Reading end-of-year tributes to the Hollywood stars and other cultural icons we lost in 2014—particularly those whose deaths were untimely—got me thinking about James Dean (1931-1955). I’d just read East of Eden, John Steinbeck’s epic reworking of the Biblical story of Cain and Abel, set in California’s Salinas Valley. Elia Kazan’s film version of the last third of the novel introduced movie audiences to the troubled young actor, who would go on to make two more films before dying in a car accident at the age of twenty-four.



Read the review on Deathless Prose