Free Admission to Steinbeck Center

On Aug 8th, admission to the Steinbeck Center will be FREE because of the Steinbeck Festival.  If you're thinking of going this summer, this could be the time to go!

Ruby Bridges will also be speaking at the festival that day.  (I think some of you may have seen the film with the same name when reading To Kill A Mockingbird in 9th grade).

Time to get reading

If you haven't started reading East of Eden yet, it's time to get reading.  This is a long book and unless you plan on doing nothing else during your last week of vacation, I strongly suggest that you get started. 

Steinbeck Festival

Wondering what to do with yourself?  Check out the Steinbeck Festival.
http://www.steinbeck.org/Festival.html

With your student ID, the Red Pony Passport gets you admission to the museum and a full day of events for $15.  For those of you who enjoy creative writing, you might want to check out the flash fiction workshops.

Steinbeck's Nobel Prize Speech

http://as.sjsu.edu/steinbeck/works/index.jsp?val=works_nobel_speech

Abra

Abra, at first simply an object of sexual competition to Cal and Aron, becomes a more complex character in her relationships with the brothers but also with Lee and her own family. She rebels against Aron's insistence that she be a one-dimensional symbol of pure femininity. What is it that she's really looking for? Compare her to some of the other women in the book (Kate, Liza, Adam's stepmother) and try to identify some of the qualities that set her apart. Do you think she might embody the kind of "modern" woman that emerged in postwar America?

A good, and not too long essay on Steinbeck

Why read Steinbeck?

Locations in Steinbeck's novels

Steinbeck as a character in his own novel

The novel is a combination novel/memoir; Steinbeck writes himself in as a minor character in the book, a member of the Hamilton family. What do you think he gained by morphing genres in this fashion? What distinguishes this from a typical autobiography? What do you think Steinbeck's extremely personal relationship to the material contributes to the novel?

Fun Trivia About Writing East of Eden

Steinbeck on Steinbeck: Writing Trivia
Steinbeck kept track of things while writing East of Eden, and by his account, the novel took:

• 11 years of mental gestation
• One year of uninterrupted writing
• 25 dozen pencils
• Approximately three dozen reams of paper
• 350,000 words (before cutting)
• About 75,000 words in his work-in-progress journal
• And a rock-hard callus on the middle finger of the his right hand.

Character Discussion

Who is your favorite character in the novel so far? What are his or her enviable qualities? Or, who is your least favorite? What is it about him or her that bothers you?

What do you have to say about Cathy, in terms of her representation of women in the text?

class issues

Later in the year we will read the Great Gatsby, which has a lot to say about wealth.  What constitutes true wealth in East of Eden? The Hamiltons and the Trasks are most explicitly differentiated by their relationship to money: though Sam Hamilton works hard he accumulates little, while Adam Trask moons and mourns and lives off the money acquired by his father. Think of different times that money is sought after or rejected by characters (such as Will Hamilton and Cal Trask) and the role that it plays to help and hinder them in realizing their dreams. Does the quest for money ever obscure deeper desires?

An inside view at the process of writing East of Eden

If you are interested in the process of writing, this book (most of which you can read online) gives you an inside view at Steinbeck's process... pretty cool!  I'm interested to hear what bits you find intriguing.

Book About Writing East of Eden