East of Eden (a book review post)

Once upon a time, I would have assumed general knowledge about the story of Cain and Abel. About most Bible stories, actually. But, then, I grew up in the Bible Belt where I was surrounded by people, whether they were church-goers or not, who had general knowledge of Bible stories. That assumption on my part was wrong. I've learned (and learned hard) to never assume knowledge by other people. Or, even, any kind of intelligence or curiosity or desire to know things.

So let's talk about Cain and Abel for a moment because Steinbeck believed that it was one of the most, maybe the most, foundational allegories from the Bible. He felt it was so important that he used it twice in the same book. Yes, twice. I'm not sure he's wrong. The sequel I'm working on to The House on the Corner is called Brother's Keeper and uses some of the same themes.

If you don't know the story of Adam and Eve, you'll  have to go research that one on your own.

Adam and Eve had two sons: Cain and Abel. Cain, the older, was a plant man, and Abel was an animal man. God asked them to make some sacrifices to him and, of course, they offered him the stuff they were each familiar with. Cain brought god the fruits of his garden, and Abel provided a barbeque. As it turned out, god was into meat and really liked the lamb chops Abel cooked up and left the salad untouched. God later died of a heart attack because he didn't eat his greens, but that was later. At the time, he snubbed Cain's gift and this, of course, caused Cain some amount of upset.

After god was gone, Cain and Abel got into an argument over the incident. I imagine that Abel was a bit smug about it all, though the Bible doesn't say that but, knowing how brothers are with each other, it's more than possible that Abel started the argument by taunting Cain about it. "Hah, hah! God liked my offering better than yours!" That kind of thing. The argument got heated, and Cain picked up a rock and smacked his brother in the head with it, killing him. I don't remember if the rock part is actually in the Bible, but that's how it feels to me at the moment.

Some time later, god comes looking for his new buddy Abel. Probably, he wanted to know if there were anymore of those lambchops or what he would need to do to get Abel to grill him up some more of them. Not finding Abel around anywhere, he went and asked Cain where his brother was, to which Cain replied, "How should I know? Am I my brother's keeper?" Of course, god, being god, already knew what had happened and got super pissed at Cain because he wasn't going to get anymore of those chops, and he didn't want any of Cain's salad, either, because salad is for sissy gods. He cursed and banished Cain and made it a law that from that from that point forward everyone had to make offerings of lamb chops to him.

Steinbeck explores this story through the character of Adam Trask who, in the beginning of the novel, plays the part of Abel and, at the end of the novel, plays the role of god. Along the way, he marries his "Eve" and attempts to create his own Garden of Eden, which is how he refers to it, but, as we know from the story of Adam and Eve (see, you need to know this one, too), Eden cannot last.

The story is seemingly told by Steinbeck himself. "He" is in the narrative as a boy through some of the action and uses his own family and family history as a backdrop to Adam's story. I don't know how accurate any of it is, but Steinbeck frequently based characters in his stories on real people from the towns he lived in. At any rate, the use of his own family history serves to pad the novel quite a bit, which isn't a bad thing. There are some humorous moments in there.

Like this one:

Samuel Hamilton, who is, in the book, the grandfather of young John Steinbeck, is one of the central characters once Adam has moved to the Salinas Valley. His teenage children are going to a dance and one of the boys, in an attempt to make sure he has a date, asks two different girls to the dance. They both say yes. Rather than tell one of them he overbooked, he decides to take them both. The problem, though, is that the buggy he's taking his dates to the dance in only has room for two. That won't work. So the boy takes a couch that his mother loves and puts wheels on it and hooks that up behind the horse instead. Problem solved. And his father, laughing, doesn't stop him or warn his son about all of the trouble he's going to be in when his mother finds out. He's too busy laughing and decides the boy should have to deal with the consequences himself.

I'm not going to spoil any of the story for you by dropping into a philosophical discussion of personal choice. I'll just say this: Steinbeck focuses his look at Cain and Abel on the characterization of Cain and how he deals with his disappointment at not receiving favor. This is how the story has always been framed every time I've heard it my entire life. Cain sinned and deserved what god did to him. Actually, god was merciful to Cain in that he only banished him. Steinbeck does offer one very small twist to the discussion in his exploration of the word "timshel" and the contrast between what it actually means and how it has been translated in the Bible. He makes the story about personal choice. Now that I think about it, the above humor example feeds into this narrative as well.

I've never really bothered to question the Cain and Abel story as it was presented to me as a child and, then, throughout my life. Why would I have, right? Experts for thousands of years have dissected this story and presented their conclusions about it. Cain was overcome with jealousy and murdered his brother because of it. God, who could have taken Cain's life in exchange, was, instead, merciful and allowed Cain to only be banished, commanding him to "go and conquer sin" or, as Jesus later says, "Go and sin no more."

However, thinking about this story in a new way because of Steinbeck's presentation of it, now looking at the responsibility of the father in all of this, I'm going to come out now and say that it's god who is the villain in this allegory. God is a bad father. God pits one child against the other, alienating one of them in the process while showering the other with praise. Cain and Abel were children. The burden of Abel's death lies not on Cain but on god. God is the parent in the situation, and it's his responsibility to manage it, to show some sort of fairness, to treat his children equally. To make it worse, god, being all knowing, is doing all of this on purpose. He knows the pain he's causing Cain and knows what the outcome will be, yet "god" chooses to do it anyway. That's some fucked up shit, god. I'd say it's, at least, borderline child abuse. Reckless endangerment? Something...

But it gets better, since god then kicks Cain out of the house. And that is actually child abuse. It's not legal to kick your minor child out onto the street to fend for himself in the world. So, you know, god would get thrown in jail for that kind of behavior today.

What I'm getting at here is that this is definitely a book worth reading. Not surprising since it's Steinbeck.

And, just to mention it, one of the best characters in the novel is a character named Lee, an Asian servant. Lee starts out almost a caricature of the Oriental servant, something many people have called Steinbeck racist for doing. However, he begins Lee as this stereotype, really, to show us that he's not. As the story develops, Steinbeck turns Lee into probably the most well-rounded and real character in the book. He is no racial stereotype but a real human being, and I think Steinbeck wants us to see that. He wants us to see that you can't lump people into these racial categories and think that they're all the same. If you bother to try to get to know someone, bother to look past the clichés and the stereotypes, you will find real people with their own desires and struggles, likes and dislikes, hopes and dreams for the future. He explores all of it with Lee.

Having done a bit of reading up on Steinbeck, I'm going to go out on what is probably not much of a limb and say that Steinbeck was very against racism, to the point of his name removed from the writing credits of a film that he felt had racist undertones that his script did not contain.

I'm not going to lie and try to pass of Eden as an easy read, but it's not a difficult one. It's just a bit long and, at times, it's difficult to tell where the story is going. But, you know, I think it's going the same place that life goes. It just goes. It's sprawling. It would never get published today at the length it is. Whole sections would get cut out, and the book would be the worse for it, so I'm glad it was written when it was and that it came out the way Steinbeck wanted it to.
Go read it.

Cannery Row (a book review post)

If you ever visit Monterey -- and you should -- you will notice a large... I don't know; is it a statue? Is it a bunch of individual statues all perched on the same rock? Is it a monument? Whatever it is, it's there on the waterfront in Cannery Row. The picture above is just the top of it. There are more figures all over the rocks of the "monument." It's a dedication to Steinbeck and the people who populated his stories. You can't see it in this picture, but there are also frogs all over the statue. Monument. Thing.

Cannery Row wasn't always called Cannery Row. It was, however, the area on the waterfront in Monetery where all of the sardine canning was done and, when Steinbeck wrote his novel about the area, he called it Cannery Row. Later, the city changed the name of the location to Cannery Row. There are no longer any active canneries there, but it is the location of the Monterey Bay Aquarium, which is housed in one of the old canneries.

It's been a long time since I read any Steinbeck, probably 20 years or more, so it was really nice to slip into Cannery Row, which I picked up at the Monterey Bay Aquarium back in January. And you do slip into the novel, kind of like walking into town on the beach trail from Pacific Grove, which is what we did. Just without any of the interesting characters that populate the novel. But, if they'd been there, we would have slipped in amongst them completely unnoticed, probably as Steinbeck himself did.

His power is his characters. Especially since there's not much actual plot. Things happen, sometimes funny things, sometimes tragic things, but they happen and you move on and, mostly, you never return to those things again. It's about the characters and their lives. And, well, throwing a party. Also, there are frogs, so, when I was reading the novel, the monument thing and the frogs all over it suddenly made sense.

The book has the feeling of sitting around with buddies, maybe drinking a beer, or, maybe, drinking Eddie's special hooch, and recounting stories -- "Hey, remember that time...?" -- or telling them to some new member of the group who hasn't heard all of the ones. And maybe that's really all it is. But it was nice to sit with them and listen to their stories, and it made me wish I had been there to be a part of them. Which, I suppose, is as powerful as a book can be.

It also made me want to get back into other Steinbeck, which, also, is as powerful as a book can be.
"I want to read more of this." Steinbeck has always been one of my favorite authors, but you can forget why when you've been away for a while. This book reminded me.

Parcivillian -- Part 4 (a local color post)

Technically, I know the above photo does not qualify as a successful photo, but I really like how it looks, so it's the one you're getting. Well, and the one below, too.

The photos are from a recent performance by Parcivillian and, whereas I would love to talk about that performance and talk about the rehearsal session I sat in on (which was fascinating!), I need to finish up the interview. The part I skipped over. See, being a writer, I felt compelled to ask the guys about, well, what kinds of things they read. In relation to that, I found it really cool that the name of their band comes from a book (see last week's post).

Me: The next question I'm going to ask is going to seem, possibly, weird or offtrack because it has nothing to do with music.

Elliot: How many pets do you have?

Me: No... [And that did make me laugh.] I'm a writer, and a lot of the people who follow my blog are writers, so, as a writer, do you read and what do you read?

Someone, at that point, said, "Oh, boy!" but I can'd tell who it was.

Me: Or have there been any influential books you have read? Even if it's like The Monster at the End of the Book.

Delek: John Steinbeck is my all-time favorite writer. I've read every book he's written.

Me: What's your favorite Steinbeck?

Delek: Actually, Cannery Row. Or, no... I always forget the name. The one about the pirate. That's my favorite one. [There followed a discussion where we (Delek, Elliot, and I) tried to figure out the book, but none of us could come up with which one he meant. I'm still not sure, because I haven't read whichever one it is.] Bukowski, too. I love Bukowski. [I redirected back to Steinbeck through some questions about Steinbeck's King Arthur stuff, so the next comments are about Steinbeck.] Mainly the things about California. And people. How he writes about people. His knowledge of what makes people human is probably what attracts me to his writing.... He's probably my all time favorite writer, but I've read countless books, and I'm still reading countless books. Some stuff in science, some in history. I just read this incredible biography about Benjamin Franklin. It's like music; I read a lot of stuff. I used to read a lot of fantasy.

Me: I went through high school reading fantasy.

Delek: Do you know David Eddings?

Me: Oh, yeah! The Belgariad, after The Lord of the Rings, I think is the best fantasy series ever written.

Elliot: I read that, too.

Delek: I liked that. I liked that actually better than The Lord of the Rings. I liked his writing a lot.
[There was some more discussion about Eddings (during which I do entirely too much of the talking), after which Delek turned to Stav and said, "What do you read?"]

Stav: That's the weird thing; I actually don't read that much. And it's weird because I love writing lyrics to songs but, as far as books and novels, I just don't do it.

Me: They're completely different beasts.

Stav: Yeah, that's right. I did read the Harry Potter books when I was a kid, of course. Those, I loved. They were great. Read books for school. But I'm a very slow reader so, as far as school goes, I kind of struggled through the books, so that's kind of where I'm at. But I love poetry, even though I don't know many huge poets. In school, I loved analyzing and studying the poems. As far as literature, I love poetry, and that's what I try to do when I write songs.

Me: As a song writer, I'd be surprised if you didn't have some kind of attachment to poetry.
[There was a bit more general talk of poetry before we moved on to Elliot.]

Elliot: My all time favorite book is The Pastures of Heaven by Steinbeck.

Me: I haven't read that one.

Delek: That one's amazing.

Elliot: It is. It's the most incredible perspective I've ever seen on the human being. [There's some discussion about Pastures and what it's about.]

Me: Y'all are going to make me have to pick back up on Steinbeck after this.

Elliot: Lately, I've gotten into more novels. Actually, this is a funny story [points at Delek]; he taught me how to read.

Me: Yeah? That's cool!

Elliot: He gave me the first Harry Potter book and worked through about the first chapter with me, I think, and said, "You're on your own." Then I read the whole thing.

Delek: That is a funny story.

Elliot: Yeah... I got into David Eddings. I got into Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett...

Delek: Yeah!

Me: Good Omens.

Elliot: Exactly. [There followed a back and forth discussion of Gaiman and Pratchett.] Somewhere after eighth grade, I got really into Shakespeare, including the poetry. I love that stuff. [Then, there was a discussion of Hamlet.]

Interestingly enough, this all moved into a discussion of the book Parzival, which is the book they took they name from (which you know if you read last week's post (link above)), but they didn't mention the connection at that point. They (Elliot and Delek) just went on and on about how good it is. Stav will have to read it this year, so he hasn't had that experience of it, yet.

Elliot: Of course, I've read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Actually, I like The Hobbit better. I've read [it] three times.

There was some other discussion about The Hobbit during which I talked way too much, and that's where we left the discussion of reading and went back to music. It was great for me to talk to them about what they've read and what's influenced them, and, really, I may have to pick Steinbeck up again. It's actually something I've been meaning to do anyway, so...

And that's a look inside an up and coming band. I hope great things for these guys. They're music is great, and they were a pleasure to meet and hang out with. I'm sure you'll hear a bit more about them from me in the future. They have a concert coming up, so it's not too unlikely that there will be a post about that. Until, then, check out "Lonely Road."