Reading East of Eden

My earliest memories involve books. I don't remember learning to read, I just read. And read, and read.

I solved crimes and raced through adventure after adventure with the Bobbsey Twins, the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew by the time I was in kindergarten. I entered the magical world of The Secret Garden when I was six and read and re-read that wonderful book. The Shoes Books by Noel Streatfeild, Little House on the Prairie series, Little Women, Anne of Green Gables, The Chronicles of Narnia , A Wrinkle in Time series by Madeline L'Engel, anything by Beverly Cleary were all old favorites by the time I was nine.

In Junior High I would walk out of the library holding a stack (and I mean STACK of books) that reached up to my eyes, and would be back the next week for more. I started re-reading many books because I was out of good material. That was when my dad started recommending some from his collection.

I come by my love of reading through my genes. My grandmas on both sides were voracious readers, and my dad had not only read everything, but could remember everything he read. He kept his collection of hundreds of second-hand books that he had acquired over the years in the garage. And it was to that old black bookcase with seventies-style yellow textured glass on its doors that I was directed.

At first, my dad and I would wander out to the garage together and he would pick a book or two for me. Out came All Creatures Great and Small, Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less, We the Living, Of Mice and Men, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, 1984, The Hobbit, The Chosen, even Agatha Christie. Some of them were old when he had bought them for $.25 in 1964 and they had an old, musty book smell and the price written in pencil on the inside cover.

I would devour the book he had given me and then I would talk to my dad about what I had read. He remembered character names, themes, plots and could always discuss in-depth a book he had read twenty years ago. This is especially impressive to me because I have only vague memories of books I read a week ago and sometimes no suspense is lost in a reread because I can't even remember how the book ends.

As I got older, I would venture out to the garage and pick my next read on my own. Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged, Armegeddon, Magnificent Obsession. The summer before I left for Israel for four months I wandered out to the garage and pulled down The Source, O, Jerusalem, Exodus, and The Haj. I immersed myself in the history of the Holy Land and when I touched down in Tel Aviv in August, amidst the newness and strangeness of a land half-way around the world, it also felt familiar.

Reading has allowed me to be places I've never been (War and Peace, Tolstoy), experience things I've never experienced (To Kill a Mockingbird, Lee), laugh out loud (Pickwick Papers, Dickens), cry (Tess of the D'Ubervilles, Hardy), and walk in shoes I have never walked in (The Chosen, Potok). Books have instructed (Bonds That Make Us Free, Warner), inspired (Team of Rivals, Goodwin) and uplifted (Glimpses, Marjorie Hinckley) me. They have opened up a world of curiosity, learning, and emotion. I will never forget what I felt the first time I read Gone With the Wind. I read it any spare minute I had--including every break at work. I was practically shouting at Rhett and Scarlet to change their course of action and as with many books I read, there was a recovery period when I had finished the book where I left the Civil War and the mansions of the South and pulled myself back into the present.

Of course, reading has also resulted in many sleepless nights because I HAD to finish a book, dishes left undone, and if I want to postpone a difficult task, I'll pick up a book and start reading instead.

I am a terrible literary critic...I like everything...with the exception of Sound and the Fury by Faulkner. But some books definitely speak to me more than others. One of my all-time favorite books is East of Eden by John Steinbeck. It's not just because I love his ability to bring his characters and their surroundings to life, or because I grew up just an hour away from Salinas and have driven through that valley on my way to Monterey many times. And although I love the history and life philosophy that Steinbeck includes, my connection with the book goes beyond that also.

I can remember the moment I was first reading East of Eden. It was the summer before I went to Israel. I was working for a temp agency and had a job as a receptionist at one of Symantec's offices. It wasn't the main building, so my "dream job" consisted of sitting at the front desk and reading. Every day I had a new book. Every morning the Vice President would come into the office, say hi, and check what book I was reading that day.

And I say moment, because when I got to chapter 24, it is like time froze there for me. I remember exactly where I was sitting at the gray desk, the light from the window in front of me streaming into the office. The door was in front and to my right; the copy machine to my left and back. And this is what I read,

"The King James version says this--it is when Jehovah has asked Cain why he is angry. Jehovah says, 'If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door. And unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him.' It was the 'thou shalt' that struck me, because it was a promise that Cain would conquer sin. . . .

Then I got a copy of the American Standard Bible. . . .It says, 'Do thou rule over him.' Now this is very different. This is not a promise, it is an order. . . .

[and in Hebrew it says] 'Thou mayest.' 'Thou mayest rule over sin.'. . .The Hebrew word, the word timshel--'Thou mayest'--that gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open. That throws it right back on a man. For if 'Thou mayest'--it is also true that 'Thou mayest not.'

Why that makes a man great, that gives him stature with the gods, for in his weakness and his filth and his murder of his brother he has still the great choice.. . .Think of the glory of the choice! That makes a man a man. A cat has no choice, a bee must make honey. There's no godliness there."

And in that moment, all the things I had been taught and had learned about the Atonement came together. I had always had a nagging question in the back of my mind...why was Satan's plan such a bad one? No hurt, no pain, we all make it back? Why was that bad? But when I read this discussion about choice in East of Eden and the connection between choice and godliness, it all came together. Heavenly Father wants us to have all the blessings he has--to become like him. As Steinbeck put it, choice gives man "stature with the gods." And I realized that we had to have the gift of agency if we were going to be able to become what Heavenly Father wanted us to become. But if we can choose, we will make mistakes and choose bad things from time to time. Which is why there must be an Atonement.

I never had realized "the glory of the choice" until I read East of Eden.

I just re-read East of Eden for book club. Sometimes a re-read can be a disappointment. But East of Eden was just as good as I remembered it (even though I couldn't remember a dang thing about the plot until I started reading).