scene is, leaving us to guess. Why would he do that? The narrator obviously knows the person in the scene. There's no need to withhold that information unless (a)the narrator is a jerk or (b) the narrator is a stupid narrative device. For some reason, the inconsistency with the narrator bugged me.

WOW!!!! If I was smart I would just stop with that one word instead of trying to review what I've come to think of as the greatest book ever written.

The facts. East of Eden takes you from the Civil War to the beginning of World War 1. It follows two families through three generations and across the country. You get everything with this novel the good and the bad.

The book focuses on family relationships. Husband-wife. Father-son. And brothers. It's written in a way that you feel wrapped up with the various characters. When they find love or are rejected you feel that too. There are also a lot of terrible things that happen in the book. The turn of the century wasn't a very friendly time. Fortunes were made and lost. People fell in and out of love. Murder. Mystery. Betrayal. It's all in there.

It took me two weeks to read. Not because of the length but because of the depth of the writing. It's a lot to take in all at once and should be spaced out and savored.

I would highly recommend East of Eden and will be rereading it again (and I don't ever reread books). Absolutely amazing.

No, I can’t write a review about East of Eden. It ended up being too epic, to compelling, too amazing for me to be able to find any words to describe it. I think I’ll just leave here what I found on, for example, page 4: “You can boast about anything if it’s all you have. Maybe the less you have, the more you are required to boast”; Or this one on page 33: “The direction of a big act will warp history, but probably all acts do the same in their degree, down to a stone stepped over in the path or a breath caught at sight of a pretty girl or a fingernail nicked in the garden soil.”; Or this one (I really liked this one) found on page 90: “No one who is young is ever going to be old.”. And how about this one one on page 260: “When a man says he does not want to speak of something he usually means he can think of nothing else”. Just one more, this one on page 530: “But isn’t silly, this preoccupation with small time units. One thing late or early can disrupt everything around it, and the disturbance runs outward in bands like the waves from a dropped stone in a quiet pool.”

RESPECT

نامه‌ای برای او
ستاره عزیزم، سلام.
اولین نامه‌‌ایه که برات می‌نویسم و نمی‌دونم از کجا شروع کنم...
از وقتی شنیدم هر کسی ستاره‌ای در آسمان داره، سال‌هاست که شب‌های مهتابی پس از کلی گشتن و پیدا نکردنت، سراغت رو از ماه می‌گیرم... با این‌که می‌دونه کجا قایم شدی، اما هر شب مثل تمام شب‌های دیگه، با افسون‌گری به من می‌گه:
ستاره؟ تو ستاره‌ات رو گم کردی و سراغش رو از من می‌گیری؟ نمی‌تونم بهت بگم، خودت باید ستاره‌تو پیدا کنی.
دخترم، این سومین کتابیه که برات به یادگار می‌ذارم. این دنیا جای عجیب و مرموزیه! الان که این نامه رو برات می‌نویسم، داری توی آسمون‌ها قدم می‌زنی و هنوز در این دنیای سیاه و شوم که سراسرش به مشتی گه نمی‌ارزه پا نذاشتی.
اگر سال‌ها سال پس از شب یا روزی که با مادرت روح و جسم‌مان را در هم آمیختیم و خلقت کردیم، زنده بودم... آن‌وقت این کتاب‌ها را به تو هدیه می‌دم، اما اگر روزی از روزها، تو بودی و من نبودم، مطمئن باش که به کسی سپرده‌ام که تقدیمت کنند.
ستاره عزیزم، در زندگی خیلی تلاش کردم. از وقتی به خاطر دارم رنج و سختی کشیدم، بارها در آن سرزمین شوم زمین خوردم و دوباره روی پای خود ایستادم. مرد ثروتمندی نیستم، پدربزرگت هم نه تنها ثروتمند نبود بلکه نامردترین پدر دنیا بود، دست‌کم اگر نخوام بگم نامردترین، می‌تونست در المپیک پدرهای نامرد روی سکوی افتخار بایسته.
سی و سه‌ سال عمرم در جایی که در گذشته آن‌جا را وطن می‌نامیدم، برای تو حاصلی نداشت جز یک کتاب.
صدسال تنهایی اولین کتابی بود که به خودم قول دادم، هر کجای دنیا که باشم به دوش بکشمش تا روزی به تو هدیه دهم. حین خواندنش به خودم قول داده بودم که روزی یک ماهی کوچولوی طلایی، درست از همانی که سرهنگ آئورلیانو بوئندیا می‌ساخت را برات بسازم و خب همان‌طور که پیش‌تر بهش اشاره کردم، در سرزمین مادری همیشه هشتم گرو نهم بود، تا اینکه به دوحه رفتم. با اولین حقوقم سفارش ساختش را دادم و حالا با زنجیری روی کتاب آویزونه و تشنه‌ی عطر گردنته.
خشم و هیاهو را در لندن خریدم، و دومین کتابیه که برات نگهداری می‌کنم.
پس از خواندنش، تصمیمی گرفتم: ساعت کوکی پدربزرگم که برام به یادگار مانده بود را به یک ساعت‌سازی در داکلند سپردم، تعمیرش کردم و حالا روی کتاب آویزونه.
امشب که این کتاب را تمام کردم، بیش از هر زمانی مطمئنم که این باید سومین کتابی باشه که به تو هدیه می‌دم.
نمی‌دونم... واقعا از آینده خبر ندارم که اینجا مرد ثروتمندی می‌شم یا نه، اما تلاش می‌کنم و متوقف نمی‌شم. تلاش می‌کنم مثل پدرم نباشم. نمی‌دونم پدری مثل پدر آقای آدام تراسک می‌شم و برات کلی پول و سهام به ارث می‌ذارم، یا مثل آقای ساموئل هامیلتون، تکه‌ای زمین بایر یا خانه‌ای قدیمی. اصلا این‌ها که مهم نیست، اگر من تونستم گلیمم را از آب بکشم تو هم می‌تونی، اما امیدوارم مراقب کتاب‌هایی که برات به یادگار گذاشتم باشی، بخونی‌شون، از خوندنشون لذت ببری و نهایتا پند بگیری.
در زندگی کتاب‌های زیادی خوندم: کتاب‌های عالی، خوب، بد و مزخرف، اما یادت باشه که من به دنبال این نبوده و نیستم که سلایقم رو بهت تحمیل کنم، پس اگر به صورت موردی کتاب‌هایی را انتخاب کردم، براشون دلایل خودم را داشتم. صبور باش دختر نازنیم و حرف‌های آقای لی یادت باشه که گفت:
"از رد انگشت‌های هرکسی می‌شه فهمید در کدام بخش‌های کتاب، توقف کرده، به فکر فرو رفته و یا اشک ریخته..."
دنبال نشانه‌ها باش.

شرق بهشت همانند صدسال تنهایی و خشم و هیاهو، به معنی واقعی کلمه زندگی بود.
حدودا سه ماه قبل بود که حین خواندن خشم و هیاهو، توسط عالی‌جناب فاکنر به استاین‌بک لینک شدم. پیش از این کتاب دو فسقلی به نام‌های «مروارید» و «موش‌ها و آدم‌ها» را از او خواندم. فسقلی‌هایش را دوست داشتم اما وقتی این کتاب را خریدم،‌ شدیدا نگران بودم که رمانی با ششصد صفحه آن‌هم به زبان انگلیسی، آنی نباشد که باید باشد، اما بود... بهتر که نه، فراتر از انتظارم و حتی چند لول بالاتر از فسقلی‌هایش بود.
شرق بهشت نیز مانند آن دو فسقلی با توصیف‌هایی بکر از موقعیت جغرافیایی داستان آغاز شد. توصیف‌هایی که نه تنها خسته کننده نیستند، بلکه خواننده له له می‌زند که هر چه می‌خواند را سرچ کند و با چشم ببیند. رمانی با چهارچوب قوی و استحکامی کم‌نظیر از ابتدا تا پایان.
خواندن شرق بهشت برای من به مثابه دیدن یک رویا بود.
رویایی که شیرین آغاز شد، مرارت‌های زندگی را به من نشان داد و نهایتا با مرگ به من تلنگر زد.
به نظرم استاین‌بک ششصد صفحه نوشت تا بگوید هیچ‌چیز مهم‌تر و با ارزش‌تر از خودشناسی نیست...
ما آدم‌ها تا زمانی‌که خود را نشناسیم، با ترس‌هایمان آشنا و مستقیم با آن‌ها چشم در چشم نشویم، نمی‌توانیم به رستگاری برسیم.
طبیعیه که در یک رمان با این حجم، داستان‌نویسی با خلاقیت و توانایی‌های استاین‌بک، برای خواننده فقط کلاس دو واحدیِ خودشناسی برپا نکرده...
پیش‌تر اشاره کردم که این کتاب، خود واقعی زندگی بود. زندگی که با تولد آغاز می‌شود، به مرگ ختم می‌شود و خونی که در نسلی دیگر به جریان می‌افتد.
در این چرخه‌ها و دست به دست شدن روزگار از نسلی به نسل دیگر، بخش‌های زیادی بود که شدیدا با خواندن‌ آن‌ها به فکر فرو رفته و با زندگی خودم به مقایسه می‌پرداختم.