1. To me, the phrase "east of Eden" is another way of saying "after the fall", referring to life outside the Garden of Eden. In his novel, East of Eden, John Steinbeck tells the story of two families who are, in some ways, trying to recapture the beauty and perfection of the Garden of Eden, but they live in a world of good and evil and this conflict is constant.
I find this novel painful.
I dread when I can see the evil in the novel at work and it's painful to witness the idealistic characters who are oblivious to the evil in their midst and, I'm thinking, must inevitably suffer tragedy.
2. I don't remember exactly how it worked, but I am pretty sure it was at Whitworth where, as the semester was drawing to an end, we had what was called Reading Day -- or maybe even Reading Days -- to have time before final exams to read and prepare.
Well, whether I am remembering that correctly or not, today was a reading day for me and thankfully it was not connected to any final exams.
It's definitely a contradiction that I can find a day of reading so relaxing and enjoyable even as I'm reading this long novel with its dark under and over tones and its sense of doom vibrating through it.
I don't know how East of Eden turns out and I have a long way to go to finish it.
But, as of now, as I read the early stages of the book's Part 2, I'm feeling the story's sense of inevitable tragedy.
And, yet, I'm enjoying the book -- I don't enjoy the darkness, but I enjoy the act of reading itself and I enjoy savoring Steinbeck's language, imaginative powers, ability to draw characters, and his storytelling gifts.
3. My reading day progressed largely uninterrupted because Debbie got creative in the kitchen and made a superb pasta sauce combining ground beef, a Trader Joe's can of eggplant, tomato, and onion, some chopped onion, and a small can of spicy V8 juice and we ate it over some twisty pasta.
I hope we remember how she did this. This sauce turned out to be one of my all-time favorites.
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