I’d better start by explaining my history with this book. I was 15 when I saw the film and thought it was the most amazing experience of my life. I went around being James Dean for 6 months – which in an English boarding school wasn’t the best move I could have made. I came across the book in my English master’s bookshelf and begged it from him. I was just irritated by the first three quarters, just wanting to get to the James Dean bit.
Following some comments on here I bought it and have just finished it. And finally, after 60 years, I think James Dean is out of my life.
The book is not as good as the commenters thought. It seems to me that he set out to write the Great American Novel, and simply tried too hard. There are passages where he deliberately brings in the whole of American society, and those grate on me, I’m afraid. Don’t get me wrong I enjoyed reading it and will keep the book on my shelves, but I think there are masses of things wrong with it.
I don’t believe in Cathy as a character. Her evil is too all-encompassing. I struggle with Sam Hamilton at the other end of the good/evil scale. I think it’s a problem with his view of character. That there is one set character in everyone and that determines what the whole of their life is like. Most of all I don’t believe that Cal is saved at the end. The last couple of chapters struck me as complete bullshit.
I suspect that Steinbeck set out with the idea he wanted the book to exemplify and everything had to fit into that. Rather than inventing a set of characters and seeing what they got up to. Everyone talks like a philosopher or therapist and their conversations strike this reader anyway as deeply unrealistic.
So – it’s a good book that I’m happy to have read. But it’s not Huckleberry Finn or The Goldfinch.
by StuNunn1564