Word: steinbeck
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...theme) in which the family destinies brush each other so slightly as to make East of Eden two novels between the same set of boards. Adam Trask, the hero of one of the novels, was born in Connecticut in 1862. He did not reach California and meet the Hamiltons (Steinbeck's folks) until 1900, but he already had quite a story...
Cathy was a vicious slut but Adam didn't know that. Steinbeck has made her a dish of distilled evil, one of the most implausible women in fiction's gallery. As a young, sweet-looking girl she had murdered her parents, burned the family home and skipped off to Boston. There she became the mistress of a man who ran a string of brothels, drove him mad with jealousy and was almost beaten to death by him. When she crawled...
...California, Cathy behaved no better. She bore Adam twin sons, then shot him with his .44 and ran off to a nearby town and became a prostitute. Cathy was good at it, and Steinbeck seems to have a fine time explaining her trade. Naturally, Cathy poisoned the brothelkeeper. took over the place, and racked up a lot of money. But she got her comeuppance. Arthritis, and fear that her sins would be found out. broke her evil spirit and she died by her own hand. But not until her shocked, teen-age sons (the second Cain & Abel team) and gentle...
...kindly North-of-Ireland man with tenderness, blarney and wisdom in about equal proportions. His ranch was a failure, but he raised a big family of boys and girls who turned out pretty well. Any man would be lucky to have so lovable a grandfather as Novelist Steinbeck...
Skill & Stickiness. Perhaps Steinbeck should have stuck to his original idea of telling just the family history. As it stands. East of Eden is a huge grab bag in which pointlessness and preposterous melodrama pop up as frequently as good storytelling and plausible conduct. Cathy's story, gamy, lurid, and told at tedious length, is all but meaningless. Almost as tiresome is the figure of Lee, the Trasks' trusted Chinese houseman, whose warmed-over Oriental wisdom and too gentle heart give the whole California story an overdose of stickiness...