Review:- East of Eden by John Steinbeck

This is the third Classics Circuit Tour I’ve participated in, and I’m ridiculously glad I discovered it. Every book I’ve read for a tour has not only been one that’s been sat on my shelves for far too long but has also been a book I’ve loved. This is exactly what happened with East of Eden.

Prior to this, the only Steinbeck I’d read was Of Mice and Men, which was unlike anything else I’d ever read in its’ depth of character and setting, not to mention the masterful build up of tension. It lulled me into a false sense of security and then knocked me for six; I had to go back and re-read the ending three times before I could fully take it in. Given that Of Mice and Men is so very short though, I was unsure about Steinbeck’s ability to immerse me in landscape and story over a longer period of time, but I shouldn’t have been.

A basic synopsis of East of Eden would be that it tells the story of the Hamilton’s and the Trask's, and their lives in the Salinas Valley. It is the tale of unlikely friendships and unnatural actions, and is pretty much a study of all the weird and wonderful things human beings do.

Steinbeck is a brilliant and beautiful writer – possibly the most beautiful writer I have ever read, and I know people take issue with him for not writing about happy stuff, and for writing about ‘abnormal’ people, but for me it’s the emotion and the struggle which makes his writing so raw and cleansing to read. After finishing this novel, I am desperate to read more Steinbeck, which is odd because when I was younger, I started The Grapes of Wrath several times but could never get past the first few pages, and I also started East of Eden twice before finally settling down to it. I feel like reading Steinbeck is something you really have to commit to and focus on, because once I did that, it suddenly got really good.

East of Eden is basically about life in small town America, and Steinbeck portrays the history of the country through his characters. War is present in East of Eden, but it is removed from the story by virtue of letters. Adam serves in the army and hates it. He doesn’t understand the point of killing, and so it’s ironic that he is then suckered in by Cathy Ames; murderess, adulteress, and at the very least, sociopath. At the heart of the story lie Samuel Hamilton and Adam Trask, but the reason for the story to be told at all, and the primary motivation for much of what many of the characters suffer and do, is Cathy – both her presence, and the fallout it creates.

Following the death of her parents in a thinly veiled arsonous house fire, Cathy becomes the mistress of a brothel owner, thinking she can make him do what she wants, but when he sees through her she finds herself badly beaten and in need of help. Injured, she drags herself to the doorstep of Charles and Adam Trask. Charles remains suspicious, but Adam takes pity on her and nurses her back to health, eventually marrying her. Adam and Cathy relocate to the Salinas Valley, where Cathy gives birth to twins, eventually named Caleb and Aron, before leaving them and their father for good. She goes on to commit many other heinous acts, without a single moment of redemption. She does provide the counterpoint for judgement of all the other characters in the novel, all of whom are flawed, but none to such a chronically soulless extreme as Cathy. The way that Adam and his sons never stop wanting her, while she barely thinks of them and has no qualms about how much she hurts them, was painful. Towards the end of the novel Adam is finally freed from her hold over him, and I nearly cheered.

For me, possibly the most important relationship in the novel, though, was the relationship between first Samuel Hamilton, and later Adam Trask and Lee. Lee is an educated Chinese man with a capacity for logic and the dream of some day owning a bookstore, in a period where most Americans apparently expected the opposite to be the case. He is the glue holding the Trask family together. When Adam fall apart after Cathy leaves, it is Lee who raises the boys, and Samuel Hamilton who knocks sense back into Adam and makes him behave like a father.

Interestingly, Samuel Hamilton was a real person; John Steinbeck’s maternal grandfather, and Steinbeck himself makes a (very) brief appearance in the novel. The inspiration for the novel apparently came from the book of Genesis, from the story of Cain and Abel. This is mentioned in the novel, and Adam is quite rightly dubious about the overtones suggested if he calls his children Cain and Abel, although this cleverly does rear its head throughout Caleb and Aron’s relationship, and have a brilliant bearing on the ending. It is noteworthy, though that their initials are still C and A. The religious template ties in with first Adam, and then Cal’s striving for forgiveness and acceptance, and also with the struggles in the relationship of the twins.

It’s not a book that makes you want to read it for its happiness, but one that absorbs you in the lives and troubles of its characters and leaves you hoping against hope that the good in the characters will win out. It shows the struggles of real, flawed people, and I think that’s what made the book so thoroughly enjoyable for me.

Thanks again to Rebecca at the Classics Circuit for hosting such brilliant events, and keeping classics on our TBR's! My companions today are Laura's Reviews and The Blue Bookcase, so if you haven't been following the tour so far, start now! :-)

The Classics Circuit: Emma by Jane Austen

 

This is the second Classics Circuit tour I've participated in.  The first was the Lost Generation Tour, and I really enjoyed reading Tender is the Night, so when I heard about this one, it seemed like a great chance to finally read Emma!

My first thoughts on hearing about this tour, were that pitting Dickens and Austen against each other is impossible. They write in such different styles, on such different subjects. And of course, as with all reading, it's 90% a matter of personal preference anyway! Aside from the fact that they're both English, and were writing in a similar period, there's not very much to compare about the two, really. 

I discovered both Austen and Dickens in college, and my first reading of Pride and Prejudice was, in many ways, the antidote to my struggle with Hard Times. It was required reading for my English Literature course, and the first half of it was so immensely dull that there were moments when I actually felt like sawing my fingers off so as to have an excuse not to read it (dramatic, me? Never!). Then it suddenly got a lot better, very quickly, and I was forced to revise my opinion. If I'm honest though, I'm really not the sort of person who likes to go through that much effort, and frankly pain, to enjoy a book. I do recognise the genius and intricacy of his description, though, and love the vividness of his characters, among many other things, and hope I'll read and love more Dickens in the future. However, at the end of the day, and no matter how much I love singing along to Oliver!, Dickens depresses me. Austen, on the other hand has a far more positive effect. 

Emma was Jane Austen's fourth novel, published in 1815. It is a comedy of manners, and shows the dangers involved in matchmaking. For those who haven't read it (and I really do feel you should), basically, Emma Woodhouse is a rich young lady, living in a very big house with her neurotic father. When the novel begins, Emma's governess, Miss Taylor, has just got married to Mr. Weston. Mr Knightley is a close neighbour and old family friend of the Woodhouses', and Emma's sister, Isabella, is married to Mr Knightley's brother, Mr. John Knightley. As usual with Austen's novels, Emma focuses on a particular 'set' of society, and the ins and outs of their daily lives. Near the beginning of the novel, Emma befriends Harriet Smith, a young woman of unknown parentage, and begins to try to make her an 'eligible' match. At first, she attempts to set her up with the vicar, Mr. Elton, to no avail, as Mr. Elton is actually in love with Emma, and thinks that marrying Harriet would be totally beneath him. She also convinces Harriet to turn down an offer of marriage from Robert Martin, a farmer, with whose family Harriet had spent the summer. Emma thinks a lot of herself, and her level of perception, but she often misses things which are entirely obvious, and causes lot of unnecessarily painful situations, either by causing others to fall in love, or by believing herself to be in love, without really knowing what love is.

As with all of Austen's novels, Emma took me a little while to get into, mostly because I've read the first half before, and so wasn't giving it my full attention. After a while, though, I began to really enjoy it. Emma Woodhouse, to me, was a much more rounded and believable character than Austen's heroines often are: I really liked her. She's a total snob, with very firm (and very often misguided) opinions, and can often be a little bit of a bitch. For those who feel that this is too strong a word, I mean it in the most positive way. Emma is flawed, which is the thing that makes me like her more than any other Austen character. She often says things without properly thinking them through, or because she wants to be the centre of attention. Her redeeming feature, though, is Mr. Knightley, who isn't afriad to tell her when is in the wrong. I liked that she reacted to his criticism with thought, and the desire to change.  And yes, throughout the novel, my brain was playing Clueless in the background. I think it helped that I'm a big fan of it! 

I love Austen's novels for the fact that nobody is ever bored for more than about a second: they are always using their time in productive ways, going out and taking walks, talking to each other about deep and meaningful things, drawing each other, playing music, playing cards, dancing. They didn't have TV or internet, and yet they still survived!! I often think modern society could do with taking a few leaves from the pages of Austen's world (not literally, obviously). 

I also enjoy the secrets and intrigue Austen creates. During the course of Emma, there are two rejections, one secret engagement, many flirtations, and a declaration of love. Mr. Knightley's declaration of love to Emma was admittedly nowhere near as awesome as Elizabeth Bennett and Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice, but I liked Mr. Knightley a hell of a lot more. I really appreciated how he was just totally straight about everything, and wouldn't hesitate to tell Emma when she was doing something stupid or beneath her. I feel that he helped make her a better person, and if I'm honest, that, to me, seems much more like true love than 'I just saw you and think you're pretty and now I must have you'. Having known someone all their life, and knowing all of their faults and the things you dislike about them, and still loving them anyway? That's romance.

If we're going to put them up against each other, Austen gets my vote, primarily because she was less appreciated in her own time. Henry James has ranked her as one of 'the fine painters of life', along with Shakespeare, Cervantes, and Henry Fielding (my reliance on Wikipedia for obscure facts is terrible. I really must stop). That's some tough competition, and Austen is the only girl! Undoubtedly, Dickens is great - a great social commentator and reformer as well as a great writer, and I do feel a little bit hypocritical defending Austen over him, as I live literally just around the corner from the actual Bleak House, and the house in which Dickens used to spend his summers, but really, Austen makes me happy. She writes about the kind of England I'd love to have lived in, from the perspective of the class of person I would want to be, had I been alive at that time. Let's face it, nobody would want to be in the class of person Dickens writes about - workhouses? Disease? Dying young? Yes please!... :-/ Dickens is great, but he's such a struggle to read, and I don't always want that, whereas I can always be in the mood for some Austen. She goes hand in hand with sunny summer days and picnics, and equally with rainy, cold winter nights curled up in a blanket with some hot chocolate. Sorry, Mr. Dickens, but the ladies win for me!

In order to placate his ghost, which Broadstairs would undoubtedly love to claim for itself, here are some pictures of both Bleak House, and the Dickens House Museum, where he spent summers with his aunt. This is my little town in England's claim to fame!

 Bleak House, Broadstairs, Kent, UK

The Dickens House Museum, Broadstairs, Kent, UK

The Classics Circuit - Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald

I have to admit to total ignorance of what the Lost Generation actually was, until I started to do some research as background to reading Tender is the Night . I’ve read a fair amount of English literature over the years, but not so much American. Pretty much the only author I’d read from this generation is Eliot, because he’s also classed as English Literature. Following on from this tour, many of the Lost Generation will join the ever-expanding TBR list. People who have participated in, or been keeping up with the tour (or who are just more educated about American literature than I am, which is not hard. English literature, I’m great at. American, not so much...) will know all about it, so I won’t reiterate, but just say thanks to  Rebecca for giving me the chance to learn about it, as well as to finally read a book that’s been sat on the shelf for literally years!

The idea that stuck with me as I read the novel , was that many of the writers of this generation had left America, in pursuit of artistic freedom and new experiences. To me, the word ‘lost’ in particular implies something in transmission, waiting to be found, to define itself. The generation who fought in the war were often either physically lost, through death or injury, or else lost in the new structure of society. Tender is the Night  felt like it was lost, drifting, trying to find its way home... There is a lot of power in the fragmented style of the novel, and, for the first time in almost three years, I finished the book and immediately wanted to go back and read it again, as I know that there was a lot that I missed. It also immediately threw me back to an excruciating course on Modernism that I took at university - just to give you an idea, Ulysses and The Waste Land were required reading. I don’t know too much about American literature, and because of this Modernism, primarily a European movement, with its emphasis on finding new forms of expression, and discussion of the change and breakdown of society and social structures, was the thing that immediately leapt to mind when thinking about the post – war years. Despite being part of this specific American generation of writers, Tender is the Night fits well into the Modernist tradition, particularly for it’s’ denial of previously accepted absolute truths such as love and marriage, and emphasis on the temporary nature of everything, from money, to love, to sanity itself.

Previous to reading this, my only experience of Fitzgerald was of falling in love with The Great Gatsby while at college. When I first started Tender is the Night , I was worried that the Gatsby love was just a fling, brought on by my first experiences of a proper academic library, combined with my first forays into the world of literature proper, but after a while I realised that, no, I actually just love Fitzgerald’s style.

Tender is the Night was F. Scott Fitzgerald’s final novel, and it reads as if it were a goodbye. It is, as many people have noted, basically an autobiography of the Fitzgerald marriage – Zelda Fitzgerald was hospitalised with schizophrenia, just as Nicole Diver is in the book, and Fitzgerald himself had problems with alcohol, as does Dick Diver.

It focuses on Dick Diver, a psychiatrist, and his wife Nicole, whom he first meets as a schizophrenia patient at a clinic in Zurich. Their relationship is the crux of the novel, and is expanded through the people that they surround themselves with. It shows very clearly, the almost bipolar extremities of the Divers’ relationship. In the beginning, Dick feels that he can protect Nicole; from the world, her past, herself. She needs holding together, and he is the one to do that. However, throughout the novel the dynamic of the relationship changes. Dick has affairs, most especially with Rosemary Hoyt, an actress, and Nicole, to some extent, allows this, but as the story progresses, and Nicole regains her sanity and strength, the dynamic changes, as she becomes the one to leave him. A lot happens during the course of the novel, but at the same time, not much: a duel, a murder, incest, affairs, marital breakdown, police brutality, and mental illness, are all part of its makeup, but still the story remains down to earth, rather than sensational, detached from reality, while all the time having a feeling of truth and relatibility about it.

I personally loved the way that the fragmented structure and style related to the cycles of sanity and insanity in the story. It begins in a coherent manner,  told through the eyes of Rosemary Hoyt, an actress, whom the Divers take into their ‘set’, and it is her impression of them that we’re first given. The second part of the novel jumps back in time to tell the story of Dick and Nicole, and Nicole’s breakdown becomes apparent in the breaking down of sentences and though patterns towards the end of the second part. As the book begins, Nicole is fragile, and unable to differentiate the real from the false , but as she manages to find her sanity, and break free from Dick, he descends increasingly into alcoholism and depression. One of the things that I really enjoyed, was that despite the central character being male, I really felt like the women won out in the end. Tender is the Night  seemed to me to be a book which showed the strength of women. One of my favourite passages was fairly early on in the book:

“Their difference from so many American women, lay in the fact that they were all happy to exist in a man’s world – they preserved their individuality through men and not by opposition to them” p45

At this point in history, where a woman’s role was fairly much still defined by men, especially if she was married, Fitzgerald is granting his women the privilege of existing within a male dominated world, but as individuals, rather than just as ‘wives’. The central story of the novel is Nicole’s regaining of her identity, and independence. At the end of the novel, Nicole is the strong, victorious one, and Dick, whose brilliance as a doctor is gone on and on about, throughout the story, fades into obscurity. The last lines of the novel are:

"in any case, he is almost certainly in that section of the country, in one town or another”p274

A few things I disliked, just to even it up, were how shallow most of the characters were, although I do appreciate that this is part of the society Fitzgerald is trying to represent. I also was annoyed by the fact that Nicole only left Dick in the end, because there was another man around who she knew loved her, and not because she had actually gained any real independence or ability to be her own person. That may just be the slightly ranty feminist in me coming out, though.

I often feel that many other bloggers think and process what they are reading much more than I do. Like, my brain got me through 3 years of university, and then just gave up and died. Reading Tender is the Night made me feel like it had come alive again. I actually immersed myself in it, I read slowly, trying to take in every single word (I’m usually a terrible skimmer!), I revelled in all the natural scenery; the sea, the mountains, the vivid imagery, and I loved every single second, from about page 40 onwards.

Having read Booksploring’s  review of Zelda Fitzgerald’s Save Me The Waltz, I think that this will have to be my next read!