Books

East of Eden

For generations, two families interact in California’s Salinas Valley.

I read this on @drewcoffman.eth’s strong endorsement. He was spot on. It was one of the best books I’ve ever read.

Steinbeck’s a good, naturalistic writer with boundless empathy for his characters, so the whole book feels immediate, authentic, and real.

A lot of the sibling relationships are structured around the Cain and Abel motif (by far the best part of the genesis story) in a totally plausible way. Again, feels natural and real but also mythical and eternal.

The character development is noteworthy. Most of the characters grapple with moral conundrums, many of them get better at it over time.

And the there’s Cathy. One of the greatest satan-incarnate villains in all of literature. Chills just recalling her.

Highest strength, highest urgency recommendation. Up there with 100 Years of Solitude on the list of books everyone must read before they die. As captivating as a soap opera, as profound as a myth.

Faust

The devil convinces a scholar to swap his soul for knowledge and worldly pleasure; scholar discovers it was a bad decision. 

I wanted so badly to love it.

The synopsis is so tantalizing. All my favorite German authors act like Goethe is the greatest of all time. @july even named his company after it. 

But the actual text was just more than I could handle. You have to grind hard to extract the ideas, even those that aren’t wrapped in allegories. And tracking down all the obscure allusions would require tens, maybe hundreds of hours. It jumps from character to character and fantasy to reality at a head spinning rate.

It strikes me as the kind of text you take a four credit seminar on, not the kind of text you’d read like just another book. 

I’ve read two different translations (separated by a decade or so) and neither one clicked for me. It presumably comes across better in the original German.

If you’re going to try it, know what you’re getting into. Not for the faint of heart.

creating and destroying; flying cars, roc.camera, july.rocks