Confused notions of good and evil in East of Eden East of Eden is an epic novel about individual ethics: whether men and women have the power to choose between good and evil. East of Eden, to be kind, is not Steinbeck's best novel. Not even in a dream. Steinbeck had wrestled with a moral question and lost. It was as if he had thought about life, but not too deeply. "East of Eden" was a third-rate best seller, the story of two American families over three generations, seventy years from the Civil War to the First World War, told in a book that confuses us with contradictions, which it lacks imaginative focus and wanders in and around too many themes. Clifton Fadiman once said that it was wrong to describe Steinbeck as a tough writer. Well, if a comparison with eggs is necessary, "East of Eden" is an over-the-top omelette. Steinbeck himself worried about his weaknesses. In a letter to his publisher, he said: "It's a somewhat sloppy sounding book, but it's not sloppy, actually." Well, it was sloppy. Asking forgiveness from the people who gave Steinbeck the Pulitizer and the Nobel Prize for Literature, there are parts of "East of Eden" that sound like something out of Freshman Composition I. Some of the syntax sounds like scrambled eggs: - "All around the brothers beat the main topic." - "The wrinkles around them (his eyes) were drawn in radial lines inward from laughter." - "In human affairs of danger and delicate success, the conclusion is sharply limited from the rush." ​​This all sounds a bit like Charlie Chan explaining life to son no. 1. Steinbeck's "East of Eden" has now been adapted for television by ABC, an eight-hour presentation starting tonight (Channel 5, 8 to 11), tomorrow (9 to 11) and Wednesday ( from 8 to 11). It's not cheap. Ten years in the making, "East of Eden" was shot on location at a cost of $11.2 million, with Savannah, Georgia, replacing scenes in Connecticut and Salinas, California. for herself. ABC boasts in a press release that the 1955 film starring James Dean only covered a small portion of "East of Eden," while the 1981 film attempts to depict the entire novel. Ironically, by the way, today (Sunday) is the 50th anniversary of Dean's birth.