"To Know That There Are Other Rivers"

In Steinbeck's first journal entry dated January 29, 1951, he notes that he is writing the book for his sons. Then, he refers to the Salinas River in his home county as the backdrop for the work.

"And so I will tell them one of the greatest, perhaps the greatest story of all – the story of good and evil, of strength and weakness, of love and hate, of beauty and ugliness. I shall try to demonstrate to them how these doubles are inseparable – how neither can exist without the other and how out of their groupings creativeness is born. I shall tell them this story against the background of the county I grew up in and along the river I know and do not love very much. For I have discovered that there are other rivers. And this my boys will not know for a long time nor can they be told. A great many never come to know that there are other rivers." (Journal of a Novel, 4)

I'm most interested in his discussion of "other rivers."

David Wyatt, in his Introduction to the Penguin Classics edition of East of Eden, notes, "Other Rivers" would have been a good title for the novel.

The juxtaposition of the Salinas River and other rivers is another framing for the novel. The one and the many. The specific and the universal. As Steinbeck notes in another journal entry: "Maybe I can create a universal family living next to a universal neighbor" (Journal of a Novel, 8).

I hear in this metaphor a sense of discovery and a theory of human development. We all begin with the single river – our culture, religion, or family of origin. To mature is to discover other rivers – cultures, religious, families. And the question becomes how we deal with those different rivers. How do those other rivers resonate with our river?

Steinbeck continues in his journal entry:

"Perhaps that knowledge is saved for maturity and very few people ever mature. It is enough if they flower and reseed. That is all that nature requires of them. But sometimes in a man or a woman awareness takes place – not very often and always inexplainable. There are no words for it because there is no one ever to tell. This is a secret not kept a secret, but locked in wordlessness. The craft or art of writing is the clumsy attempt to find symbols for the wordlessness."

When the awareness occurs, when we discover the other rivers, there are no words. There's something almost mystical here in Steinbeck's writing. For a writer to speak of inexplicable and wordless realities is bold. So, we are left with symbols, according to Steinbeck. We write about symbols, clumsily.

I think Steinbeck finds the stories of Genesis – the Garden of Eden story and the story of Cain and Abel – to be "symbols for the wordlessness." They speak to us and trouble us.

Perhaps they are a part of our river. Perhaps they are part of the other rivers we are invited to see alongside our river.

Reading Schedule

Week of June 22-28: read chapters 20-24
Week of June 29-July 5: read chapters 25-30
Week of July 6-12: read chapters 31-39
Week of July 13-19: read chapters 40-48
Week of July 20-26: read chapters 49-55

A Benediction (Or Miscellaneous Thoughts)

Ask a friend to catch up and join the Summer Book Club! If you know someone who might want to read East of Eden with us, forward this email to them.