Jackie,
Yes, I was talking about Oprah's choice.

I'm going to state the obvious, now:

People appreciate things that their minds are trained to appreciate. It's not that people can't ever understand something complicated. The issue is this: people CAN understand and even appreciate complicated things IF their minds are gradually trained for it. If I expected my daughter to sit down with her violin and play some extremely complicated piece, she'd decide she didn't want to play any more. But as her teacher started her with very simple pieces that are monthly and weekly growing more complicated, she's staying with it.

The literary mind requires no less a kind of training or preparation. I'm sure there is a 10 year old somewhere who can read War and Peace and get something worthwhile out of it. I seriously doubt that most of them would enjoy the experience - until their minds are prepared. (My own 10 year old read Hesse's Siddhartha and Orwell's Animal Farm this summer. These are what I would call borderline for her. I suspect maybe only 5-10% of 10 year olds would really enjoy these.) Adults minds are very different than children's minds, but we share a few very curious characteristics, for example, the oddity that we are more comfortable around things that are more familiar.

No matter what choice Oprah made, there would be someone who could find reason -probably even legitimate reason - to complain about it. While I admit to not having read East of Eden, I have read several other things by Steinbeck. His style is very simple, but very powerful. He's a great stepping stone to other writers. I reckon that's why so many of his short stories are used in schools. They want to get budding readers hooked.

I forgot who made the point about the latent and probably false assumption that commercial interests are necessarily bad - but I agree with it. If she makes money from this - so what? There are plenty of cheap editions - probably even some used stuff available. There are libraries, as well.

I hope she's not discouraged by the feedback she gets. I'm very curious to see how this pans out.

k