JOEL ROSE, HOST:
"East Of Eden," John Steinbeck's sprawling 1952 novel, explores the nature of good and evil.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "EAST OF EDEN")
FLORENCE PUGH: (As Cathy) I believe there are monsters born in this world to human parents. A monster is a variation from the accepted normal to a greater or less degree.
ROSE: Those are the opening lines of a new adaptation streaming now on Netflix. Screenwriter Zoe Kazan has a personal connection to this material. Her grandfather, Elia Kazan, directed the 1955 film version. I spoke with Zoe Kazan, and I asked about her relationship with the story.
ZOE KAZAN: Yeah. I fell in love with this book when I was 15 in that way that I think you can only fall in love with a book when you were 15 years old. There were two things that really grabbed me, and one was the intergenerational nature of the story, and then this other question of good and evil and ties back to Cain and Abel and the fall of man from Eden. And I think I was a very emo kid who was really interested in these kinds of big themes.
ROSE: I heard you had to get a second copy of the book. Is that true?
KAZAN: (Laughter) I did. I did. I had the copy that I had grown up reading, and I didn't want to, like, defile it. I knew that I was going to absolutely destroy a copy of this book. So actually, I went on powells.com, and I bought a used copy.
ROSE: I guess you could probably get a nicer first edition, too, if you want. That's a separate matter.
KAZAN: I have my grandpa's edition, which was a...
ROSE: Oh, you do.
KAZAN: ...Present - yeah - that my father and mother gave to me a few years back.
ROSE: You brought up your grandfather, Elia Kazan, who directed the 1955 film version. So it sounds like you encountered the book, though, before you saw the film?
KAZAN: There's too much Steinbeck to read all of Steinbeck, but I had sort of made my little march through some novels and landed on "East Of Eden" and then was so captured by it that my parents - they were like, well, do you want to see the movie? Then I was so surprised by it because it adapts only, like, the last fourth of the book, basically. And it's a pretty loose adaptation at that. Most of the characters that I found most compelling weren't in it at all. You know, there's, like, a kind of theory of creativity that all artists are making self-portraits at all times. And I think Steinbeck was definitely making some kind of self-portrait in writing this book, and I think when I see my grandpa's film, I see so much of him.
ROSE: The central character in this story - I think it's safe to say - is Cathy Ames, one of American literature's most notorious villains. What was your initial reaction to Cathy on the page?
KAZAN: Oh, I found her so shocking and really compelling. Like, you can't look away. I mean, I think she is completely singular. I've never read another character like her. I think it is fair to say that she's kind of the plot engine of the book. Like, the book changes because she enters this family.
ROSE: Yeah. I want to ask about that scene where Cathy first shows up at the house. You move that right to the beginning of the story in your adaptation. Why?
KAZAN: I felt some permission to move that into her viewpoint because of the letters that Steinbeck wrote to his editor, Pascal Covici, while he was writing "East Of Eden." And in those letters, he begins by saying I'm going to write a monster unlike any you've ever seen. And then within, like, 20 pages, he starts saying things like, I can't wait to get back to my dear Cathy. And then he starts saying things like, I think we all have a little monster blood in us. Maybe I am a monster too. You know, toward the end of his writing process of his first draft, he starts saying things like, people will hate her not because she is foreign, but because she is familiar. And that sort of invitation to see the monster in all of us, I think, is more in line with the general themes and message of the book.
ROSE: "East Of Eden" is very much about inheritance - what we pass down to our children, what we burden them to carry and these intergenerational cycles that feel bigger than any one person. You returned to write this story as a mother yourself. Did that change what you saw in it?
KAZAN: Oh, my God, so much so, so much so. You know, I started writing this in my mid-30s. My oldest child was then a year and a half. I mean, I don't know what anyone else's experience of being a parent is, but for me, it was so clear with both of my children as soon as they were born that they were the people who they are. Like, my father did this thing where he asked me to write down three words to describe them at three weeks. And those are still the three words I would use to describe each of them. Like, their first cries were incredibly different from each other. And it really repositioned for me how I understood about this question of nature versus nurture.
ROSE: Parenting - I had the exact same experience, I feel like.
KAZAN: Did you?
ROSE: (Laughter) No. I felt like they arrived, and I like - well, that theory is out the window 'cause I already...
(LAUGHTER)
KAZAN: That's exactly how I felt.
ROSE: I want to ask you about the portrait of the Trask family patriarch on the wall that comes up a couple of times in the film, and his presence is sort of still lingering in the story, even, you know, after he is dead and gone. And I wonder - did you feel, in any way, the presence of your grandfather's gaze on you as you were developing your own interpretation of this story?
KAZAN: What a beautiful way to ask that question. You're the first person to ask about the portrait, by the way. In the early stages of writing, I really had to put my grandfather and his relationship to this material completely out of my head. And then as we were in preproduction and production, it started to sort of become so obvious that I couldn't look past it any longer, that there was this sort of metatextual thing happening where this is a book that is literally about Steinbeck's own grandfather and that he was wrestling with himself and his own history and that that was also true for me. You know, like Steinbeck said about this book, this is the story of my country and the story of me. I think that, too, about the "East Of Eden" that I made.
ROSE: I've been speaking to actress and writer Zoe Kazan, the creator of Netflix's new limited series "East Of Eden." Thank you so much for joining us. This was fascinating.
KAZAN: Thank you.
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