Even Nobel Laureates Get the Blues


At fifteen, I was obsessed with East of Eden.

East of EdenLike Ethan Frome, The Great Gatsby, and A Farewell to Arms, the book was a gift from my mom. I’m convinced she passed it along in part so we could pass our time stuck in traffic by identifying similarities between my father and Steinbeck’s feral sociopath, Cathy Ames.

Steinbeck is so out of vogue these days that expressing anything but disdain for his work is tantamount to proclaiming Lonesome Dove or The Prince of Tides a seminal work of American literature. Even praise for The Grapes of Wrath has all but dried up. So when I returned to East of Eden recently, I wasn’t sure what to expect.

Despite the repetition and the melodrama, and the often clumsy ways set pieces are pushed into place, though, I was sucked into the story as if for the first time. Is this because I imprinted on the story and its characters at such a formative age? Quite possibly. I’ve rarely been as haunted by a literary passage as I used to be by this one:

I believe there are monsters born in the world to human parents. Some you can see, misshapen and horrible, with huge heads or tiny bodies; some are born with no arms, no legs, some with three arms, some with tails or mouths in odd places. They are accidents and no one’s fault, as used to be thought. Once they were considered the visible punishments for concealed sins.

And just as there are physical monsters, can there not be mental or psychic monsters born? The face and body may be perfect, but if a twisted gene or a malformed egg can produce physical monsters, may not the same process produce a malformed soul?

Don’t worry, I’m not recommending that you run out and read the book. I might give a copy to my stepdaughter, but it’s not something I’d feel confident about pressing on another grown-up. All of this is really just an extended segue.

Returning to East of Eden led me do some digging into Steinbeck’s life, and I discovered that he wrote letters to his editor, Pascal Covici, every day alongside his manuscript. These were published in 1969 as Journal of a Novel: The East of Eden Letters. They narrate not just the progress of Steinbeck’s book, but the minutiae of his days.

On and on and on he goes — about his new desk, his electric sharpener, his urgent need for four dozen new long pencils.

He forges ahead with his writerly plans, saying he has to write this book his way, in his time. He can’t be rushed. He won’t be questioned. This is the novel he’s been preparing for all his life. Soon, though, he’s hinting around: are the characters believable, the scenes clear, the themes subtle enough? Finally he hits up the editor for an honest reaction — and, upon receiving it, slides into a depression.

I want to ask and even beg one thing of you — that we do not discuss the book any more when you come over. No matter how delicately we go about it, it confuses me and throws me off the story. So from now on let’s do the weather or fleas or something else but let’s leave the book alone…. Once it is done, you may tear it to shreds if you wish and I won’t object, and I’ll go along with you, but right now you and I forget the delicate sets of balances involved. There are no good collaborations and all this discussion amounts to collaboration. So, we’ll do that, if you don’t mind. And let’s stop counting pages too. I am not being difficult, I hope. It is just too hard on me to try to write, defend an criticise all at the same time. I can quite easily do each one separately. Let me keep the literary discussions on these poor pages. Then we will have no quarrels.

The letters manage to be dramatic and monotonous simultaneously — no small feat. They are relentlessly, ridiculously self-important. And I read every word.

Here’s a guy who won the Nobel Prize, and his moanings about writing were as tedious as anybody’s. Maybe even mine, though I wouldn’t put money on it.

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February 6th, 2007
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Viewing 15 Comments

    • ^
    • v
    I want to ask and even beg one thing of you...

    I loved that whole quote. I think I might use that line right there a lot -- whenever it strikes me to do so. Watch for it on my blog!

    Great post.
    • ^
    • v
    Artists as a whole tend to be melodramatic and self-centered. Even the greats rarely understand why they are great, which is why so few are good critics. The lone published exception possibly being Oscar Wilde.
    That Steinbeck is not respected the way he should be says more for our deliterate culture, which fobs off writers not even capable of being hacks- Eggers, Foster Wallace, Frey, as writers, and gives awards to hacks- JC Oates, TC Boyle, or current Poet Laureate Donald Hall.
    Even worse is when people leach off of the success of their forebears, such as Steinbeck's son: http://www.cosmoetica.com/B288-DES228.htm

    The only way to combat it is to avoid the systems that promote such bad writers. Too many artists delude themselves the way American Idol rejects do because no one actually wants to criticize. 99.9% of all writing is BAD, and that won't change by not acknowledging it. Worse, are the MFA scams which take $ from the talentless.
    Then, America's history is all about con men, sio why shd Academia be any better?
    • ^
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    As a writer who counts accusations of "being melodramatic" among her earliest memories, which sounded (then and now) like the worst sin a three-year-old could commit, I suppose fiction writers are obnoxiously sensitive. Writing fiction, like they say of comedy, is hard. One reliable reason I do it is for an adrenaline rush like no other.
    That said, so much of what Steinbeck wrote comes across to me as corny that I miss passages like the one quoted, even though it rings familiar.
    Good, bad, melodramatic or sublimely subtle, fiction writers deserve, to my mind anyway, some forbearance. Even in Steinbeck's day, they struggled to earn a living. The adrenaline-fueled activity if one practices it long enough can drive you crazy, especially if like so many fiction writers, you did not start out among the hardiest souls.
    Given that so few people read fiction anymore, I do not expect fiction writers be given attention, just a bit more patience than, say, a famous and dazzling gladiator who is commonly widely admired, praised, and rich.
    • ^
    • v
    Great post. I escaped Steinbeck somehow, though I know at 18 a friend gave me East of Eden as one of her favorites for me to read.
    • ^
    • v
    What a wonderful post. I remember reading him in high school, I had the feeling I hadn't lived long enough to truly appreciate it. I re-read some of his work a few years ago and realized I had been right.
    • ^
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    Kat: Bad writers shd struggle so that they do give up. I'm reminded of Yeats' line in The Second Coming:

    'The best lack all convictions, while the worst
    Are full of passionate intensity.'

    Tioo true re: modern writers. Those w talent give up because getting published is a crapshoot divorced from quality, while the bad, obsessed, and psychotic, trudge on. Or, like Steinbeck's son, bring disgrace to their name.
    • ^
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    Dan,

    Well, you just flipped everything I've always believed right on its head. That thought sure is a drain on the spirit.

    At least you've given me something to think about ... not sure I want to, though.
    • ^
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    East of Eden is the only Steinbeck book i haven't read. It has been on the must read list for years. It's shame he has gone out of style. He should be respected, if for nothing else, then for the power that a book like Grapes can have in a society. That was a time when literture could touch the masses and shape a society.
    • ^
    • v
    Blue Girl: I love that line, too. It's like beseech -- but even more dramatic.

    Agreed on the praise for The Grapes of Wrath. Has anyone read it recently? I think that's the next of his I'll go back to.
    • ^
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    I wasn't aware that Steinbeck had gone out of style. Good thing I don't follow what the lit crit types think.

    Effete, , self referential, overly refined writing is what they often like, not writing with power. And like it or not, if you can avoid sliding into cliche, using archetypes and repetition and so on can be very powerful.

    One of the problems that lit types have is the same as many movie critics have - many have read too much, and have become jaded. The simple pleasures are no longer enough for them, because they've read them too often. Something more subtle, refined, or something more outre and "shocking" is needed.
    • ^
    • v
    I went through a kind of Steinbeck phase and read a bunch of his stuff, including East of Eden, though that book didn't make much of an impression.

    His short novels (The Pearl, etc) are often far too simplistic - parables, really, and not very good.

    The Grapes of Wrath, however, at least as I remember it, was a knockout: deservedly called a classic, warts and all.

    I also much enjoyed Travels with Charlie.
    • ^
    • v
    I too am surprised to hear the Steinbeck is out of style. I read his stuff a long time ago now, and I didn't like all of it, but I've always thought, and still do, that Grapes of Wrath is one of the two truly Great American Novels (The other being Huckleberry Finn, which no doubt tells you something about me.) I also liked Sweet Thursday better than his other famous classic Cannery row, which probably says something else about me. Anyway,those books spoke/speak to me, and (Grapes of Wrath, at least) to a lot of people. I read a lot, and I can't write for beans, so I'm always grateful for people who can write in ways I can connect with--even if not all their stuff measures up to their own best standards.
    • ^
    • v
    I am reminded of a wonderful afternoon that I spent in a comfy chair many years ago reading Steinbeck's The Moon is Down.
    I still have a distinct picture in my mind of the mood of the town that is occupied by an unnamed country's army, but is certainly Germany's.
    It's very relevant today.
    I've just found this site and am very happy reading here...
    • ^
    • v
    What I take from this post is that Maud is feeling Steinbeck (as the rappers say) as she hasn't in years, because she sees his struggles on the page and sees how ridiculous they sound, maybe even to him, and can't help but sympathize.

    But although Steinbeck may be out of vogue these days with the critics, he's still a huge presence in American storytelling, not just for "Grapes of Wrath," but for "Of Mice and Men," and, on a personal scale, not so far really from Bukowski and Miller, for "Travels with Charley." As well some other popular books that would really tick off the critics.

    Which raises the question: How much do the critics matter, really?

    Sorry, guess I shouldn't bring that up on this site.
    • ^
    • v
    Steinbeck has been out of favor for a long time. (Bradbry's "The Parrot Who Knew Papa" has him describe Steinbeck as "Finished last in the league.")

    His prose is as painful as Hawthorne's, and eliding "the repetition and the melodrama, and the often clumsy ways set pieces are pushed into place" is not exactly a setup for praise.

    He hits brilliant notes but rarely presents a complete symphony. (His social effect surely deserves to be credited, as greg in ak noted.)

    In fact, if there is anyone today who is his successor, it's probably Stephen King (who I would certainly prefer to DFW for the Nobel; then again, I might be willing to make an argument for Lonesome Dove as a seminal work of American literature).
 

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