A sincere thank you to @Mary13 and all who added comments. (Nice to see you back @psychmom.) I so enjoy this group of readers. Looking forward to the Underground duo - reading and discussion.
Steinbeck ends his journal (his letters to Pascal Covici) with something lovely that I’d like to share:
Wishing you all the best. Till next time.
I too at first thought it was weird that Charles was the one who was so worried about the source of his father’s money. I think @psychmom 's explanation is on the money. Later there’s a sort of reversal of this scene when Adam won’t take Cal’s money.
What have I been reading?
Still (!) plugging away at A Suitable Boy
But I’ve been reading some sci fi/fantasy for a break - Connie Willis’ news Crosstalk a somewhat zany, frenetic look at the cell phone industry, and why we don’t really want to know what other people are thinking. Very much a screwball comedy. Sometimes I just wanted to slow down and smell the roses.
Just finished Scalzi’s Lockin about a world where a large portion of the population are basically completely paralyzed and there for send their minds out in android bodies. Also a murder mystery.
Currently reading Mary Robinette Kowal’s Ghost Talkers which takes place in an alternate World War 1 where mediums gather intelligence from the ghosts of recently deceased soldiers. Also a murder mystery.
As ever thanks to @Mary13 for leading the group.
Thanks, everyone! I just posted the new thread for February. Happy holidays to all!
Lol – I told my daughter-the-literature-major that my online book club had read East of Eden and she wanted to know if we discussed how Steinbeck’s conception of the Cain and Abel story compared to Milton’s. Nice to know I’m getting my money’s worth from her education!
I have been travelling and need to catch up on the discussion. It will probably take me while. I am heading out again to my son’s college graduation this Thursday and Friday.
I like the choice for the next book club. I don’t often make suggestions, but I was going to suggest The Underground Railroad for the February book. My sister-in-law recommended it to me. I’m glad it came up without me.
I read Paradise Lost in high school - at least some of it - but I remember nothing about it.
One thing that just popped into my head about East of Eden was how Adam didn’t name the twins for almost a year. That was a powerful indicator of a very real and deep trauma that undoubtedly left deep scars on the boys, and, under contemporary attachment theory, could explain the flaws in both Aron and Caleb. Imagine – a mother who abandons the boys at birth and a father who is so checked out he can’t even name them – an act that symbolically bestows humanity on a baby. Thank God for Lee, but Steinbeck adds so much complexity to Lee by letting us know that he has an exit plan, or, more precisely, an exit fantasy. In psychoanalytic terms, the fact that Lee harbors that plan would have to have manifested itself in small ways that would lead the boys to be insecurely attached to even Lee. I don’t know a lot about it, but I believe that there is empirical evidence that that sort of insecure attachment in infancy – pre-memory – can have profound and life-long effects on personality. And Steinbeck seems to have intuited that these effects could be passed down through generations.
I read online that babies begin responding to their names at 6-9 months. I hope Lee at least had two separate, affectionate nicknames for the boys.
On the other hand, does anyone remember Olympic gold medalist Picabo Street? She turned out okay. 
But her parents were very present–just rather eccentric:
I somehow missed (or forgot!) that story about Picabo Street.
I think Steinbeck was onto something with the effect of not naming the twins. I’ve now returned the Journal to the library, but I seem to remember him from time to time talking about the psychology of the characters. Particularly when they are about to do something that the average reader (or reviewer - he has a thing about reviewers) would likely object to.
The book is staying with me longer and with more detail than many books do. I think the schematic parallels to the Genesis stories sort of led me to write off some of the characters as lacking in depth but the more I think about it the more I think many of the characters were quite deep --or “round” as EM Forster used the term. I think I will read this one again sometime soon.
I do have to reiterate that I don’t think it approaches the literary quality of Grapes of Wrath, though. I really believe that book was a masterpiece, both as a work of literature and as an advocacy piece, something that is a rare combination. I read it for the first time when I was very young and I can honestly say it had a profound effect on my world view. I still to this day consciously call to mind the Joad’s struggles when I’m annoyed by a homeless person on the street. Maybe it is a cliche but the book definitely made me a more compassionate person, even though my temperament naturally runs toward impatience.
Interesting comments @notelling which remind me of the PBS special about “To Kill a Mocking Bird” and Harper Lee and many people interviewed claimed it was a life changing book for them.
East Of Eden seems to have had that of impact for you.
I’ve wondered what other books people would say had "life changing " impacts.
Sadly, none that I can think of, but this CC book club, shout out to @mary13,has been life changing for me
I read the book in conjunction with Steinbeck’s Journal and it was clear he wanted this book to be his masterpiece. It was something he’d been mulling about for years before he wrote it. He talks all the time about how he doesn’t want to write it to fast. He wants to get it right. He knows he’s doing some unusual stuff that may be hard to pull off - combining memoir and allegory and also trying to make his story full of real people.
I think The Lord of the Rings is probably the story that had the most impact on me. Great armies and guys with magic are marching around and fighting each other, but the people who make the real difference are the little guys - Frodo and his working class buddy Samwise without whom Frodo would have failed. That made a huge difference on 11 year old me.