Answer as A Man

By Taylor Caldwell

Taylor Caldwell is one of my favorite authors.  Her books totally capture the scene, character, and mood of the story, for one reason; there is a sense of autheticism.  In reading a biography on her I have come to discover that reincarnation research has been done on her ability to write such authentic description on subjects in past time periods and found that she can write clairvoyantly with no research on the subject and hit the mark perfectly.  She was known to write spontaneously on a subject as in Testimony of Two Men.   In that book, she not only captured the technology of medicine in the 19^th century but captured the beside manner and mood between patient and physician that could only be done having interviewed both; requiring time travel.  Or, as suggested in the biography, she experienced the situation first hand; reincarnation.

Answer as a Man covers the time period of the early 20^th century of an Irish Catholic family and in particular one Jason Aloysius Garrity in Pennsylvania.  In writing this note I recall that another of her books, Captains and Kings, she writes of another Catholic family that closely resembles the Kennedy’s.  Clearly the families and thread of characters are different between the two books.  But the reader will come away from the book(s) with a colorful appreciation of how an oppressed ethnic group of Irish people overcame racism of the WAPS and make a fortune.  Caldwell at the same time writes of the dark stains and the hard headed determination of Irish Catholics who rise above not just their own flaws but the flaws of society in whole.  The time spans of both books overlap. Coincidentally, it is my favorite time period of history, from the Civil War (Crimean War in Europe) to the Great War.

This book begins on November 11, 1900 and spans through the rise and the Great World War.  This is a period that fascinates me because so many changes in technology had a knock-on effect on how one would chart new ways to make a fortune.  Each technology is folded into the story as the reader witnesses it almost first hand.  Here it is one hundred years later in the era of Steve Jobs, a new century, and still new technology abounds us. But it seems to me, albeit the character of ‘the man’ is the same; however the fortunes require a vision that not is the same as 1900.  Today it’s not how to live better, but to live longer.  I presume Jason would say something similar about his forefathers in the aftermath of things like the printing press.  So what were the guiding principles that Jason lived by?  How was it that he answered like a man?

There are three threads that Caldwell weaves to answer this question.  First Jason’s brother who, because he is seen to be cut of the fabric to be a man of the cloth, in childhood is granted special allowances away from chores.  This burned Jason, but he also understood it. Second is the relationship he has with his wife, a woman of monstrous character, reference my review of East of Eden.  His wife never loved Jason, but she married him because she became pregnant by Jason’s best friend, who was betrothed to Jason’s sister.  The question of virtue is again again at the root of controversy.  This dynamic is too strikingly close to a storyline too many people deal with.   So I appreciate this book being a best seller in it’s day.  

Finally  along side those personal dramas, which is the moral undercurrent  of the book, Caldwell’s practical story line describes how  Jason sorts how to make a bundle of money in the hotel business where his core values borne in him by his father, who likely passed them down from generations of forefathers before him provides the foundation for his success.  The one word that coins Jason is virtue; where those close to him, his wife and best friend, had none.  I have come to learn that when virtue escapes you, there are opportunities to atone for your ‘sin’.    I know both sides of this equation.  Forgiveness and its cousin could then set in and the story would be different.  In this book as in East of Eden and Anna Kiernan there was no atonement (Job: 11).  And everyone besides Jason Garrity paid a price.    Caldwell opens the book with a quote from the bible.  “Then the Lord asked Satan: Have you considered my servant Job – Job 1:8.  Jason prevailed.  I think it is important to read from the Bible Job first and then read this book.

Bibliography:

Page 21:  He had no impulse to kneel, to venerate; to worship for what he had experienced had no name, no frame of reference in piety, no connection with the world of men at all.  It transcended time and place and flesh.  It was only Itself, revealed utterly, possessing no human awareness.  It was Revelation, and its awareness of its revelation was sufficient for it, demanding no acknowledgement.

He had heard of the “rapture” of saints. It never occurred to him the he himself, for one endless instant, had experienced rapture.  He was not famous for devotion to his religion, or for his earnest practice of it.  Yet, as he went toward the house, he was suddenly aware of God in the simplest and our surest sense.

Page 50:  Bernard silently plunged his hands into his trousers pocket and brought out a handful of coins, which he nosily spilled on the table cloth.  “Nearly two dollars”, he said finally.  “We needed only four more.  We’ll get it sure we will!”

“Yes,” said Jason, who was less than hopeful, but he wanted peace tonight for his mother’s sake.  ….he said where did you get that money Da?”

“went around,” grunted Bernard.  “Not everybody’s got a heart like a stone.”

Page 70: [of the land left to Jason from a friend who was murdered]   “Some day that land will be valuable, mind my words,” he told Jason.  But Jason did not think of that.  He only thought that old  Joe had not properly been avenged.  His hatred for the executed murders never abated.

Page 71:  When Jason talked of Justice, Lionel was bored.  Justice had been done.  The murders were dead too.  Why brood?  Life was for the living.  He saw that others respected and trusted Jason, whereas they did not respect or trust him.  He only charmed them, and he found much more to his interest, and far more profitable.  There would never be tips for Jason.  He would have to earn every penny.  Jason had character.

My comment:  Lionel did earn his tips and saw immediate gratification in terms of reward.  But Lionel was less that honest, albeit not telling any lies.  I think the message here is he who plants his intention in firm soil sees a stable return on investment and is less vulnerable.

Page 82:  He still stared at the empty hollow under the trees.  Then all at once he felt a “shifting,” a movement, though there was no movement anywhere.  Suddenly, like a giant wave of light, he was engulfed in brilliance, though he did not see it with his mortal eyes.  He was only aware of it, a glory, an opening, a vastness of being, of understanding, of love, of promise, of secret but incredible hope.  Above all, of tremendous love, supernatural, filled with eternity, without boundaries, personal consoling, joyous, ecstatic.  Warmth enveloped him, like embracing arms.  He was not only released, but he felt expanding, as if aware of his membership in something beyond life and duty and grimness of pain.  He was swept, in, in that blinding glow, into rapture, tenderness, strength, and grandeur.  Everything was explained, everything known, all terror lost, all peace encompassing.

Page 82:  However the melancholy and fear had left him, as if a parent had lifted him from a sightless bed and had held him and had told him something he could not remember and only knew.

My comment:  Caldwell speaks to that inner knowing that comes from above, generation to generation; the everlasting now that needs no remembering.

Page 95:  To him, as to his Irish ancestors, trees were holy things, the home of druids, not to be violated.  He wanted to worship, but he did not think of the God of fervid cities.  His impulse was toward something more intense and immanent – indwell yet immense and boundless and universal. He felt the immediacy of the godhead, listening, aware, burning, with Being, young, and joyous yet timeless, swelling with love and mystery not comprehended by man.  Here was all explained, even to the dark mind of humanity – if it would listen, which it rarely did.  Here indeed, was the peace that passed understanding, the eloquent peace of majestic eternity, which knew nothing of death or pain or tumult.

The earth to Jason would sometimes think, was a temple, sacred and dedicated not by any priest but by …What?  For an instant and something flashed across his mind, as incandescent as the sun but more vivid – a wing of light, which also brushed his flesh.  But it was gone at once; it left only a shadow of resplendence behind it.  The it was also gone.

My comment:  I call this a holy instant, where others may call it a vision quest, a word from God.  It is written about in many novels and books, including ‘The Good Book.’

Page 121:  Bernard’s vivid gaze moved about the room.  He listened to the silence, disturbed only by the hallow thud of the wind.  He said “I’d like to think there is a God – for Katie.  The woman in the other bed – she said she saw an angel… I’d like to believe it was Katie, going home.”

Jason looked down at the table with its oilcloth covering.  “Let’s believe it, then.”  He said in a voice as emotionless as his grandfather’s had been.

Page 141:  Her restlessness overcame her.  She had got out her bicycle from the stable and had furiously ridden off, peddling with all her strength.  That she was desperately seeking an encounter she did not know.  The exertion exhilarated her and she pressed for the out skirts of town.  The gentle heat made her sweat; her breasts tingled wetly against the camisole and the shirtwaist, and the sensation excited her.  Her loins, on the seat of t bicycle, began to burn.  She took off her straw hat and tied it on the handlebars,  The wind lifted her light brown hair and she laughed.  She felt alive and vibrant as never before.  She felt her femaleness and was proud.  It was naughty. of course, but in what way?

She passed carriages and automobiles and did not see or hear them.  She searched with her eyes, and did not know for what she was looking.  Her heart was beating very fast.  An unimaginative girl, she had never known beauty before..  Now she was entranced by the countryside which bordered the narrow road.  Everything elated her, the new green of the trees, the scent of the warm grass, the sight of wildflowers shyly clustered in the shade of great trees – purple, yellow, red, and blue – the mauve glisten of the mountains in the distance, the fragrance of hot stone and hot dust, the comfort of the sun on her face and her hands.  She smiled, and she wanted to cry in her delight.  Patricia Mulligan had discovered life.  She felt she was part of it and she was beautiful, too.  Her hear expanded, She began to sing.

My comment:  She was riding to a rendezvous with her lover.  This would be their one and only time having sex.  While she was being pursued by Jason, she really wanted Jason’s best friend Lionel.  Who was betrothed to Jason’s sister.  Both betrayed Jason.  Was this a double surrender of virtue in its true meaning?  On its own; no.  But to hold to the betrayal the through the remainder of the story as did Jason's wife and his best friend did and haunts everyone involved as the upheaval of truth like a plate tectonic crash, rains ruins upon the immediate characters and their children. 

Page 147:  Mrs. Lindon had once said, “You have all the ways of a gentleman, my Deal Lionel, but you don’t have much education.  It doesn’t take a lot of study to give te appearance of education; it just needs a little reading, a lot of listening, and a knowing air.” 

Page 186:  Daniel dutifully attended Mass with his uncle.  He did not see Jason there very often, and when he did, Jason would site wit his eyes in swerving regarding the great crucifix above the high alter.  When he prayed, it was with a strange intensity.  It was as if a devoted son contented with a  capricious or in comprehensible father and demanded answers to unanswerable questions.

In his spirit he is a priest, Daniel would think  with a curious mixture of compassion and mirth.

252:  While Jason fumed, Lionel opened his newspaper.  “Look at this,” he said.  “just when we wanted to install oil heat instead of coal, Washington warns – they’re always warning – that our oil resources will be exhausted by 1930.  And coal soon after.”  “We should heat with wood.”

Page  253:  [On the looming Great War] We’ve got too much sense.  And Washington is too small and feeble to push us into one.

Page 259:  Every man in that kitchen thinks he is better than any other man there, and far superior in every way.  That’s human nature.  If you look at slights, you’ll get them.  But for God’s sake, don’t insult them either.

Page 261:  He tried to lighten his mood and forced himself to think of his new Zulu chef and finally could smile.  No matter a man’s race or color or religion, he was on with the rest of his wrenched fellows and they all had one terrible adversary – God.  And each other, of course, sad to say.

Page 326:  “You’ve changed,” she said.  “

Have I?”  He did not know that his usually impassive face was glowing, like a youths.

“Yes and I don’t like it.”

He turned away.  He said involuntarily, “You’ll have to get used to it.”  He left the room.

Patricia fell back on he cushions.  He was not the man she had known only yesterday.  He has escaped her.  She felt powerless.  This enraged her.  She got to her feet, went to her locked dressing table, and took out a bottle of whiskey.  She did not wait to get a glass.  She lifted the bottle to her lips and drank avidly.

Page 370:  But Jason shook his head over end over in increasing torment.  “But not for his parents; there is no joy or peace, watching somebody like that.  A waste of life…”

“Is it a waste to those children?  Is a bird a waste, or a butterfly, or a flower?  Who is to say?”

He won’t be a man.”

“The days of a man’s life are full of trouble.   Like the grass he is cut down.’  Job cursed the day of his birth.  Nick will never do that.”

“Its better to suffer,” said Jason.  “Then you know you are a man.  It’s better to have pain than endless childhood.  AT least you know you are alive..”

Saul shook his head warily, “ I’m an old ma. I wish I’d never been born.  It was Gods will – blessed be his name – and here I am in my old age, with none of my own.  I’ll go to my grave and thank the Lord.

My comment:  This is dialogue between Jason and Saul in the realization that Jason’s son Nick is mentally impaired.  Caldwell brings in Job into this very Catholic story of the early twentieth century.  Medicine had not made break through’s…and still today we have mental disorders.  Hence we all turn to God, the reality of our being and go within.

Page 389:  Let Love come last, after the lesson’s learned

Love like all things else, must be earned.

“And that goes for children too, Saul Weitzman.  He told me that it is Jewsih teaching, from the Holy Bible, that a man owes his children and education, but above all he must teach them righteousness.  Parents are not commanded to ‘love’ their children.  Children have to earn their parents’ love.  But kids are commanded to honor their parents.”  He waited a moment and said, “And the Church teaches this also…”

Page 419:  Suddenly radiance fell over the mountains, river, sky, trees, blinding Jason wit hits effulgence.  A sea of light engulfed him, bearing his soul upward to ecstasy, becoming one with the brilliance he thought he saw with his eyes. The light became rapture, the rapture true light.  They flowed into one another, pulsing blissful, without boundaries, without end.  Above all they brought joy.  All was transformed, charged with grandeur.  A thought came to Jason un bidden.  Be still and know that I am God.”

The glory ended.  The familiar scene became small, ordinary, merely pretty.  The majestic revelation faded.  Jason felt as if he had wakened in some fetid valley after falling asleep in Olympia.

My comment:  This is for sure the essence of my book of poetry “Love is a Blooming Rose”.   If you want a copy, send me an email.  It is also a coincidence that I also randomly picked this book up along with all of James Redfield’s books on the Celestine Prophecy.  He describes a process to this transformation and describes exactly the glorious moment of revelation.  I call it in my book ‘The Holy Moment’.  The moment itself is fleeting.  But ones reaction is forever.

Madame Bovary

By Gustave Flaubert

I picked this book up at a used bookstore in Traverse City a couple of years ago. I picked it up largely because it is an old French classic of original copyright printing & binding, simply to add to my bookshelf. I pulled it off my bookshelf to possibly discover in a classic, a lifestyle that may provide clues as to where or at what time in history man began his deference of self-accountability to his government. The book in modern times in a mid American crowd would be an Oprah chic book. So I was struck to find myself reading it. I had no clue of what I was getting in to. As it is a drama about the life of Madame Bovary, which could happen to anyone. The real beauty in the book is the French description, and the thought-provoking message. Character and setting introduction goes as follows.

The setting of the story is in the farm country of Western France. You could imagine slightly rolling hills carved by the intersection of two rivers, cultivated and rich in crop. The small towns are situated about fifteen miles from each other and each with a population of a hundred to two. The Bovary’s lived in town and from their house you get the impression that they could tune in to all that is happening by putting ones head out the window. The Bovary house came with one servant and was your typical middle-income house with a piano that may have had them in slight advantage over others. All in all it was a setting for a pretty quiet and uneventful life. The key characters help define the authors message.

Charles Bovary - was molded by his mothers drive. She set his life’s charter to be a doctor. His first effort was a failure due to the decision not being his own. However his second effort on the boot of his father proves successful. As he grew into his practice and got fat as his focused was on both his patients and his wife. He was well respected; a loving and caring husband, yet not refined to the manners of Paris. He fell into life.

Madame Bovary’s - (Emma) moral fabric was weaved in a convent. There she learned the morals of life’s decisions She came to appreciate art, music, and culture was well read. When her mother died she returned to the farm to help her father out. It was in this setting that she met Monsieur Bouvary, succumbed to a courtship out of limited choice and marriage partially arranged, partially promoted by her father. She battled through life.

Leon – a bit younger than Emma is a dreamer and also longing for the city. His longing for academic study and for culture led to his departure to Paris to pursue a career in law.

Rodolphe - was bachelor, a lady’s man. He was rich and developed selfish designs on Emma that go too far for a confirmed bachelor. He realizes her longing for arts and culture and plays into them only to have a mistress shackled in a marriage where he may have his way with her and also live his life of solitude.

Lormeaux - is the local merchant. I am always intrigued of the venue for distribution of goods of that time as well the understanding and practice of commercial exchange. Lormeaux extends credit to Emma and therefore plays the role of merchant and capitalist. This represents store credit cards of today. The main business difference is simple interest -v- compounding interest. Secondarily is today’s stores are much better situated to absorb losses for those that default on their loans. The personal interaction is less noticeable where one is not aware of the obligation to repay and consequence upon society and our economy for not doing so. Through the character of Lormeaux: the signing of a promissory notes, the negotiation of debt among other businessmen, and the tendering of debt paper as payment is described as common place of the times. Today that process is made as transparent as possible and I find that the average person may only witness with the transfer of a mortgage. Thus a stranger collecting on a debt, changing the unwritten understandings of the primary lender, do not occur.

In summary the story line picks up where marriage for Emma was an awakening where she soon discovered that her passion for a finer life could not be met with Charles. She was a good wife and tended to the house with elegance, yet inside she was burning for something more. Monsieur Bouvary was invited to a country party where she danced with a Viscount. The dance illuminated her desires for city life. Depression from absence of arts set in so drastically that Charles moved his practice to a new town in Yoneville, hoping a change in setting would cure her ailment. Coincidently their first child came along and Emma’s preoccupation with motherhood temporarily masked her passions. She discovers in young Leon someone she can share in her passion for art and culture. The passion for each other is lit, however restraint, founded in a moral code, prevails. It was Emma’s attempt to put mind over passion. Leon would eventually leave Yoneville for a Paris leaving a tremendous vacuum in Emma’s life.

This sets the stage for Rodolphe. In the vacuum he sweeps in and cultivates four years of escapade and rendezvous. In classic French style of the time the scenes are romantic, not naughty. While Rodolphe plays the cock that couldn’t crow with a strut instead, Emma plans a life together. Rodolphe plays along only to continue this perfect bachelor arrangement. Emma incurs tremendous debt arranging an escape to a new life only to find Rodolphe leaves her in a lurch. The scene draws a contrast of morals.

A moral code: “but one must bow to the opinion of the world and accept it’s moral code”
But there are two types “The small conventional, that of men, that which constantly changes, that brays out so loudly, that makes such a commotion here below. Of earth and earthy. But the other, the eternal, that is about us and the blue heavens that give us light”

This contrast sets the stage for the return of Leon. While there is at first an attempt for restrain an affair is lit by a carriage ride of lovemaking. This time however this time Emma is in control. This time Leon plays the part of the mistress. Emma spins a web of lies, waiting to be unraveled. Love turns to everyday life of which Emma funds through revenue from Charles’s patients and an over extension of her ability to repay her debt. She implores Charles to extend a power of attorney to manage the money of the house. Imagine this power not being implied through a marriage license. After this book one would be compelled to revert back to the ways of old. As an indication to the evolution away from personal responsibility the book includes a dialogue between Lormeaux and Charles with Lormeaux saying, “A man of science should not be troubled with matters of money”. This gives Lormeaux, with full knowledge of Emma’s agenda by way of the things she purchases, free access to the pocket book of unsuspecting Charles.

As events of the economy changed, Emma’s debt fell upon the decision making of persons not privy to the nature of her debt. And as such strict adherence to repayment was rudely and with great surprise introduced to Madame Bovary. Without knowledge of the custom of repayment to a stranger collecting on a debt, Bovary never considered changing the unwritten understandings of the primary lender, which previously allowed her a never-ending continuance of debt. As her passion for culture eroded to a lust for things she could not fairly gain she was rendered incapable of good business judgment. In the face of a bankruptcy process whereby the town official comes in to your home and prices all belongings for auction to facilitate repayment her solution an act was to take her own life.

In closing Charles, only after an honorable funeral, discovers the years of love letters and the deception. This discovery leads to the mysterious passing of Charles, where you conclude he simply lost all meaning of life. This left their daughter Berthe who you are left wondering about. The two metaphors from this book that give meaning to me are: When words fall short in the expression of ones heart: “They like a cracked kettle, on which we hammer out tunes to make bears dance, when we long to move the stars” “A lifetime of passion can be fit in a minute”. These are only to think about, as I have not an answer. My preference for poetic expression is though renewed from words like these. For they ironically do paint a meaningful picture best left to poetic interpretation. I did find the answer to a much simpler question; which is how a person could loose sight of personal accountability, virtue.

East of Eden

by John Steinbeck

At the core of Steinbeck’s message is what differentiates us from animals is choice.  We know that right?  It's about timshel.  It's root comes from the Bible in the story of Cain and Able.  Timshel is about God blessing man with free will.  But there is a slight distinction.  In a wolf thou will choose.  In humans, they may choose. There are a couple of prime characters who make a choice in marriage where virtue becomes yet a gain in a classic novel the center theme.  Adam Trask represents ‘thou mayest'. Adam Trask represents a character of blind virtue.  Cathy, later Kate represents a monstrous life of ‘thou will’.

Adam begins his adult life going against his core character to be a sensitive creative person and obeying his father’s orders by becoming a military man.    After years of going against the grain in the military, he is discharged only to wonder lost, broke and homeless; the life of a Hobo across the country of the late 1800’s.  He needed to find himself.  He climbs out of this abyss of life to take up his place in his brother’s home in Connecticut.  The living arrangements were doomed from the beginning as the two brothers though raised by the same military man, were total opposites. 

In the course of Adam’s sad beginning Cathy as she was called in the beginning of the book had also a dismal start.  She and Adam were on a collision course. Steinbeck introduces her character in the following way.  “I believe there are monsters born in the world to human parents.  Some you can see, misshapen and horrible, with huge heads or tiny bodies, some born with no arms, no legs, some with three arms, some with tails or mouths in odd places.  They are accidents and no one’s fault as used to be thought.  Once they were considered the visible punishments for concealed sins.

And just as there are physical monsters, can there not be mental or psychic monsters born?  The face and body may be perfect, but there is a twisted gene or a malformed egg can produce physical monsters, may not the same process produce a malformed soul?”

Notice Steinbeck forms this thesis with question marks.  He goes on to discuss the ramifications of monsters as follows.  “Monsters are variations from the accepted normal to a greater or a less degree.  As a child may be born without an arm, so one may he be born without kindness or the potential of conscience.  A man who loses his arms in an accident has a great struggle to adjust himself to the lack, but one born without arms suffers only from people who find him strange.  Having never had arms, he cannot miss them.  Some times when we are little we imagine how it would be to have wings, but there is no reason to suppose it is the same feeling birds have.  No to a monster the norm must seem monstrous, since everyone is normal to himself.  To the inner monster it must be even more obscure, since he has no visible thing to compare with others.  To a man born without a conscience, a soul-stricken man must seem ridiculous.  To a criminal, honesty is foolish. You must not forget that a monster is only a variation, and that to a monster the norm is monstrous.”  This question I think captured the attention of millions who have read this book.  So I now know I am not alone in dealing with such a monster.  This book speaks to our humanity on the question of virtue and how only human beings are challenged with the choice to be virtuous or not.  A dog is loyal to a cruel master.  A woman can sell out her virtue to a man who has blessed her with mere material kindness.   

While there are many sub-story lines in the book that raise the question of choice, Cathy who turns to a prostitute who becomes Kate the madam of a brothel is the thread that Steinbeck pulls through the book in an attempt to look at choice, virtue and a monster.  Was Cathy born a monster? Or was she born into a monstrous world?  Steinbeck is not real clear in answering the fist question, but I think he is saying that she was born a monster and therefore created a monstrous life for herself.   To the second question her early life was not a bed of roses.  She found herself in desperate situations making desperate choices.  Early on she learned to utilize her female assets to raise her prospects in living comfort.  Her choices through the book were not trivial or an act of survival, but rather brutal as an act of vengeance. 

Through the twists and turns of revenge drama, Cathy finds herself left for dead at the hand of one of her victims on the side of the road.  Her evil deeds had caught up with her.  Adam Trask, who had really not found himself yet, discovers her and brings her home to nurture her back to life.  In the course of his service he began to let pity paint her as a virtuous woman who met with a bad turn of fate.  He blinded himself from her monstrous nature.  He fell in love with her and married her.  I know this mistake.  She conceded to marriage as a temporary escape root to the legal situation she may have been facing.  Marrying Adam and moving west to California was a new lease on life, at Adam’s expense.  There was no love in her heart.  In fact on their wedding night, she bedded down with Adam, and then after he fell asleep she went into his brother’s room, woke him up and fucked him too.  I know women, one in particular capable of this, leading me to draw a conclusion as to why the book was popular.  I sure wished I had read this book 20 years ago.

Cathy the prostitute on the lamb, rather than assume the loving environment of family and a good husband, shoots Adam in the shoulder and leaves him for dead as she heads not too far down the road and takes a job turning tricks in a brothel. This goes to Stienbeck’s monster theory.  Cathy now Kate, is back in her comfort zone of virtue-less deceit. She knows no other life.  She cannot make a better choice, as it is foreign to her thinking.  Eventually her high marks with the Madame of the brothel earn her the opportunity to murder her in a very discrete way.  So now she, as Madame of the brothel has control of all the city leaders who have surrendered their virtue to her house.  I am amazed at the result on society when virtue is surrendered.

She is in control of everything…until time’s two edge sword cuts her to shreds.  As it runs out on her where people discover her crimes, her deteriorating health makes life … living painful.  She like Anna Karenina commits suicide. So Steinbeck, like Tolstoy, leaves it for the reader to interpret their allegoric answer.   If the higher being, human though it may be, is the sole domain of choice; did Kate…Anna with loss of virtue exercise choice, or were they monsters out of control?   Both East of Edin and Anna Karenin ended with the husband completing his life in peace.  Personally, after my twenty year dance with the devils daughter, I look forward to the same.

The distinct moral message from Steinbeck:  Is presented in a two page dissertation by Steinbeck in Chapter 13:  Here is an excerpt:  Our species is the only creative species, and it has only one creative instrument, the individual mind and spirit of man.  Nothing was ever created by two men.  There are no good collaborations, whether in music, in art, in poetry, in Mathematics, in philosophy. Once the miracle of creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but the group never invents anything.  The preciousness lies n the lonely mind of man.

And now the forces marshaled around the concept of the group have declared a war of extermination on that preciousness, the mind of man.  My disparagement, by starvation, by repressions, forced direction, and the stunning hammer blows of conditioning, the free, roving mind is being pursued, roped, blunted, and drugged.  It is sad suicidal course our species seems to have taken.

And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world.  And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected.  And this I must fight for against: any religion or government which limits or destroys the individual.  This is what I am and what I am about.  I can understand what a system built on a pattern must try to destroy the free mind, for that is the one thing that can by inspection destroy such a system.  Surely I can understand this and I hate it and I will fight against it to preserve the one thing that separates us from the uncreative beasts.  If the glory can be killed, we are lost.

In conjunction of the free mind Steinbeck brings in the dichotomy of Cain and Able.  Cathy’s twin sons, one by Adam and one by his brother, a double untundered construct all by itself that takes on the theme of Cain and Able from two perspectives.   Yes Cathy had sex with both brothers in the same night.  Neither ever knew of the other’s pleasure.  In the case of Adam and his brother; Adam is introverted and introspective.  His brother is egotistical and reactive.  Adam’s brother was resentful and did not treat Adam kindly.  He beat him once to near death out of jealousy.  A parallel is drawn between Adam’s sons. As obscure it may seem, there is a progression in the form of evolution of man away from violence.

Of Adam’s sons the introspective brother finds a life in religion and love for a girl.  He surrounds himself with aspects of society that are structured and safe.  The other brother was a free thinking maverick, always testing the fringes of acceptable society.  It was the maverick who found the courage to discover the truth about his prostitute mother Cathy.  Steinbeck draws a colorful picture of the mind of children at a loss for their mother, and their discovery of her evilness.  However, unlike his father’s sibling rivalry situation, the maverick loved his socially bound brother and would do anything to protect him.  Finally the legacy of Cain and Able is NOT carried forward. 

In my view, children inherit their moral personification of character from their parents.  God help them!!!! It’s up to a parent to recognize their own flaws and eradicate them in front of their children.  In absence of this too often found neglect of obligation, it is up to children to see the flaw and also make changes where the parent fails.  This comes from free thinking; creating the space for children to grow up in a peaceful setting and giving them the confidence to believe in themselves…evolve the human spirit  This goes to Steinbeck’s opening statement:  Our species is the only creative species, and it has only one creative instrument, the individual mind and spirit of man.  Amidst my own mistakes in life I strive to meet the lofty goal of one spirit with my children and openly pursue the evolution of One spirit of souls with them. I do it privately; Steinbeck makes a profound statement for millions of readers.

Bibliography

Page 19: When a child first catches adults out – when it first walks into his grave little head that adults do not have divine intelligence, that their judgments are not always wise, their thinking true, and their sentences just – his world falls into panic desolation.  The gods are fallen and all safety gone.  And there is one sure thing about the fall of gods:  they do not fall a little, they crash and shatter or sink deeply into green muck.  It is a tedious job to build them up again, they never quite shine.  And the child’s world is never quite whole again.  We are individuals and at the same time exist at soul level in the spirit of One.

Page 34:  It has always seemed strange to me that it is usually men like Adam who have done the soldiering.  He did not like fighting to start with, and far from learning to love it, as some men do, he felt increasing revulsion for violence

Page 54:  Time interval is a strange and contradictory matter in the mind.  It would be reasonable to suppose that a routine time or an eventless time would seem interminable.  It should be so, but it is not.  It is the dull eventless times that have no duration whatever.  A time splashed with interest, wounded with tragedy, crevassed with joy – that’s the time that seems long in memory.  And this is right when you think about it.  Eventlessness has no posts to drape duration on.  From nothing to nothing is no time at all.

Page 56:  [Of Adam’s character] he learned that when people are very poor they still have something to give and the impulse to give it.  He developed a love for poor people he could not have conceived if he had not been poor himself.

Page 69:  [Of Adam’s love for his father] “Maybe that’s the reason’ Adam said slowly, feeling his way. “ Maybe if I had loved him I would have been jealous of him. You were.  Maybe-maybe love makes you suspicious and doubting.  Is it true that when you love a woman you are never sure – never sure of her because you aren’t sure of yourself?

Page 88:  In all such local tragedies time works like a damp brush on water color.  The sharp edges blur, the ache goes out of it, the colors melt together, and from the many separated lines a solid gray emerges.  [a wonderful metaphor upon this story]  Within a month it was not necessary to hang someone, and within two months nearly everybody discovered that there wasn’t any real evidence against anyone.  If it had not been for Cathy’s murder, fire and robbery might have been a coincidence.  Then it occurred that without Cathy’s body you couldn’t prove anything though you thought she was dead.  Cathy left a sent of sweetness behind her

My comment:  I know very well a person of Cathy’s monstrous character.  It takes a monster to leverage time in the cover of her manipulative deeds.  It seems that when you lose virtue, you discover deceit.

Page 130:  Then a man pours himself outward, a torrent of him, and yet he is not diminished.  And I guess a man’s importance in the world can be measured by the quality and number of his glories.  It is a lonely thing but it relates us to the world.  It is the mother of all creativeness, and it sets each man separate from all other men.

Page :  131:  Our species is the only creative species, and it has only one creative instrument, the individual mind and spirit of man.  Nothing was ever created by two men.  There are no good collaborations, whether in music, in art, in poetry, in Mathematics, I philosophy. Once the miracle of creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but the group never invents anything.  The preciousness lies n the lonely mind of man.

And now the forces marshaled around the concept of the group have declared a war of extermination on that preciousness, the mind of man.  My disparagement, by starvation, by repressions, forced direction, and the stunning hammer blows of conditioning, the free, roving mind is being pursued, roped, blunted, and drugged.  It is sad suicidal course our species seems to have taken.

And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world.  And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected.  And this I must fight for against: any religion or government which limits or destroys the individual.  This is what I am and what I am about.  I can understand what a system built on a pattern must try to destroy the free mind, for that is the one thing that can by inspection destroy such a system.  Surely I can understand this and I hate it and I will fight against it to preserve the one thing that separates us from the uncreative beasts.  If the glory can be killed, we are lost.

Page 141: [metaphor] My wife is rumbling like round stones in the surf.   

Page 141: [metaphor] You’re right I do, and Liza says I do, shepherd my words like rebellious sheep.

Page 144:  [metaphor] Well a man’s mind can’t stay in time the way his body does

Page 149:  [metaphor]I went down and down until the wing tips of angles brushed my eyes.

Page 149:  [metaphor] When angered she had a terrible eye which could blanch the skin off a bad child as if he were a boiled almond.

Page 157:  [metaphor] If Adam rested like a sleek fed cat on his land, Cathy was catlike too,  She has the inhuman attribute of abandoning what she could not get and of waiting for what she could get…and pounce.

Page 180: [metaphor] “I’m afraid we’ve done a bad service to our dearies.: Samuel said. ‘Here she wanted to save it for a real tin-plate surprise to her mother and we’ve leaked it like wheat from a mouse hole in a sac.”

Page 183: [metaphor]  A woman gave a tooth to for a child. It was the law:  And a woman was likely to have strange tastes, some said for filth, and it was set down to the

 Eve nature, still under sentence for original sin.

It was if she had gone away and left a breathing doll to conceal her absence.

Adam fluttered like a bewildered bee confused by too many flowers.

Page 185:  [metaphor] And indeed they could see a horseman riding toward them at full gallop, but a curious horseman who flopped about on his mount like a tied chicken.

Page 188: [metaphor] I’ve been so close to the details, I’ve paid no attention to the clothing of the day.

Samuel said, “You stay close.  That sounds like Adam playing true.  He doesn’t know his wife probably couldn’t hear God Himself beating a tattoo on the sky.”

Page 216: [metaphor] The were not pure, but they could make something pretty fine of it within himself.

While churches, bringing the sweet smell of piety for the soul, came prancing and farting like brewery horses in bock-beer time, the sister evangelism, with release of joy for the body, crept in silently and greyly, with its head bowed and face covered.

Page 239: In Human affairs of danger and delicacy sucessful conclusion is sharply limited by hurry.  So often men trip by being in a rush.  If one were properly to perform a difficult and subtle act, he should inspect the end to be achieved and then, once he had accepted the end as desireable, he should forget it completely and concentrate solely on the the means.  By this method he would not be moved to false anxiety or hurry or fear.  Very few people learn this

Page 251: [metaphor] Samuel wrote to Joe, “ I would be disappointed if you had not become an atheist, And I read pleasantly that you have, in your age and wisdom, accepted agnosticism the way you’d take a cookie on a full stomach.”

It worries her, her faith is a mountain and you, my son, haven’t even got a shovel yet.”

Page 255: [metaphor] You turn it over the way a coon turns over a wet rock…

Page 256:  [metaphor] and this thought went from evening star to the late dipper on the edge of first light

I don’t understand you.  How could you?  Adam Trask, a dog wolf with a pair of cubs, a scrubby rooster with sweet paternity for a fertilized egg!  A dirty clod,

Page 264: [metaphor] “Two stories have haunted us and followed us from our beginning.” Samuel said.  “ we carry them along with us like invisible tales – the story of original sin and the story of Cain and Able.  I don’t understand either of them.”

Page 266:  No story has power, nor will it last, unless we feel in ourselves that it is true and true of us.  What a great burden of guilt men have!

Page 268:  [Cain and Able story]  I think it is the best-known story in the world because it is everybody’s story.  I think it is the symbol story of the human soul.

 It is all there – the start, the beginning.  One child, refused the love he craves, kicks the cat and hides secret guilt, and another steals so that money will make him loved, and a third conquers the world – always the guilt and re revenge and more guilt.  The human is the only guilty animal.  Therefore I think this old and terrible story is important because it is a chart of the soul – the secret, rejected, guilty soul.

Page 269:  [metaphor] Oh, I wonder how my Tom will think of this!   He’ll cradle it in the palm of his mind.  He’ll turn it like slow pork in his brain like a roast of pork before the fire.

Page 274:  [metaphor] But she had the loveliest hands and feet.  Her ankles were as slender as grass and she moved like grass.

Page 280:  [metaphor] Samuel rode lightly on top of a book and he balanced happily among ideas the way a man rides white rapids in a canoe.

Page 284 [metaphor] I don’t think he’ do it said Will.  ‘He’s stubborn like a mule and proud like a horse.  He’s got a pride like brass.”

Page 285:  [metaphor] He says himself that a thing about time doing the job dynamite can’t touch.”

Page 290:  I have wondered why it Is that some people are less affected and torn by the verities of life and death than others.  Una’s death [metaphor] cut the earth from under Samuel’s feet and opened his defended keep and let in old age. On the other hand Liza, who surely loved her family as deeply as did her husband was not destroyed oe warped.  Her life continued evenly, she felt sorrow, but she survived it.

I think perhaps Liza accepted the world as she accepted the Bible, with all its paradoxes and its reverses.  She did not like death as knew it existed, and when it came it did not surprise her.

Page 291:  She had no love of places.  A place was only a resting place on the way the Heaven.

Page 293:  “I know the ‘shoulds’ although I never do them, Adam.  I always know the ‘should.’.  You should try to find the new Cathy.  You should let the new Cathy kill the dream Cathy – let the two of them fight it out.  And you sitting by, should marry you mind to the winner. That’s the second best should.  The best would be to search out and find some fresh new loveliness to cancel out the old.

Page 301:  “Ah!”  said Lee.  “I’ve wanted to tell you this for a long time.  I even anticipated your questions and I am well prepared.  Any writing which has influenced the thinking and lives of innumerable people is important.  Now, there are millions in their sects and churches who feel the order, ‘Do thou’, and throw their weight into obedience.  And there are millions more who feel predestination in ‘Thou shalt.’  Nothing they may do can interfere with what will be.  But ‘Thou mayest’!  Why that makes a man great, that gives him stature with the gods, for in his weakness and his filth and his murder of his brother he still has the great choice.  He can choose his course and fight it through and win.”  Lee’s voice was a chant of triumph.

Page 303:  “Neither do I,” said Lee.  I take my two pipes in the afternoon no more no less, like the elders.  And I feel that I am a man.  And I feel that a man is a very important thing – maybe more important that a star.  This is not theology.  I have no bent towards gods.  But I have a new love for that shiny instrument, the human soul.  It is a lovely and unique thing of the universe.  It is attacked and never destroyed – because ‘Though mayest.”

Page 303:[metaphor]  He’s about as ugly a crow bait as I ever saw.

Page 306: [metaphor] Your mind is as facile as a young lamb leaping in a daisy field

Page 321:  Adam shivered. He looked closely at her.  Her face and her laughter were childlike and innocent.  He got up and poured himself another drink.  The bottle was nearly empty.  “I know what you hate.  You hate something in them you can’t understand.  You don’t hate their evil.  You hate the good in them you can’t get at.  I wonder what you want, what final thing.”

My comment: I suppose I book marked this for two reasons.  First I truly appreciate a guy reaching the bottom of a bottle trying to figure out an evil wife.  Second, I know first hand that from evil comes jealousy, jealousy of those who can't overcome evil.

Page 328:  [of Sam Hamilton, deceased] “Maybe both of us have a piece of him,” said Lee, Maybe that is what immortality is.”

My comment:  I first read this comment in a scientific book by Hofstadter.  The immortality of a person lay in his thought, an energy that cannot be destroyed.  I accept this concept and because I do, I see it everywhere.  Coincidence, I think not?  It’s the collective humanity coming to the same conclusion in a timeless expression of what is.

Page 369:  [metaphor] He pinched a dollar until the eagle screamed.

Page 370:  [metaphor] and it was as restless as a setting hen scrounging into the nest.

Page 381:  Adam said, “I guess you can’t understand it.  I don’t much care.  There are so many things I don’t understand.  I don’t understand how you could shoot me and desert your sons.  I don’t understand how you or anyone could live like this.”

My comment:  I suppose I bookmarked this because metaphorically my wife shot me, though she didn’t literally shoot me, nor abandon her children physically, she abandoned them spiritually.  I think upon reading these words, I came to appreciate that indeed my ex-wife is a monster and that I created an angel in my image…by mistake.   I now give full stock to the phrase, things are themselves by themselves.  It took me to make her what she was not.  I paid dearly.

Page 382:  “ no I won’t because I seem to know that there’s a part of you missing.  Some men can’t see the color green, but they may never know they can’t.  I think you are only part of a human.  I can’t do anything about that.  But I wonder whether you ever feel that something invisible is all around you.  It would be horrible if you knew it was there and couldn’t see or feel it.  That would be horrible.

My comment:  Through Steinbeck’s character and story, I see clearly now my view of my ex-wife.  I think she is horrified.  I pray that she one day finds her peace.  Kitty/Cathy and Anna Karenina, found it through suicide.  How tragic.  Neither sought help.  Neither did my ex-wife.

Page 385:  [metaphor] “something is the matter with Tom.  He’s moping around like a monument.”

Page 387: [metaphor] she carried excitement in her arms

Page 405: [metaphor] He shuffled possibilities like cards

Page 411:  I believe that there is one story in the world, and only one, that has frightened and inspired us, so that we live in a Pearl White serial of continuing thought and wonder.  Humans are caught – in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, and their avarice and cruelty, and in their kindness and generosity too- in a net of good and evil.  I think this is the only story we have and it occurs on all levels of feeling and intelligence.  Virtue and vice were warp and woof of our first consciousness, and they will be the fabric of our last, and this despite any changes we impose on field and river and mountain, on economy and manners.  There is no other story.  A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life will have left only the hard, clean questions:  Was it good or was it evil?  Have I done well – or ill?

Page 415:  [metaphor]  There is nothing sadder to me than associations held together by nothing but glue of postage stamps.

Page 441:  Things do not change with a change of scene.  In Salinas, Cal had no more friends than he had in King City.  Associates he had, and authority and some admiration, but friends he did not have.  He lived alone and walked alone.

Page 442:  I never forget the time she shot him and ran away.  Plugged him in the shoulder and just run off.  Well she wasn’t no good as a wife, but she’s sure as hell a good whore.

My comment:  I can really identify with this statement.

Page 444:  “Cal” Adam said, “I’ve thought about it for a great many hours and I still don’t know.  She is a mystery.  It seems to me that she not like other people.  There is something she lacks.  Kindness maybe, or conscience.  You can only understand people if you feel them in yourself.  And I can’t feel her.  The moment I think about her my feeling goes into darkness. I don’t know what she wanted or what she was after.  She was full of hatred, but I don’t know why or toward what. It’s a mystery.  And her hatred wasn’t healthy.  It wasn’t angry.  It was heartless.  I don’t know that it is good to talk to you like this.

My comment:  I can really identify with this statement.

Page 449:  [metaphor] As the fear began to chill, resentment took its place.  So might a trapped fox feel anger towards its paw which held him to the trap.

Page 519:  I was thinking about that time when Sam Hamilton and you and I had a long discussion about a word, “said Adam.  “What was that word?”  “Now I see the word was timshel.” (a mans choice between good and evil.   “Timshel – and you said-“

“I said that word carried a man’s greatness if he wanted to take advantage of it.

Page 530:  There was pride in it, and relief too.  The split second has been growing more and more important to us. And as human activities become more and more intermeshed and integrated, the split tenth second will emerge, and then a new name must be made for the split hundredth , until one day, although I don’t believe it, we’ll say “Oh the hell with it.  What’s wrong with an hour?”  But it isn’t silly, this preoccupation with small time units.  One thing late or early can disrupt everything around it and the disturbance runs outward in bands like waves from a dropped stone in a quiet pool.

Page 532:  [metaphor] He felt let down and helpless, packed like a bird’s egg in cotton of his father’s ambition

Page 538:  [metaphor] “Maybe knowledge is too great and maybe men are growing too small,” said Lee.  “Maybe, kneeling down to atoms, they’re becoming atom- sized in their souls.  Maybe a specialist is only a coward, afraid to look out of his little cage.  And think what any specialist misses- the whole world over his fence.

Page 542 [Lee’s advice to Cal] “He couldn’t help it, Cal.   That’s his nature.  It was the only way he knew.  He didn’t have any choice.  But you have.  Don’t you hear me you have a choice.”

Page 545: [metaphor] Kate wasn’t thinking.  Her mind drifted among impressions the way a bat drifts and swoops in the evening.