The Other Side of Eden: Life With John Steinbeck

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  56 ratings by Goodreads

Synopsis: As the son of a celebrated literary icon, John Steinbeck IV grew up in a privileged world peopled by the literati and the intellectual elite. Sadly, it was also a world of alcoholism, bitter divorce, estrangement, and abuse, on the part of both his mother and father. In this fascinating memoir, the late son and namesake of John Steinbeck writes with great insight and a gift for lyrical expression about his often painful youth. Left unfinished at his untimely death, this testament to his life is here reconstructed by his wife of twelve years. Interweaving her own reminiscences of her life with John Steinbeck IV, Nancy Steinbeck has created an engrossing account from two perspectives: her husband's memories of his chaotic and adventurous upbringing and her own thoughts on their journey together to make a new life apart from the long shadow of a famous father and a troubled past.

From the Publisher: "Brilliant, tragic, sad, pathetic, poignant, and powerful indeed. It's hard to come up with modifiers to fit the extraordinary story told in [this book], and the even more extraordinary way that story is told by a writer of tortured and torturing genius. John Steinbeck IV illuminates and transcends his famous father here in penetrating, poetic, and often devastating prose. Everywhere--in the barest facts of a brutally painful childhood and an adulthood marked by both awful self-destruction and stunning insights--the father's ghost leaks through. One steps away from this book in awe of the terrible struggles of this writer's son whose immense talents might have, under different circumstances, even surpassed his celebrated father's. Nancy Steinbeck, with skill and sometimes profoundly disturbing candor, fleshes out her husband's story until, in the end, one feels that nothing has been left out, neither joy nor horror. This book is impossible to put down once w! e pick it up." --Louis Owens, Ph.D., author

Bibliographic Details

Title: The Other Side of Eden: Life With John ...
Publisher: Prometheus
Publication Date: 2001
Binding: Hardcover
Condition: very good