10. East Of Eden: Steinbeck, Sin, and Redemption

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He enters his vehicle information on Carvana and offers appears in minutes. Remarkable. He squints, reads it again, smiles and says, "Dang, that's a good offer." The highest form of approval, no haggling, no hassle, no one called him boss. He's still on that couch, astonishing. Sell your car today on Carvana.com, pick up fees may apply. Now at Kruger, your points add up to more ways to save every trip. Use them your way to take dollars off groceries at checkout or save at the pump. You can even save up to $35 on your next fill-up. Same points, more choices. And with low prices on fresh quality food, plus digital and personalized offers tailored to how you shop, your dollar goes further. Redeem your points online or in the app. Kruger, fresh for everyone, restrictions apply, seaside or store for details. Her voice came from so near that he jerked his head back. He heard richness in her voice. "Dear?" she said softly. "I didn't know you would take it so. I'm sorry, Adam." His breath burst hoarsely out of his throat. His hand trembled trying to turn the key. He pushed the door open. She stood three feet away. In her right hand, she held his cult and the black hole in the barrel pointed at him. He took a step toward her, saw that the hammer was back. She shot him. The heavy slugs struck him in the shoulder and flattened and tore out a piece of his shoulder blade. The flash and roar smothered him and he staggered back and fell to the floor. She moved slowly toward him cautiously as she might toward a wounded animal. He stared up into her eyes which inspected him impersonally. She tossed the pistol on the floor beside him and walked out of the house. That is probably the most melodramatic and violent of many melodramatic and violent confrontations in John Steinbeck's novel "East of Eden" which he published in 1952. It's a family saga set in the Seleness Valley of California where Steinbeck grew up, but it's much more than that. Steinbeck of course, he's seen as the great champion of the downtrodden in America of the Californian workers, the Dust Bowl, Depression, America of Mice and Men, and the rapes of Roth is most famous books, high school standards, aren't they? But this is the book that Steinbeck regarded as his absolute masterpiece, the book by which he thought he'd be judged, and there's a lot going on in "East of Eden", isn't it? It's a very complex, surprisingly dramatic book, I think. It's a kind of massive retelling of the story of the opening chapters of Genesis in the Bible, particularly the story of Cain and Abel, and a little bit of Adam and Eve in there as well. It's a book about good and evil, about free will and destiny, how much we trapped by heredity or by sort of cycles that repeat down the generations. And above all, I guess from Steinbeck's point of view, he wrote it as a message to his two young sons. And basically what he was telling them was, you're not bound by the past, you're not trapped by history, you can choose your own fate, and be whatever you want, and you're not tainted by original sin or anything like that. I mean, that all seems fairly kind of straightforward, but it was very controversial at the time. A lot of critics absolutely hated it, and I keep, I'm struck by the fact that a lot of the books we've done so far on the book club have been hated by critics upon their publication, so there's something in that, but it's obviously been enduringly popular. So there was this very, very famous film in 1955 starring James Dean of only the second part of the book, an Aliyah Kazan film, and then Oprah Winfrey's book club, Oprah's book club, championed it in 2003 unexpectedly, and then that sent it back up to number two on the bestseller list. And she described it as maybe the best book she'd ever read. Wow, no less a critic than Oprah Winfrey. No less a critic. I know, we're following in some lofty footstuffs there, but then part of the reason that we were drawn back to it, or why certainly was, was because there's a Netflix adaptation coming out this year, starring Florence Pugh as Kathy, who we'll be getting on to because she is surely one of the most genuinely evil characters in all literature. We should just misunderstood tabby. We should misunderstood, yeah. So let's get into the plot a little bit and be warned, there will be spoilers, but this isn't, I think, a book in which the plot is really the point. Spoilers won't ruin reading it for you. So obviously, as you said, it's kind of a massive window into America during a period of flux. So the novel set in California's Salinas Valley and it chronicles the lives of these two interwoven families, the Trasks and the Hamilton's between the start of the 20th century and then the end of the First World War. And we start with the kind of the well-intentioned Adam Trask and he leaves his violent brother Charles to settle in this kind of Eden-like valley, the Salinas Valley. And he brings with him his mysterious but blatantly evil wife, Kathy. And she before coming to the Trasks, she turned up on their doorstep kind of half dead. She had burnt her parents alive, burnt down their house. When she was a teenager, property-led rebellion. Exactly, and we'll explain all that later on. But she had worked as a prostitute before becoming a mistress to a horrible pimp. Yeah. Anyway, she's pregnant, possibly with Charles's baby, but Adam believes it's his. And after they move, she's not happy in Salinas Valley and she gives birth, she ends up shooting Adam and running away. And that's the opening reading. And when Kathy goes off, she becomes this sadistic brothel owner. She's running the worst brothel in the town, right? Everyone speaks of in harsh tones. Exactly, famously sadistic. She kind of, it's famed for using the kind of dark toxic desires of powerful and rich men against them. Yes. Anyway, so meanwhile, a kind of broken hearted Adam raises his two sons, who Kathy has given birth to Caleb and Aaron, Cal and Aaron, with the help of his Chinese American servant, Lee. And their neighbors, the Hamilton, who I mentioned at the beginning, who, that Samuel Hamilton, he's nourished immigrant, he's well loved, and his family of endless children. I can't remember their names, but let's just look at them. Tom Dick and Harry. Tom Dick and Harry. Yeah, they might as well be. I mean, basically no one, they're massive spoiler. No one really cares that much about the Hamilton's. They take up, you know, do you? Yeah, I do. I love the Hamilton passages. Oh my, oh my God, I was tempted to skip those. I think it brings so much agility to what is otherwise quite a dark, but, you know, ultimately important story. Anyway, so the twins grow up and they kind of grow into polar opposites, like emblems of good and evil, maybe. Aaron is kind of good, kind, virtuous, Cal is kind of more troubled. And jealous, isn't he? He's jealous of his father's love. He's afflicted by guilt over the fact that he knows he has a real strain of evil inside him. Aaron becomes a priest, becomes obsessed with being virtuous, and then Cal wins back the family fortune, which Adam had lost in a ill-advised, refrigerated lettuce business. You'll never read a book that has more about refrigeration. Yeah. And frankly, it adds to the story, in my opinion. And they both seek the affection, same girl, Abra. Finally, this tragic conflict breaks out between Cal and Aaron, because Cal offers his father, his, you know, recently one fortune, Adam rejects it and says, you should be more like Aaron. In a fit of jealousy and kind of revenge, Cal takes Aaron, who he's discovered the true identity of his mother, Kathy, who's been living as his madame all these years, and takes Aaron to meet her and show him. Show them the brothel. Yeah, show them the brothel and show them like who he's born of, what's inside him. And Aaron is so appalled and repulsed by this that he enlists in the First World War and he dies during the battle. Kathy is also affected by this encounter. Adam's heartbroken, he has a stroke, and on his death bed, he forgives Cal and gives his blessing with this very particular ancient Hebrew word. But what it is, what it all means, will be revealing after the break. Before that, I know Dominic, you absolutely love this book. So for a moment or two, I'll indulge your passion for it. Tell me what you thought of Easter Eden. So I had never read this before. I had read Steinbeck, obviously, but not this one. I put off partly by the fact that it's quite long, and you have been waxing lyrical about it about what a brilliant book it was. I have to say I was a tiny bit suspicious. what? Um, I was a bit skeptical because the last massive book that you recommended to me Finneas Finn by Anthony Trollab, consumed a giant part of my life, and I wasn't even doing the podcast then, I was reading that for pleasure. This is basically what I do, and I seek to entrap you in long, tedious novels to sort of slowly rob you of the desire to live. I know you'd love it, so I don't want to reign on your parade. What do you love about it so much? Because you've always, you read this a long time ago, did you? I actually read it for the first time two years ago, so, not ages, and like right, right from the beginning, I was pretty captivated by it. I thought, and I hate, it slightly pains me to use this word because it's a bit vague and it's a bit sort of obvious, but I genuinely found it to be powerful, but not just powerful, also enjoyable. If felt as though it kind of encompassed everything that matters and is best and worse about being human, I love the way that Steinbeck writes, I have a real weakness for books like this, quite masculine prose, set in the, you know, West or Midwest America, and I love the way that even though it's just kind of plain masculine voice, he manages to have very old-naked and delicate descriptions into woven throughout. I loved his descriptions of the land, Sleen's Valley. I thought the characters were vivid. Yeah, the biblical stuff's a bit blatant, but it doesn't really bother me. Like, all stories are derivative of other stories, and the Bible is surely the biggest of all. Yeah. The source of some of the greatest stories of all time. So I absolutely loved it, and I did this time as well. Well, let's kick off by talking about Steinbeck himself. So Steinbeck's a really interesting character. He's born in the Sleen's Valley in California in 1902. Yeah, this is almost autobiographical, isn't it? There's a lot of his family history, and there's a lot of kind of therapy, I would say, in the writing of this book. Yeah. So he grew up in this sort of frontier valley. It's about 25 miles inland from the Pacific. His father, John Ernst Steinbeck, and he was a local government official, and his mother, Olive, was a teacher, and she appears in the book, doesn't she? She does, yeah. Olive Hamilton. I mean, actually, I'm quite, because I'm quite slow. It took me quite a long time to work out that this was Steinbeck's own family, the Hamilton's. 300 pages in or something, and then I started to realise that narrator was John Steinbeck, and actually we'll talk about this a bit later, about whether Steinbeck is effective in his use of the narrative voice. Anyway. So as a teenager, he worked on farms and ranchers, and he was struck at the time by the terrible conditions of the migrant workers, which is something that obviously he was to write about in the 1930s. In the 1920s, he studied English at Stanford. He would travel to New York and try to become a writer and failed. He came home back to California. Pazali, he tried to make a name for himself as a manufacturer of plaster mannequins. Then he ended up sponging off his parents for a bit, and he went back to writing. Then he had a real breakthrough in 1935 with a book called Tortilla Flat, which is about a group of mates who are home in Monterey in California from the First World War, and they're kind of getting up to tapes with girls and drinking and stuff like that. Then two years after that, Of Mice and Men, a novella, and then the Grace of Wrath 1939, that makes him a massive name. So it was the best selling book of 1939. You won the Pulitzer Prize. There was a film made by John Ford, starring Henry Fonda, and then there was a massive backlash against it because the Grace of Wrath is really about the plight of the Okis, the people who have moved west during the Great Depression to flee the Dust Bowl. People on the right, except Conservatives, business owners, and stuff, but also a bit of lots of people in California were outraged by it and tried to ban it. At the end of the 1930s, Steinbeck is simultaneously very successful. He's very well known. He has a touchstone for it's kind of new deal, depression, America, very polarised and left and right. But at the same time, he's very controversial. He's getting an awful lot of flak, not least in his native California. Yeah, and this all had quite a big impact on his personal life, which was getting very, very messy by this point. So he'd been married to a woman called Carol Henning in 1930, but by the end of the 1930s, their marriage was really fraying. I can part because of all the pressure from the backlash to grapes of Wrath. So then he starts an affair with a 19-year-old singer called Gwyn Konger. This is just horribly, it's a horribly toxic back and forth. You know, the two women are fighting for Steinbeck. They both claim to be pregnant. Carol is lying. Gwynn and has an abortion. Finally, Steinbeck ends up divorcing his first wife, Carol. He pays her $100,000, which is a massive sum of money at this point. And he marries Gwyn. And by this point, he's 41 and she's 23. So it's a significant age gap. And he was always afflicted after all this by by massive guilt and actually self-loathing. And you can see this in East of Eden. You can see it in characters like how, to some extent, maybe Adam, and the themes of the novel, you know, love turning to hatred, women who lie and manipulate men, you know, people who love and are therefore betrayed by that love. It's a huge factor in the book. And you can see why, therefore, it is, as you said, kind of therapeutic, his writing it. Yeah. So amidst all this, he goes off to Europe as a war correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune when America joined the war. But he was never really the same afterwards. So he was hit by shrapnel in the head during the Allied landings at Salerno in Italy. And he almost lost his hearing. And then he came home basically scarred by the war. He was drinking a heck of a lot. I mean, he's absolutely one of those mid-century American writers. Like, F. Scott Fitzgerald, he would talk to us about an hour, great Gatsby episode, or Ernest Hemingway, another of your favorites. These people who basically, the first they do when they get up in the morning is drink a bottle of whiskey or something. Steinbeck is cut from that cloth. Hemingway's great, kind of, Maxim was right drunk at its sober. Right. Yeah. There's a bit of that with Steinbeck, I think. He suspects his wife, Gwynne, of being unfaithful while he's been away. He's a very troubled and unhappy man. They have two sons in the 1940s called Thomas and John. John Steinbeck IV. It was just mental. Why don't Americans do that? No, fans try American listeners. Yeah, American listeners, if they exist, please direct your complaints to Tabby if not to me on this issue. Sorry. He's a terrible father. I mean, the irony is that East of Eden is in part a book about fathers and sons. And also dedicated to his sons. Right. And the mad thing is, you know, he went to all the distress of writing a book for his sons, dedicating it to them. And yet, he was, he'd, by all accounts, I mean, just to give you a couple of examples, when John IV was three years old, there was an accident with a dog when he let this dog into the apartment. And the dog relieved itself on the floor. And Steinbeck discovered this and he rubbed his son's face in the dog mess on the floor. I was so sad to discover this by myself. To teach him a lesson. Or this, this, I think, is, badly, I think this is worse. When he was tiny, Steinbeck would encourage him to jump from his high chair into his arms. And he'd do it again and again. And this boy was always laughing and he trusted his dad and stuff. And then one day, you know, Steinbeck was doing this so he could teach his son a lesson. People will betray you, you know, you can't rely on anybody. And one day, he basically pulled his hands back at the last minute so his son fell on the floor with a huge bump. And as John the fourth said, later, the greater piphony of my childhood was realizing that my father was an asshole. But you know, this is actually massively reflected in East of Eden itself because there's this little passage about how that moment when children realise that their parents are flawed and fallible and how it shatters you. I just think it's very poignant. When a child first catches adults out, when it first walks into his grave little head that adults do not have divine intelligence, that their judgments are not always wise, they're thinking true, their sentences just, his world falls into panic desolation. That gods are fallen and all safety gone. And there is one sure thing about the fall of gods that do not fall a little, they crash and shatter, will sink deeply into green muck. And the child's world is never quite whole again. I mean, it's so interesting that he can understand these concepts and he can see that he, you know, it's his fault and that he's done wrong but he can't change his behaviour. I think that's often the case with serially guilty people. Yeah, I think that's probably true. By the end of the 1940s, you know, his life really isn't a mess because his marriage is disintegrating to go in. He's now drinking very heavily. They're falling out because he wants to move to the countryside, Adam New York and she doesn't. And amid all this, he decides he wants to write a history of his family. And you can see that I think there's an element of nostalgia, nostalgic escapism in this almost. His own family life is a terrible mess. He's basically, you know, extremely distant, best, violent, at worst, to his own sons. His wife, Gwen, ends up asking him for a divorce. So you can see why he would want to look backwards, I guess. And to this sort of idealised paradise of his own boyhood. And to sort of want to tease out lessons from that that he can pass on to his own sons. But he doesn't write anything until in 1949, he meets his third wife who's called Elaine Scott. She works in theatre. They meet at a party. And she is your classic, you know, mid-century male American writers long-suffering wife. So she basically says, I will take care of the house. I'll take care of the paperwork. I'll do all the accounts. I'll do everything. I'll organise the cleaner and the man who sweeps up the leaves. You are free to write. And so crack on. So in 1951, he starts on East of Eden. And he writes to his editor who's called Pascal Covici. And he says, basically, you know, this is it now. I either write the book or I do not think I'm, you know, excuses. The writing will be spare and lean. The concept's hard. the philosophy old and yet newborn, it may destroy everything for me, but it has to be done. The way that he wrote this is just mental. It's extraordinary actually. And we know this because there's a really nice essay online about it by a guy called David Christinger of Chicago University. He writes the whole thing in pencil in a notebook. He writes the story on the left hand pages. He writes a series of letters to his editor, Pascal Kavichi, and every day he kind of gets into the writing by writing a letter to Pascal. And it's kind of like brain storming. It's basically more therapy. He's thoughts about the book, his anxieties, his ideas for characters, even just news about himself and his home life. And then he leaps across and continues the story on the right hand page. But it's quite a slow starter for about two weeks. Progress isn't, he's not getting very far with it. And then on the 14th of February, he goes to visit his sons. And he's shocked because they're very, very distant with him. They're very cold with him. I mean, understandably, checking them out of pie chairs and rubbing their face in dog poo. Anyway, and but he's still very, very upset by this. And as I say, shocked. And then that night, he just pours himself into writing and becomes totally absorbed by it for the rest of the year. He writes the whole book over the next 276 days. There's a massive, massive intensity to it. And he says again and again that it has to be this masterpiece put himself under such pressure. And he even stops drinking during the week, which for him he's a heavy, heavy drinker. Yeah. Where does this intensity come from? You know, why does it have to be kind of so powerful to him? And I think it's because it's this central redemptive idea that comes to him and just animates the entire book. And it's a secret wrapped up in the translation of a single Hebrew word, which I mentioned when I was kind of explaining the plot from the book of Genesis. And this for him holds the key to the entire story. And we will be unlocking that mystery in the second half. So he finishes the book in November 1951. He tells his friends, it's his masterpiece. The longest and shorter, the most difficult work I've ever done, he says to his sister Mary. And to a Swedish artist friend, these very celebrated lines, he writes, "I've put all the things I wanted to write all my life. This is the book. If it's not good, I have fooled myself all the time. Always I had this book waiting to be written." And then he spends four months cutting it, which is hard to believe when you discover that the edition that I bought. Tabby told me this was quite short book and very readable. It's 714 pages long, quite small print the edition I have. So it's almost as long as one of my own books. So he cut it down. And then in September 1952, Viking released the book. And they basically went to town and they said this is going to be a major event. He's one of America's best-known writers. And this is the Magnum Opus. But nevertheless, the reception is pretty mixed. So it does reach, I mean, it's popular with kind of the reading public at large. It reaches number one on the New York Times fiction bestseller list in November 1952 and it holds it for five weeks. But a lot of critics say that it's far too moralistic. It's too clunky. The Goodvaz's evil is simplistic and a bit sensationalized. The New York Times said that it was clumsy in structure and defaced by excessive melodramatics and much cheap sensationalism. And then the Christian science monitor, Steinbeck's obsession with naked animality, brute violence and the dark wickedness of the human mind remains so overriding that what there is of beauty and understanding is subordinated and almost extinguished. That's harsh. But he did win the Nobel Prize ten years later. So there's hope for you. Yeah, exactly. Although then the New York Times kicked him again and said, why have the Nobel Committee given an award to a writer whose limited talent is in his best books, watered down by 10th rate philosophising? Oh, savage. Yeah, I mean, you don't want to be reading those reviews. So whether we agree, you know, there are two schools of thought clearly. Yeah. There is Oprah Winfrey, who speaks for the general public who loved the book, who said, come on, don't sneer at this book. And then there are the stuffy, stuck-up, high-brow critics who said, heartless academics. Yeah, where Tabri and I identify with Oprah Winfrey or with these sneering academic critics, we shall discover at the end of the episode. Before we do that, let's get into the book itself. And to do that, we need to explain a massive central part of it, which is the biblical story of Canaan Abel. And this is taken from Genesis chapter four, verses one to sixteen. But God, interestingly, is carefully excluded from the plot. God doesn't really have a part to play in any of it. Even the title East of Eden was taken from Genesis four sixteen. Right. So Canaan Abel, basically the two sons of Adam and Eve. Canaan is a farmer. Abel is a shepherd. And they both bring presence to their father and Canaan is rejected. Abel is accepted. And so Canaan is full of bitterness. Full of anger and bitterness. He's also marked. He has the mark of Canaan on him. It's like a darkness. It's a sign of God's disfavor, basically. Exactly. Yeah. He ends up being branded as a killer because he's murdered his brother. And then he's exiled to the land of naught on the East of Eden. So Steinberg basically thought this was the only story in all literature, didn't he? He thought it was the first story, the major story, because it's the ultimate confrontation of good and evil from which all stories derive. Yeah. All novels, all poetry built on this never-ending contest, he said. And then basically his idea was that this story, that this taint of sin repeats through the generations and there's no escape from it. Or is there? We shall discover. It's kind of original sin, isn't it, that all humans are blighted from the moment of birth because Adam and Eve rebelled. Exactly. And the idea of East of Eden, I mean, this is the Salinas Valley. And basically some of these characters are trying to create their own Eden in the valley, you know, a paradise. They're trying to start again. So many people did when they moved to America. But they end up just repeating the cycle of betrayal, which is Eve betraying Adam, you know, by messing around with the snake and the apple and whatnot and the garden of Eden, all that, exactly. And then Cain murdering Abel. Yeah. And that these patterns reproduce themselves down the generations and there's no matter what you do, you know, the implication is that you are trapped by them. I guess the Salinas Valley, and the Salinas Valley itself is a big character in this, right? The landscape is a character in the story. It totally is. And you can see how important it is to the book and to Steinberg in the alternative titles that he considered before name at East of Eden. It was going to be called the Salinas Valley or down to the valley. I think that was a near miss. Down to the valley. Yeah, no good. Or alternatively recognising the importance of this biblical element, it was going to be called Cain's sign. And he wrote to his editor, "I want to describe the Salinas Valley in detail, but in sparse detail so that there can be a real feeling of it. It should be sights and sounds, smells and colours, but put down with simplicity as though the boys can read the book. That's his son." So his intention was to give kind of an impression of the valley a sense of it. And I think he does that extremely well. Yeah. The whole opening mini chapter of the book is a description of the Salinas Valley. And I think that's beautiful. But it's also, it's like a microcosm of good and evil, a microcosm of the world, of maybe the nation of America. And that's why this opening section, it's full of kind of dualism. There's light and dark, mountains, valleys, rain, dry. And it's kind of mirrors the good and the evil in human nature. And I guess in Steinberg's view throughout the course of American history, it's full of light and dark. Yeah. When that point about American history, so basically the book covers the time period for 1862, I think, to the end of the First World War. So this is the moment when America comes of age as a capitalist power. It's the conquering of the frontier, the decline of the American kind of rural dream, which is being eclipsed by kind of industrial modernity. So you have the two families, the Hamilton's and the Trasks. The Hamilton's have arrived as immigrants and they're working on the land. And Samuel Hamilton is a classic immigrant and he wants to be a farmer, but his sons all end up as sort of urban professionals kind of working, advertising or whatever, or teachers. Almost in reaction to him. And I think that's quite true to life, isn't it? Yeah, of course. They kind of resent his outsider status. So they become kind of apex Americans. Yes, exactly. I mean, that's exactly what happened to so many first, second, third generation immigrants in this period. And then you have Adam Trask. I mean, he's the central character of the book and he's the kind of personification of American history in this period. So he's the son of an East Coast farmer who served in the Civil War. He goes into the American army himself, the US Army, and he fights against Native Americans. He basically cleans them from the landscape. But he's a pacifist. He refuses to commit violence or to take human life. But he's very brave. He is. Exactly. I'm being too harsh on him, Tabi. I know. He moves west. He tries to establish himself as a farmer, but that doesn't really work out. So he ends up in the city eventually, in a town eventually. He does things like he buys a Model T Ford. He dabbles in refrigeration as we've already mentioned. And then his son goes off to the First World War. So basically all American history is condensed and embodied in this one character and in the life of his family. So that's the that's the sweep of American history. One other thing we should talk about before we get into the characters, the style of narration. So I mentioned already. I didn't realize the Hamilton's was Steinbeck's own family for some considerable time. I thought they were the narrator's family. And I didn't think Steinbeck and the narrator were the same person. And actually the reason he did that I think is because he'd thought he would write the book as a family history. And then he wrote it very quickly. And I think he still had that idea of it being his family history. And he hadn't quite rid himself of that. And so, at times, particularly at the beginning, he says, "I don't really remember what happened "and relying on old photographs, "and relying on family anecdotes and things." So, he grounds the narrative in real history. And it is almost as though he's pretending to be a historian. But then I think he forgets about that for whole chapters. And then the narrator almost disappears and then comes back in whenever he remembers. And I find that a bit patchy and unsastained. And I know that some of the early critics did as well. But Tabi, I know you like this. You think it's very well done. I do like it. I think it's intentional. Like someone that was putting as much energy and intensity into writing this book, it wasn't just going to start, you know, forgetting what he was doing. But I like it because it feels loose and free and unrestrained. And as we'll see freedom and the ability to choose as a big part of this book, it kind of melds history and mythology together, which the book does throughout. As you say, it's a window into genuine American history, but then it's also a retelling of the Bible. It moves you from these kind of very intimate reflections or observations about someone to kind of these, the philosophy at the heart of it and this idea that it kind of encapsulates the heart of a nation overall. I think it's very, very effective. But so let's get on to the major characters in the book, then. So we've spoken a little bit about Samuel Hamilton. Has a big family, he's an immigrant. He's kind of people very suspicious of him, originally when he comes to the valley and then they grow to love him. The classic immigrant story, right? He's an Irish immigrant. Exactly. He, you know, has this large, very boisterous family. But he never, he's brilliant at inventing things and, you know, he's pretty ingenious, but he never ever managed just to make any money. And I like that kind of detail of him. And so he's always poor, but he's always kind of free in himself. He has kind of great faith in himself. So if I was being skeptical, let's say two things. I'd say, first of all, everybody who reads. So you are being skeptical. All right, fine. The Hamilton's, the stuff with the Hamilton's, I think a lot of critics at the time in the 50s said is redundant because basically everybody who reads Easter beads and is really only interested in one of these two families, which are the tracks, which are the family that the cane-enable thing recurs in and the good versus evil struggle. And the Hamilton's are a kind of slightly solid counterpoint to that. We joked at the beginning, they're all called Tom Dick and Harry and no one can remember which one is which. And Samuel Hamilton, I would say, you know, to me, he feels a bit of a stereotype. They're basically the stoical, wise, hard-working, Irish immigrant who, you know, he's unlucky, but he's warm-hearted. Things that haven't really worked out for him, but he's a great patriarch and he loves his family and all of this kind of thing. For me, he and his family do not feel terribly alive as characters. I think they do. Each child has a very different character and each child kind of goes on to, you know, symbolise something different about that kind of American dream. And also, Samuel Hamilton, he has a real quirkiness to him, which makes him more than kind of just conventional and a bit of a stereotype. But then let's get on to the tracks. As you mentioned, they're massively the heart of it. You would agree, though, to have either the tracks are much more interesting than the Hamilton's, wouldn't you? Yeah, I would, but that's partly because they're much worse people than the Hamilton's. Of course, that's the point. Isn't it the case in a way that makes the Hamilton's kind of more realistic that their flaws and their weaknesses are not evil? They're just like human foibles. Whereas the tracks are firmly divided into good and evil, because they are essentially the second cane-enable. So, you have the first cane-enable in the Bible, then you have the tracks. And you have, and they're called Charles and Adam. So, the C and the A, and these, there's a massive element of nominative determinism in this. Completely is, yeah. And so, Cyrus Trask, their father, he's from Connecticut. He's a fake war hero. I find them really, really funny, because he reminds me of someone that was like, briefly in the territorial army or something, and then makes their identity having been in the army. So, I'm not quite in music. Exactly. He ends up becoming basically a mate of Abraham Lincoln or something? Yeah, well, he claims to have been a big mate of Abraham Lincoln. And he basically says that all kind of military, tactical discussion that goes on is all thanks to him. He uses up his wives, though. He has a first wife. This is Adam's mother, she dies. And then a second wife, this is Charles's mother, she dies. And he loves Adam more. Yet, he also says of him that he's a weakling. He will never amount to a doctorate. That's a harsh. Yeah, at least he doesn't rub his face in doctors. He doesn't, but he actually says it to him. This is more some of the poor parenting that recurs. Adam, yeah, look, he's guilty of constantly letting things happen to him. He's not exactly a proactive character. He's a massive drifter. But his blindness and his naivety, it's kind of just a form of radical optimism. He's without malice. And while he's not the most charismatic character, he's a good man. And in a sense, I think Steinberg writes him weak, because he puts the possibility on the table for readers that goodness in life gets you nowhere. Yeah. And ultimately, that isn't the case in this book. But he's also the perfect contrast to his brother, Charles, who is violent, fairly psychopathic. He's cruel. He almost beats Adam to death as a child. You know, again, echoing can enable story. And, but he's not, I think, an entirely one-dimensional villain either, because he writes these letters to Adam that are kind of full of guilt and missing, like childish missing of his brother. And there's his line, for instance, that says, as if many people, Charles, who could not talk, wrote with fullness, he set down his loneliness and his perplexities. And I love that, because I think there are people in life that you can recognize that in. Yeah. So you've got these two characters that can enable effectively. And then, big twist in the book, Steinberg introduces the character who really comes to define the book more than any other character that I think most readers, you know, that lives in readers' minds. Yeah. And this is this woman, young woman, called Kathy Amis. She's by far the most memorable character in the book. She could be a psychopath, a devil in human form. She could be a scathing portrait of Steinberg's ex-wife. Or she could just be a misunderstood, hard-working woman trying to make her way in the world with what assets she has. And we will fight that, which one of those we think she is after the break. When you shop Kroger Delivery, you can expect the savings you love and fresh groceries delivered right to your door. Our refrigerated trucks keep your items cool, while our associates are committed to getting every detail right. Carefully selecting and packing your order with care, because bringing you fresh, quality groceries is what we do best. Right now, enjoy free delivery on orders of $50 or more with your digital coupon. Restriction supply, seasite for details. Kroger, fresh for everyone! Once smoother, brighter skin without adding another complicated stuff to your routine, try daily microfolion from Dermallotica. This exfoliating powder activates with water, to gently polish away dull, flaky skin, leaving it feeling smoother and looking brighter. 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So Kathy, this person we talked about, she's psychopathic, she's evil. She's slender, she's blonde-haired, she has these, um, sort of blank, staring eyes. I'm looking at her right now, frankly. Yeah. Yeah. So I actually think Kathy, well, maybe it's because I see myself in her. I don't, by the way, she's awful. Of course you think. I remember when I first read this, and coming to the bits about Kathy and meeting Kathy and being like, and it may seem obvious, but nevertheless, it's effective. I was totally chilled by her. So who is she? She is described as having been born different, a monster from birth, with a malformed soul. And starring back kind of uses the idea of being born with physical defects. But rather than it being on the outside, it's on the inside. There's something wrong with her inside. So there's this wonderful quote, and it's, "I believe there are monsters born in the world to human parents. Some you can see mischraping and horrible with huge heads or tiny bodies. And just as there are physical monsters, can there not be mental or psychic monsters born? The face and body may be perfect, but if a twisted gene or a malformed egg can produce physical monsters, may not the same process produce a malformed soul. She's born and raised in a small town in Massachusetts. And the kind of cosmic evil that is manifested in her, it comes out right from the first when she's a little girl. You know, she's the devil incarnate. She entraps a teacher, doesn't she? There's a real element of the kind of horror story in this. You know, the pretty little girl with a terrifying cold smile, who's got the devil inside her. she manipulates, she harms, she destroys those around her, she frames young boys of her age for sexual assault, she drives a schoolteacher to commit suicide, she smiles when she hears that one of her school fellows has died. And there are other kind of unnerving details that give her away, like her room is always spotless and never betrays the fact that it's lived in by a little girl. There are other children are kind of fascinated by her, but then they look at her with like, they look away as if what they've seen is a bit like there's something disturbing there. Most importantly, in fact, about her characterization, she has these chilling, sharp, small white teeth that are constantly referenced when she smiles. She doesn't drink because she's afraid that it will expose her darkness. That's a very bad sign. That's a terrible sign, yeah. And at one point, it does. There's this moment when her, the pimp that she is the mistress to, persuades her to drink some champagne and she goes utterly mental. All the wickedness comes up to the surface and like, she tells him that he's a big fat slug that she knows his mind, brutal, that she could use it, whatever he feels, all of his weaknesses and desires against him. And she does this throughout her life. She spots and recognizes the weakness in people, particularly men, when it's sexual and she uses that against them because she feels no desire. She has, you know, emotionless hazel eyes, she has childlike figure and she never develops a woman's figure and like a scary little rosebud mouth. And then over the course of the novel, as she gets older, it's like the evil inside her starts to show on the outside because she becomes kind of twisted and crippled, contorted by arthritis. She's just, she's a formidable wicked character and I think she's a joy to read. So at first, the only person who really sees through her is another so-called evil character. So the cane figure in the first half of the book, which is Charles, Adam's brother and Charles, says to Adam, basically she's been beaten up by the pimp because she accused him of being a fat slug. He beats her up. She arrives on their doorstep. She's been beaten within an inch of her life. And they take her in. Adam develops this huge fondness for her. Charles says to him, please Adam, throw her out. She will tear you to pieces. She will destroy you, Adam. But Adam can't see it as we'll, as we'll discuss. Being able to see clearly and blindness is one of the themes of the book. Can you see the complexity of human nature? Or are you doomed to only see the good or only see the evil in people and not to see the sort of the battle within every soul? And love is blinding. Love makes you less able to see the never. So Adam is blinded by his love. He thinks she's absolutely wonderful. All he sees is the golden hair. And so he ends up marrying her, although Charles actually ends up sleeping with her and is possibly the father of her twins. It's never really spelled out. Now here's the thing. People who have not read the book and who've listened to our description may well say I think that what we're describing is not necessarily a real person, but a pantomime villain, a bit of a caricature. So when Steinbeck says some people are monsters, she's just evil. I kind of think in a more sophisticated book, the characters would be more rounded than that. You wouldn't just say, here's a Dickensian villain and who ends up, you know, she corrupts men. You might, you might well say this is actually quite a misogynist kind of take on a female character. The big female character of the book is just using her beauty and her sexuality to bewitch men and then to betray them and to kill them or to steal all their stuff or whatever she does. I mean, she ends. She is a murderous. Yeah, but I actually totally disagree because first of all, in the real world, there are psychopaths. You know, they don't feel as other people feel and there are murderous. Like these people exist. They don't exist just in books. Also, I think she is far more than a Dickensian villain because first of all, there's no chaos to her. She is patient, she's observant, she's socially intelligent. She's also fascinating because she, the character is kind of skeptical of human goodness. Like she embodies that. She is an experiment in finding the darkness and the weakness in the heart of every person and manipulating that and there's a power in that which challenges the book's otherwise fairly simplistic moral thesis and it prevents it from becoming just a book about simple moral optimism. But also, the other thing that makes her far more interesting is that when her son, Aaron, comes to see her, she is appalled by how appalled he is to find her as his mother. She's not necessarily guilty, but she is appalled and horrified by his horror of her. It actually frightens her and that's another thing. She has vulnerabilities that make her three-dimensional. She experiences fear. She loses control. She's can force to confront growing older and like losing the façade that allowed her to be manipulative. So she realizes there are limits to what she can achieve. She's kind of, nevertheless, admirably kind of irreducible and she doesn't have this thing that a lot of pantomime villains have which is kind of an unrealistic goal. There's no moral flimsy moral justification to her. She's just kind of an animal as I think some psychopaths are. Her desires are animalistic. It's money. It's comfort. It's basic things like that. And in terms of like, Cymex women are often quite sexist. They're often defined by what they do in society. So they're either kind of prostitutes or wives and mothers. Yeah, and literally they're a mother or a whore. I mean, that's to use the old kind of cliché. I mean, that's what she rejects one and embraces the other. But I think that's still a little bit dismissive. I agree. His women are kind of defined in terms of their potential or otherwise bisexuality and motherhood. Like, Liza Hamilton is your ultimate like domestic mother. She's virtuous. She's strict. Kathy is pretty attractive. She's a temptress. She's depraved. But I would say that the mothers and prostitutes themselves, while they may be those things, they're far from one dimensional. They have kind of iron wills and there's actually this line. I believe a strong woman may be stronger than a man, particularly if she happens to have love in her heart. I guess the loving woman is indestructible. And it's almost like through Kathy Steinbeck acknowledges that women do often fall into these two categories because Kathy sees the way that women are defined by men and she uses it against them. She knows that Adam sees her as like a perfect, motherly, beautiful kind woman. The other men who see her as a whore and a prostitute, she uses that against them and she takes their money. She charts her own course throughout. So in a way, she's a critique of standard notions of femininity. Fair enough. I take that point. But so the key moment, the pivotal moment, we started with it. She basically exposes her true nature to Adam. She's had these two boys. She doesn't want to really be their mother. She doesn't want to be his wife. She says to him, "I'm going." He tries to stop her. She shoots him. That's what we began with. And then she walks out. He then brings up the two boys, the cane enable, cowl and Aaron on his own. And the question that hangs over the second half, are they ever going to find out the truth about her? And I guess is the cane enable pattern going to recur with these two boys as well, which brings us to the two boys, cowl and Aaron. Horrid Henry and perfect Peter. That's what I kept thinking of. Yeah, completely. What Steinbeck does is he makes it absolutely obvious to you. I mean, nobody could ever accuse him of excessive subtlety. Even with the names, this bloke is going to be cane. This bloke is going to be able. The bloke who's cane has got dark hair. The bloke who's able is blonde and very good looking and all of this kind of thing. All the canes have got some sort of scar or just figments. So, do you think that these two characters are a bit one-dimensional? Surely you do. I do think I have to say, I think Aaron is massively one-dimensional. He's a bit tiresome, a bit of a character, a caricature. He's blonde, he's beautiful. He becomes obsessed with passionate purity. Actually, when I came to reread this time, I could barely remember anything about him because there's nothing very memorable about him. But there's a bit more to cowl, his twin brother. Yeah, actually, you're right about that. Cowl is much more layers. Probably the most complex character in the book, really, because he knows that there is darkness and evil in him and he spends all the whole course of the book trying to fight it and struggle with it. He's tormented by his own self-knowledge, isn't he? Because Cal is aware of the, this thing about, can you see yourself and other people clearly? Cowl really can. He can see that there is darkness in his soul and it really troubles him. He can be very manipulative and very cruel and yet at the same time we're told, he longs for his brother to love him. And his father. And as far as the Adam, and unusually in the book, one of very few such moments, he prays to God to help him overcome the evil in his soul. Dear Lord, let me be like Aaron, don't make me mean, I don't want to be. If you will make everybody like me while I'll give you anything out in the world, and if I haven't got it, I'll go and get it. I don't want to be mean, I don't want to be lonely for Jesus to say, oh man, it's quite a moving moment, actually. Really moving. And it's one of the few moments I would say in the book where somebody sees themselves clearly in their wrestle with their nature, because Kathy never wrestles with her own nature. She accepts it. She just basically says, I'm an evil person, I'm going to be evil. She uses it. Yes. And the other person I guess that they live with, which we should talk about, is this guy called Lee. So Lee is, he's the sort of servant of Adam. He's a perhaps a slightly dodgy character. Yeah. So he is Chinese American. He speaks in this kind of pigeon English, which we discover is put on because he's playing a part that people want him to play. It's what Americans expect him to be. Yes. And then once he's sort of unmasked, actually, you can speak very good English, what are you doing speaking this pigeon English? He then assumes his natural guys, which is of a sort of of stereotypical mystical man of the East, who dispenses Chinese wisdom at regular moments during the book. And, you know, I don't know. Some people readers may find that powerful and moving. I found these Chinese wisdom a little bit annoying to be honest with you. It's a bit like a succession of fortune cookies. - I found it quite powerful because he's like, he's the only ballast in these boys' lives. And I like the conversations that he has with their girlfriend, Abra, Abra. - I don't know if it's Abra. But I did, yeah, I agree. I got a little bit sick of his sections after a while. Like vast portions of the book are given in to just give them over to just conversations between him and Adam. - But they're sort of philosophizing. - Yeah, philosophizing. - It's those Steinbeckers slightly included. The literary criticism about the book in the book, I think. - Yeah. - So this narrative will stop and people will then characters will have a conversation and they'll sort of say, "Well, what does the story all mean?" - Yeah. - And that's what Lee is there for, right? But you have other books where that happens. I mean, that happens in 1984, doesn't it? - When they're reading from the Goldstein's Manifesto, a little bit, but I feel massive. I'm giving myself away here, but I think all hell isn't much better right than the John Steinbeck. Anyway, I mean, let's talk about actually what the book does mean. So Steinbeck wrote it for his sons. This is a huge element of the book. And actually the relationship between fathers and sons runs through it. So you start off with Cyrus, who's the fake war hero and his sons. And then you have Adam's sons, Carl and Aaron and so on. And this idea that the cane-enabled story in particular, the love of one son being rejected by his father and that makes him embittered and he takes out on his brother, that that just repeats down the generations. Did you like it? Do you think it was well done? - I thought it was quite well done with the first set, with Adam and Charles were near young and their father, Cyrus, because that is basically what drives Charles, that's what fills his heart with darkness in a sense as his jealousy over the fact that Cyrus says to Adam at one point and he suspects this. I love you better. And actually, there's this moment when, I mean, before he calls him dog turd, a dog turd. There's this moment where Cyrus takes Adam out and says, you know, I need you to enlist and just so you know, I love you better. And I actually, I was very moved by that. I was almost found myself weeping. Something about these hard men of 20th century America saying soft loving words. It really, it was very tender. - See, I think was something that you really like. There's no question about this. You like basically very spare hard boiled pros, written by a man in which, as you say, hard men are struggling with steep sentimental emotions. Exactly. - Yeah, I do, I think that speaks to you. It does speak to me, yeah. Sometimes it's hard for those of us with, you know, wheels of steel and hearts of stone. - Right, of course. - It's tough out there. So I was moved by that and I thought it was a great motivator for Charles's evil. I was kind of less convinced by the second generation. So this is Adam and his two sons. I thought the point there was kind of cowl. Yes, he feels rejected by Adam, but I suppose Adam doesn't, it doesn't feel like he necessarily prefers one to the other. It just feels like he's broken-hearted by Kathy's betrayal. And also it is interesting that fathers and sons are such a major theme in the book, because obviously Steinbeck had a very strained relationship with his own sons, but he also had a very strained relationship with his own father. He was also kind of a man of sunken ambitions. He owned a business that went vast. And, you know, he turned into that kind of father himself. So this must have been very therapeutic for him, writing all this. - I mean, Steinbeck's not terribly interested. We already mentioned he's not terribly interested in motherhood. So either you're a stereotypical mother, like the Hamilton's mother, Liza, who's this sort of, she's like a mother from a kind of little house on the prairie or something. But let's get to the real sort of struggle at the heart of the book, which isn't necessarily father's sons or mother's sons or whatever, it's actually good versus evil. This is what Steinbeck always said was the point of the book. And I quote, "I believe that there was one story in the world and only one. Humans are caught in their lives and their thoughts and their hunger and ambitions, blah, blah, blah, blah, in a net of good and evil. There is no other story, a man after he's brushed off that this is so kind of American prose in the 1950s. A man after he's brushed off the dust and chips of his life will have left only the hard, clean questions. Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well or ill?" Now, I may sound like I'm mocking that and I slightly am 'cause I don't think that is the only story you can tell and I don't think that's the only subject of all literature. - Of course, but it is a massive one. - Yeah. The big Russian authors, like Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, all those guys, they're constantly grappling with the question of the evil and every human heart and how to live a good life and stuff like that. And no one ever criticizes them for the day. - I know, I could see what you've written in your notes. I know you think I've got double standards on this. - I do, I didn't even double standards. But also, I mean, the thing is, yeah, it may not be the only question. I don't think it is the only question. But just because it kind of takes on this mythical greater than life quality in the book, it doesn't mean that in the day to day and people's lives going about their daily business, it isn't something that everyone grapples with to some degree. It's just that you are, I think, too cynical. Like in this way, you don't think ideas govern human lives or the course of human history. You think it's stuff like how much food people need or how the economy is doing and stuff. So this idea wouldn't chime with you very well. But I actually think, I like it. I think just because it may be a bit cliched, doesn't mean it's not valid or true. - Okay, fair enough. So we've already said that whether you can see good and evil clearly as a big theme, like basically characters who are rewarded, who are successful are those who can see both the beauty and the ugliness in people. So actually, even Adam, who has deluded most of the book because he can only see the beauty, there is a moment when he goes to see his ex-wife at a brothel. It's a very-- - It's a godmother. - It's actually quite a powerful scene and he says to her, you think you're so great because you just see the evil in people and you have cynical and all of this. You're the Dominic Sandbrook of brothel owners. (laughing) - So that casts us in our true roles on the show. You were the Kathy of this podcast and I am the eternally kind and optimistic Adam Trask. - Well, Adam says to Kathy, you know, you know about the ugliness in people, but you don't know about the rest. You see, only one side and you think more than that you're sure that that's all there is. There is a part of you missing. And I suppose, by Steinbeck's own lights, he's quite right, that he and Kathy are polar opposites and each of them only sees one side of human nature and the clarity with which somebody like Cal, Adam's son, can see the complexity of human nature and he wrestles with his own demons. That elevates him. It makes him more successful as a character because he is alive to both the good and the evil in human nature. He wrestles with this darkness within himself and he's frightened, isn't he, that he will be trapped by his own nature. That he basically sees the cane and able pattern. He thinks, gosh, I'm cane and I'm doomed to evil and doomed to-- - Yeah, I'm trapped by my nature. - Yeah, and do you think that's, do you think that people really think that's about themselves? Maybe-- - Well, I think that is genuinely something that people battle with. I think some people go through life terrified of their being something inside them that has bad impulses. So I think that is true to life and that's why Cal is such a relatable character, I think, for anyone. You're lying if you think that you're good all the time. You're definitely not being honest if you say that you don't wrestle with yourself from time to time. But then the thing is that other wonderful, hopeful part of this novel is that basically the crux of it all, this secret Hebrew word have been looting too throughout. It's all about freedom. It's about how we are in fact free to choose not to be the darkness inside us, but rather the good side of us. And this is basically encapsulated by this word, Tim Schell. - It comes from a key line in Genesis when God is talking to Cain and God says to Cain, if Thou doest well, this is the King James version, shout Thou not be accepted and if Thou doest not well, sin life at the door, and unto thee shall be his desire and Thou shalt rule over him. Thou shalt rule over him is basically, if you're good, you will rule over sin. And if you're not, you won't. And basically, the three characters, Samuel Hamilton, Lee, the Chinese American guy, who's basically a bit of a caricature, and Adam, they sit around for hours, don't they? Talking about these, about Cain and Abel and about this sort of, what does it all mean? - Biblical interpretations, yeah. - Biblical interpretation. It's like your divinity degree at Edinburgh, Debbie. - Yeah, I was born for this. - So Lee, the Chinese bloke, he says to the others, I've taken this, I've taken this bit of the Bible to my Chinese elders. And they've consulted some sort of rabbinical authorities and they've studied, they've spent two years studying the meaning of the Cain and Abel stories so they can report back. And basically, the key word here is Tim Shell, which the King James translation says is Thou shalt, but in reality, it should be Thou mayest. And as Lee says to the other characters, that gives you a choice. It might be the most important word in the world that says the way is open. Thou mayest, why that makes a man great, that gives him stature with the gods for him, his weakness and his filth and his murder of his brother, he still has the great choice. He can choose his course and fight through and win. And Lee basically says, so Lee is given the role of the sort of dispenser of wisdom. - Profit almost, yeah. - Yeah, exactly. And he says, this is what separates us from animals. We have the choice. voice of good and evil, we're not trapped, we're not predestined, you might think you're going to be cane, but actually you thou mayest means, this word 'timchel' means you could choose to be a good person, you're not defined by your heredity or by the role that you feel like you've been given, and this is amazingly exciting. And he says this to Kyle, basically to say that you're not trapped, you don't have to follow in the footsteps of Cain, just choose your name as Kyle, and you've got wickedness in your family, you can choose to be a good man, and this kind of liberates him, and obviously you can see the appeal of a concept like this to someone like Steinbeck, Steinbeck, you know, a man that had made mistakes throughout his life, he'd had a toxic and tumultuous personal life, he had had a negative relationship with his father and then had a negative relationship with his sons, you can see how emancipating and liberating this would be for a man like that, and then, you know, he's writing this for his sons, so to be able to tell them, you don't have to have the same relationship with your sons, you don't have to make the mistakes that I made, God, you can see how liberating it is. How liberating that would be, yeah, I find it liberating. But you know the irony, Tabi, I hate to be the person who's constantly wearing your parade, I mean, I don't really, but I'm pretending I hate to be the purpose of pleasing the listeners. Steinbeck was wrong, like that word doesn't even exist, it's not even a word, Tim Shill. The word is actually Tim Shill, and I read an article about this in the Jewish review of books by Sheila Tuller Kaita, and she said, you know, actually the original version was right, and that Lee and Steinbeck are quite wrong, you know, all this. You know, Lee of Little Faith, do not think that I have not contemplated your every single tricksy little argument you'd have to destroy this book. It's intentional. He's doing it intentionally. He's not like rewriting biblical interpretation. He's just, he's creating a philosophy and an idea in his book, you know, it's more than a word. He's creating a magical word in a way, a way to reshape the way that we see human nature and get put some more positive spin on things, I think he intended it to be mistranslated. Okay. So when we get to the very last scene in the book, so which is basically, I actually cried the first time I read this. Oh, tabby. Yeah. I'm going to have to really dial down what I was going to say now. No, no, no. Let's rip. No. I, uh, well, Adam is dying, isn't he? And Kyle comes in. So Kyle, who basically has conspired or colluded and Aaron's death, he, he, by by forcing Aaron to confront the truth about his mother, he effectively drove him to enlist in the army in the Great War. Aaron has been killed. The sort of telegram has arrived. Adam has had a stroke. He's lying in bed. He's dying. Lee brings in Kyle, the bad guy, basically, and says, help him, Adam, help him. Give him his chance. Let him be free. That's what a man has over the beast, free him, bless him. And Adam does bless him. He whispers that word. Tim Shell. Thou mayest. Yeah. Yeah. You're not trapped by, you know, uh, by, by fate. You can choose to be a good person, set yourself free and be a good person. I forgive you. All of this. And well, clearly, I was about to say, do you find a moving, but clearly, if you were crying, I mean, you weren't crying at the, at the pros, you were crying at the, the message, the message. Yeah. So you did. So you do find this moving. I do find it moving. Firstly, because, you know, the idea of forgiveness is always moving. Mm-hmm. Whether that's like in war and peace or whatever, when an attach is forgiven on the deathbed or anything like that. And then, you know, it's a father dying heartbroken and then finding some degree of kind of hope and redemption in his wayward, prodigal son. Right. So I do find that moving, but also he's not actually being massively moralising his time back. I mean, he is, but he doesn't say he is the moral question, believe it. It's a story. It's a conversation. It's actually a debate that runs throughout like, are humans good or are they wicked? How's good get you anywhere in life? And the emotional reality of the book, you know, the death of a father whispering goodbye to his son, I think it outweighs the allegory or the symbolism of the idea of, you know, free will. And I don't think it is preachy. His voice is full of thought and doubt, it's intimate. And you know, you love the chronicles of Narnia, which has a big message at the heart of it. Yeah. And this message is no, is no bigger and is just as subtly done, I think. And just as powerful, see if they use that word again. It's that good. It's as good as the chronicles of Narnia, I mean, that is good. All right. So, I think this just can tell that we probably don't quite agree on whether this book is a great book or not. This book has created the tension at the heart of the book club. We've never disagreed so much. No. So Tavis stands with Oprah Winfrey. I do. And I stand with the New York Times, as always. So, we're going to mark this. What are we going to mark? We always, as part of our own commitment to subtlety, we mark these books out of ten. Yeah. So I'm going to appall you by giving it five out of ten. Oh. It's the lowest mark we've ever had. So the critics in 1952, what they didn't like about it, the hybrid critics, they said they did not like the Hamilton family, they found them redundant, which I do. They found Kathy, unbelievable, a sort of a psychopathic prostitute turn madam. They didn't like Lee's profound Eastern wisdom, and they found the cane and able stuff to on the nose. And I agree with all of that. I agree with all of these things. That said, I know a lot of people love this book and not so not just you, and loads of people do find it moving, and they love the kind of family saga element to it. And I agree with you about this. I think particularly maybe as a British reader, there is something always very appealing about these books set in California on the frontier, people queuing out in your life for themselves. So that's why I've managed to find five marks to give it. That's a sense, Abby. It's kind. That's good of you. But I know that you are going to give it a massive score. And feel free. You know, be my guest. Well, thanks. I'm going to give it a nine out of ten. As you said, I love books set in this kind of part of America set during this time period. I love Steinbeck's writing. It's kind of, it's so simple and spare and plain, and yet it conveys incredible delicacy of thought and incredibly delicate descriptions, and like this delicacy delivered in this kind of hard masculine voice kind of cuts to the quick. I love the descriptions of the Salinas Valley, you know, moving through the seasons. I like the message at the heart of it, I think it's a hopeful one, the idea that people can change. As you say, I love the family saga element. I actually thought the Hamilton's added a kind of nice domesticity to it that otherwise would make it just a book seen from the bird's eye view, maybe. And I read something that said that it captured the vast confusion of life. And that's how I feel about it, but I'm deducting a mark because I found Aaron and Lee a bit boring. The first proper disagreement and the first, I hope, of many. And by the way, people should, on Instagram, on X or whatever, we'd like to hear your own thoughts. Express the fact that you agree with me. I know they will agree with you, and there's no question they'll agree with you. I mean, I should never have done this show, because I've just opened myself up to a beauty from Tapping Stones. I know. So what we've got coming up, I think some books that we'll agree on a little bit more, certainly the first one, The Hound to the Baskervilles is what we're doing next week. And then we are doing a Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Massen. We shall probably be discussing the whole genre of romantasy and why it appeals to so many people at the moment. The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins, Beloved by Tony Morrison, Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Wolf. I'm looking forward to that. And another big change of tone, The Hunger Games, I don't know, you're the Hunger Games. Who are the Hunger Games? Suzanne Collins. Suzanne Collins, that's an indictment of my literary knowledge that I don't know, but I'm looking forward to it. You mean that is just pretending? I was just pretending, it's one of my favourite books. So we're always keen to hear your views, and if there is, by some weird mischance, somebody out there who agrees with me and not Tabby, I'm particularly keen to hear from you. All right, Tabby, thank you very much. Take good bye. Bye. Now at Croger, your points add up to more ways to save every trip. 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