If you ever read East of Eden, you probably never forgot it. John Steinbeck published it on September 19, 1952, and it has been living rent-free in readers’ heads ever since.
Now it is having a genuine moment. Collider has just named it the greatest American novel of the last 100 years. And Netflix is turning it into a new limited series, premiering October 1.
For those who need a refresher: East of Eden is a sweeping family saga set in California’s Salinas Valley. It follows two families: the Trasks and the Hamiltons across generations, exploring free will and the eternal battle between good and evil. Steinbeck drew the story from the biblical tale of Cain and Abel. He considered it his magnum opus.
Steinbeck once described the book this way:
“It will actually be two books: the story of my country and the story of me.”
Collider calls it “beautifully rich in terms of its character writing, plotting, thematic work, and moral messaging” and says it “almost definitely is the best American book of the last 100 years.” At just over 600 pages, they note, it could have easily been twice as long and still felt too short.
This is not the first time the novel has been adapted for the screen. In 1955, a celebrated film version, starring a very young James Dean, was directed by Elia Kazan. That film won an Academy Award. Then in 1981, ABC adapted it as a Golden Globe-winning miniseries starring Jane Seymour.
The new Netflix series was written by Zoe Kazan, who also serves as co-showrunner. It stars Christopher Abbott and Mike Faist. Here is the remarkable footnote: Zoe Kazan is Elia Kazan’s granddaughter. The same family that brought the story to the screen in 1955 is bringing it back now.
She told Netflix’s Tudum that she took Steinbeck’s words as her guiding principle. “It needs to be epic and intimate,” she said. “It needs to be as personal for me as it was for him, even though he’s literally writing about his family.”
Steinbeck won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1962. Collider calls him “a champion of the working class and a voice always willing to speak about the harsh realities of the Great Depression.” East of Eden joins his other beloved works, The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men, as stories that have been adapted again and again because they simply refuse to age.
If you have not read it in a while, there may never be a better time to pick it up again before October 1.
