Editions Seghers publish this year the collection of letters that John Steinbeck wrote to his publisher Pascal Covici from January 29 to November 1, 1951, throughout the writing ofEast of Eden, published in 1952. It was for him like a morning warm-up before starting to get started. Most of the letters also end with “Come on, I’ll leave you, I’m going”. As in any gymnastics, the work has a repetitive side which can tire, or on the contrary take away. Me, I like it. But at the same time that I like it, I told myself that I would like even more an edition reconstituting the synchronism between the letters and the chapters of the novel. The remarks of a letter clarifying or contradicting the account of the chapter written following the gymnastics. And vice versa.
It was not until May 10, a third of the time he had given himself to write his novel, that Steinbeck asked himself the question of the title. Moreover, it is not he who asks it, as he tells it himself in his letter to “Pat”, his editor, but one of his friends who, during a dinner, asks him what He is writing. “A very long novel,” replies Steinbeck. And when the friend asks for the title, Steinbeck launches as if the idea had just occurred: Salinas Valley. The friend finds the title not good. A discussion arose at the end of which, Steinbeck agreed, Salinas Valley is not a good title.
“What do you think about it ?”
“How about my valley ?”, proposes Steinbeck. He finds it wonderful, this title. Graphically, the effect of balance produced by the doubling of consonants seems to him nothing less than masterful. “And it is also of great warmth and great simplicity. I’d love to hear what you think about it.”
The writer quickly informs us of what the editor thinks of it: “You don’t like my title MY VALLEY. I’ve never been good for titles. I don’t care what his name is. I would call it Vallée vers la mer which is a quote from… nothing at all, but it has two big words and a direction. What do you think about it ? And I’m not going to think about it anymore.”
Steinbeck has a stylistic tic: he abuses the and. It touches me because I am afflicted with the same tic. No more my valley that Valley to the sea don’t seem to suit the editor. Under these conditions, “wouldn’t it be better to make it known, from the title, what it is about? With this idea in mind, I returned to Genesis […] So I suggest for my title: The Sign of Cain […] it’s short, tough, memorable and almost the whole world knows what it means. And it’s also a title that has allure. What do you think ?”
Not good. But the biblical reference made its way, which resulted a month later in: “And I believe that I finally have a magnificent title, EAST OF EDEN.” Pat seems to have approved and even applauded it since Steinbeck writes ten days later: “And to me too East of Eden is gradually becoming the definitive title. I wonder though if you should try it on someone else before they know what the book is about.”
As if to seal the deal, Steinbeck speaks only of E of E (East of Eden). “I think of the book as an E.” His wife’s name also begins with an E (Elaine), “Therefore the letter brings good luck.” When the choice of a title is superstition, there is nothing more to do to dissuade its author.
As profitable as a daily exercise in intellectual gymnastics, reading this collection of letters forced me to see once again the film that Elia Kazan made from it, two or three years after the publication of the novel, and a few months before the death, at 24, of James Dean who had played the main role. Following which it occurred to me that the letters, the novel and the film formed a single object and that it was after having offered Moses several titles, each as worthless as the other, that God found the Bible.