:INFO
The Novel That Broke Me Open on Page 400
I read East of Eden over three weeks and was managing my expectations carefully because long novels about American families often disappoint me in the third act. This one did not. Steinbeck's multigenerational story of the Trask and Hamilton families in the Salinas Valley builds to a single chapter about the Hebrew word timshel, meaning thou mayest, and the argument that the word makes about human freedom and responsibility is the most important thing I have read in fiction.


:NOTE
The timshel argument is the whole novel in a single word.


:QUOTE [quotetype:plain, subtitle:John Steinbeck]
And now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good.


:JOURNEY
Reading East of Eden
4 Warm and personal
5 Cain and Abel
5 Heart of the novel
5 Most important page

:POLL
Did the timshel chapter affect you the way it has affected so many readers?
Yes it was the most important single chapter I have read in any novel
Somewhat, it is a powerful idea that I think about occasionally
Not particularly, I found it overstated compared to what preceded it
I have not read East of Eden yet