Radical Transparency

I just read the first chapter of East of Eden again.  Because I couldn't resist.  Too good not to want back in, even if just for a moment.

And, of course, as not so secretly expected, I found something new.

I remember my childhood names for grasses and secret flowers.

I don't have those kinds of memories.  I have snapshots and impressions and a handful of incomplete, skeletal stories, but I don't remember my imagination.  Not as far back as childhood names for grasses anyway.

I can tap imagination memory a little bit in relation to sports and music.  I remember counting down, commentating, and launching three pointers to take playoff games to OT.  I remember walking out on a spotlit stage, long hair swinging, and hearing the crowd explode as I picked up my guitar.

But I think that's where it stops.  Or that's where my access stops.  At the moment anyway.  I do hear faint echoes of crawling around pretending to be animals.  I know stories of my days dressed up as Robin Hood and carrying a quarterstaff.  I can't imagine my mind wasn't racing all day every day.  And I hope I'll someday dig deeper into those memories.

But not today.  No secret flowers for me.

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Life has been a little tougher without East of Eden these past couple of weeks.  As Tom and I discussed in August (while he was reading East of Eden, incidentally), it's tough to walk away from something that has truly grabbed you.

But read on we must.  And I'm trying.  With Melville.  Benito Cereno.

The beginning was a struggle.  But not so much anymore.  Not for the past 10 or so pages anyway. 

Something happened.  Something clicked.  And I suspect it had to do with one character wondering if another might be "of a piratical character."

Those were the first words I underlined.  I dug them.  Piratical.  A new word for me.  And a damn good one.

And, then, nine pages and much pen scratching later, I hit this:

Trying to break one charm, he was but becharmed anew.

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I took a break from the early returns a little while ago and read. 

And I happened to read this:

All colors and all blends of Americans have somewhat the same tendencies.  It's a breed - selected out by accident.  And so we're overbrave and overfearful - we're kind and cruel as children.  We're overfriendly and at the same time frightened of strangers.  We boast and are impressed.  We're oversentimental and realistic.  We're mundane and materialistic - and do you know of any other nation that acts for ideals?  We eat too much.  We have no taste, no sense of proportion.  We throw our energy about like waste.  In the old lands they say of us that we go from barbarism to decadence without an intervening culture.  Can it be that our critics have not the key or the language of our culture?

Fun place, this country.

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Let's say there is a desirable and attainable and even archetypal psychological arc to life.  One running parallel to the ignorance to knowledge to wisdom arc. 

Does it flow from uninformed, giggly bliss to brave gravity?  Or does it flow from frustrated suffering to smiling, enlightened invincibility?

I think Steinbeck chooses the latter:

She went back to work.  "Do you think it's funny to be so serious when I'm not even out of high school?" she asked.

"I don't see how it could be any other way," said Lee.  "Laughter comes later, like wisdom teeth, and laughter at yourself comes last of all in a mad race with death, and sometimes it isn't in time."

I support that choice.

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They've been battling forever.  Angry reactionaries versus smug radicals.

According to John Steinbeck's memory and imagination circa 1950, here's how the conflict played out in California in the 1910s:

The postmaster looked out from behind the bars of his golden grill.  "I see you've got one of those damn things," he said.

"Have to keep up with the times," said Adam.

"I predict there'll come a time when you can't find a horse, Mr. Trask."

"Maybe so."

"They'll change the face of the countryside.  They get their clatter into everything," the postmaster went on.  "We even feel it here.  Man used to come for his mail once a week.  Now he comes every day, sometimes twice a day.  He just can't wait for his damn catalogue.  Running around.  Always running around."  He was so violent in his dislike that Adam knew he hadn't bought a Ford yet.  It was a kind of jealousy coming out.  "I wouldn't have one around," the postmaster said, and this meant that his wife was at him to buy one.  It was the women who put the pressure on.  Social status was involved.

The postmaster angrily shuffled through the letters from the T box and tossed out a long envelope.  "Well, I'll see you in the hospital," he said viciously.

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