Books That Made Me Cry - East of Eden

Shut up! I'm not crying, you're crying!

Books can affect you in any number of ways. Sometimes they  introduce you to new ideas and make your world bigger. Sometimes they speak to something deep inside you and make you feel like someone else understands. Sometimes they just wrench your guts out and send a cascade of hot tears down your face and make you wish you hadn't started reading that chapter on the bus.

East of Eden by John Steinbeck

HERE THERE BE SPOILERS!

When'd I read it?: This was an assigned reading book the summer before Advanced Lit & Comp in 11th grade.

What's it about?: This is a big one. In the dedication Steinbeck says "Everything I have is in it, and it is not full." Part family history, part retelling of various stories from Bible, East of Eden tells the stories of the (fictional) Trask family and the (real) Hamilton family (Steinbeck's mother's family). The Trasks seem doomed to relive biblical stories of brothers clashing (Cain and Abel, Jacob and Essau, Joseph and his brothers) while the Job-like Samuel Hamilton can't seem to leverage his prodigious talents into the kind of success that might bring his large family financial stability. It's peak John Steinbeck with broad humor (the chapter about his mother "winning" a ride in an airplane during WWI is hilarious), pathos (see below), lurid details (I mean, anything about Adam Trask's wife Cathy's job as a prostitute and later a blackmailing madam), and gorgeous passages describing the California landscape. It's one of my favorite books, I re-read it every two years or so, and it always makes me cry, and always in the same place (hint: the picture is a clue).

Why'd I cry?: As the novel progresses, Samuel Hamilton's children gradually leave the ranch and make lives for themselves. On the other hand, Tom (John Steinbeck's uncle) stays, even after his parents have moved into the Steinbeck house in Salinas. Tom is boisterous and sensitive, given to fits of passion and dark moods. Unlike his brothers and sisters, he can never seem to find his place in the world. After accidentally causing the death of his older sister, Dessie, Tom mails two letters. One to his mother, telling her that he's going to try to break in a new horse, the other to his brother, Will, asking that no matter what, he should tell their mother that Tom died after being thrown off of a horse. He returns home and shoots himself. I don't know how closely the Hamilton sections of the novel hew to real life, but this always opens up the waterworks. Tears streaming down my face, wiping my nose. Even if I'm riding the bus.

Would it make me cry again if I re-read the book now?: 100%, definitely, absolutely, for sure.

Links:

John Steinbeck's address at the 1962 Nobel banquet.

Also, apparently the Nobel committee for Literature wasn't actually that into Steinbeck, in spite of selecting him for the prize. Their loss