So Oprah thought retreating to the classics would rid her book club of controversy? “John Steinbeck’s selection by Oprah is likely to confirm the suspicions of those critics who look down their noses at him as a simplistic writer not worthy of inclusion in the American pantheon. For starters, if East of Eden is a classic, it’s a disputed one. A handful of Steinbeck partisans defend it as one of Steinbeck’s great books, to be placed alongside works like Of Mice and Men and The Grapes of Wrath. Others argue that it’s flawed but still worthwhile, even a masterpiece. But an equally large—if not larger—group thinks that hardly anything good can be said about it.”