Critique on East of Eden Perhaps the best piece of criticism I discovered was an essay by Joseph Wood Krutch. Krutch begins by making a statement by praising the enormous amount of energy required for a book with the purpose of East of Eden. Very briefly, Krutch summarizes the novel and draws an analogy between it and Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain. Krutch points out that in this novel Steinbeck avoided falling into the trap of writing melodramatic as he has in other pieces. Krutch says of Steinbeck: "Never, I think, not even in The Grapes of Wrath, has he shown such a grip on himself and his material." (Krutch 370) Krutch points out that, especially in the first third of the book, the characters' parallels to symbolic figures are quite distracting, but become less so as the book progresses. Steinbeck is often associated with writers who advocate deterministic philosophies and are moral relativists, but Krutch states that "it is difficult to imagine how any novel could more explicitly reject [these values]." (Krutch 370) Krutch assigns East of Eden the position of determining Steinbeck's position as a moralist and concludes his review by stating that "there is no doubt that Mr. Steinbeck has written an intensely interesting and impressive book." (Krutch 371) Harvey Curtis Webster was the author of another review that I found helpful. He begins with the blunt statement that "it will take almost equal amounts of pride and stupidity to deny that this is one of the best novels of the past decade and the best book John Steinbeck has written since Grapes of Wrath." (Webster 369) To conclude his strong opening paragraph Webster states, “It is doubtful whether any American novel has better told our...... middle of paper......ress. 1957. pp. 302-305. Twentieth Century Literary Criticism Ed. David Marowski, 27 November 2001. Steinbeck, John 'other side of Eden. Prometheus books. February 2001. Various contributors. "Information on purchasing on Amazon.com. 28 November 2001Webster, Out of the Newborn Sun . vol. XXXV. 20 September 1952. Rpt. In the literary criticism of the twentieth century. 369-370