Pascal Covici

Exactly.

And now imagine that every single day, before you allow yourself to write a single word of that immortal story, you pick up a pencil and you write this secret, agonizing letter to your editor.

Oh, wow.

Yeah, a letter that you refuse to ever put in an envelope, like you refuse to ever send it.

Definitely.

So in January of 1951, this man named Pascal Kovici, who went by the nickname Pat, he gave Steinbeck a gift.

And Pat Kovici was his editor, right?

Yes, his editor of Viking Press.

Right.

On the right-hand page, he wrote the actual text of the novel, but on the left-hand page, he simultaneously wrote a series of running letters to his editor, Pascal Covici.

Writing letters to your editor while you are drafting the scenes is just wild.

It's so unique.

It, it's like a director recording the DVD audio commentary while they are actively shooting the movie.

And, um, he is a little later, again, this is 1952 that this, that East of Eden is coming out, so it's almost 100 years after Madame Bovary, but it does in fact supply us with a very good example of a realist type of novel.

So with that in mind, we are going to dive into the text, and actually there's a note right before we get to the actual heart of the text, um, that John Steinbeck has written to, uh, to Pascal Covici, who was a friend of his.

So this note, in this note to Pascal, um, he is talking about the, the novel that he is sort of presenting in some ways to Pascal Covici.

"Nearly everything I have is in it, and it is not full.

Pain and excitement are in it and feeling good or bad and evil thoughts and good thoughts, the pleasure of design and some despair and the indescribable joy of creation.

So he used a large notebook.

On the left-hand pages, he would write warm conversational letters to his editor, Pascal Covici, and then on the right-hand pages, he wrote the actual monumental text of the novel.

Wait, let me stop you right there because that is such a wild mental split.

It really is.

And if you don't want the cynicism, but you are entirely obsessed with the mind that built East of Eden, the essay has one more Steinbeck recommendation, which is Journal of a Novel, the East of Eden letters.

These are the actual left-hand pages we talked about earlier.

The morning letters to Pascal Covici.

Right.

Yes.

So Steinbeck's editor was a chap called Pascal Covici, and they have a very important and unique relationship.

I mean, Steinbeck was a man married three times, and arguably the relationship with Covici was the most kind of constant one in his life.

Mm.

[laughs]

Um, our studio does, thank you.

Um, someone wrote, "Well this is a work of fiction, so why aren't we allowing Steinbeck to take artistic, um, abilities and, like, why aren't we giving him that space?" However, Steinbeck himself very clearly wanted c- accuracy because when he was looking at the Old Testament, in particular Genesis- He asked Pascal Covici to correspond with Talmudic scholars-

Mm.

It is completely secure.

But, you know, when he finally finishes the manuscript for his newest novel, he sends it to his editor, Pascal Covici, with this, um, this really startling letter.

Right, the letter where he basically dismisses his entire career up to that point.

Exactly.

And on the right-hand side of the page, he would write his pages for the day.

And on the left-hand side of the page, while he was writing East of Eden, he would write letters to his editor, Pascal Covici, to whom he sort of dedicates the book at the very start.

And as Jeb was saying, you can watch his process and his relationship to these characters change over the course of it.

And that really informed the way that I came to this material.

Yeah, Steinbeck, uh, knew at the time that this was the work of his life.

He wrote these letters to his editor, Pascal Covici, as he was writing the book, and all those letters are collected in a book called Journal of a Novel: The East of Eden Letters, where he refers to East of Eden as his, quote, "First book," capital F, capital B.

Mm.

Um, like, this is the epic thing he's been working towards.

Mm-hmm

... kinds of stories.

And by the way, 10th rate philosophizing New York Times editor, we certainly have figured that out, right? We figured out nature versus nurture.

We've got it all handled, right? We got it all handled.

They can handle the neuroses, the bad drafts, and the complaints, but crucially, they do not carry the bleeding emotional weight of a fractured family dynamic.

Pascal Covici represented psychological safety.

He was a safe harbor.

Steinbeck could pour out his fears of failure, his complaints about the work, his structural doubts.

They were eventually published posthumously decades later.

Right, as Journal of a Novel, the East of Eden letters.

But in the moment, in 1951, Pascal Covici wasn't actually receiving these thousand-word morning epistles.

No. Steinbeck was just addressing them to him and leaving them in the notebook.