John Steinbeck's East of Eden - Confused Notions of Good and Evil

Confused Notions of Good and Evil in East of Eden

East of Eden is an epic novel about individual ethics - whether men and women have the power to choose between good and evil.

East of Eden, to be polite, it is not Steinbeck's best novel. Not by a long shot. Steinbeck had wrestled with a moral question and lost. It was as though he had been thinking about life, but not too deeply.

"East of Eden" was a third-rate best seller, the story of two American families over three generations, seven decades from the Civil War to World War I, told in a book that confuses us with contradictions, that lacks fictional concentration and that wanders in and around too many themes.

Clifton Fadiman once said it was wrong to describe Steinbeck as a hard boiled writer. Well, if a comparison with eggs is necessary, "East of Eden" is an overdone omelet.

Steinbeck himself worried about its weaknesses. In a letter to his editor, he said, "It's kind of a sloppy sounding book, but it's not sloppy, really."

Well, it was sloppy. Begging the forgiveness of the people who gave Steinbeck the Pulitizer and the Nobel Prizes for Literature, there are portions of "East of Eden" that sound like something out of Freshman Composition I.

Some of the syntax seems like scrambled eggs:

- "All around the main subject the brothers beat."

- "The wrinkles around them (his eyes) were drawn in radial lines inward by laughter."

- "In human affairs of danger and delicate success, conclusion is sharply limited by hurry."

All of which sounds a bit like Charlie Chan explaining life to No. 1 son.

Steinbeck's "East of Eden" now has been adapted for television by ABC, an eight-hour presentation beginning tonight (Channel 5, 8 to 11), tomorrow (9 to 11) and Wednesday (8 to 11).

This is no cheapie. Ten years in the making, "East of Eden" was shot on location at a cost of $11.2 million, with Savannah, Ga. standing in for Connecticut scenes and Salinas, Cal. for itself.

ABC boasts in a press release that the 1955 film starring James Dean covered only a small portion of "East of Eden," while the 1981 film attempts to depict the entire novel. Ironically, by the way, today (Sunday) is the 50th anniversary of Dean's birth.