Cannery Row

This was my second "reading" of the book and reminded me yet again that Steinbeck is the great American novelist. While the plot isn't much, Steinbeck's descriptions always blow me away. The opening line really says it all: "Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream." It is a poem written in prose, a celebration of a time and a place, even with all the rough edges of homelessness, poverty, drunkenness.

Mack and the boys living at the Palace Flophouse provide whatever plot there is to the story, of course, with their scheming and planning for the two parties, which inevitably go bad. As Mack says, "Ever'thing I done turned sour...If I done a good thing, it got poisoned up some way." And that's as close to pathos or pity as the book really comes, even though most of the characters are really down and out, living on the edge of destitution. At the same time, Doc somewhat envies Mack and the boys "There are your true philosophers...Mack and the boys know everything that has ever happened in the world and possibly everything that will happen...In a time when people tear themselves to pieces with ambition and nervousness and covetousness, they are relaxed."

And this appreciation of the down and out characters of Cannery Row, from the whores of Dora's Bear Flag Restaurant to the artist Henri and even Lee Chong underlies the poem that is Cannery Row. Steinbeck fits in short descriptive chapters, like the sailors leaving the bar and dawn or Mary Talbot's discovery of Kitty Cassini killing the mouse or the dog eating the entrails thrown out by doctor who had embalmed the writer Josh Billings. It's written with humor and a tenderness that bring out the nostalgia and the dream. Parts of it are laugh out loud funny. Parts of it are just sheer beauty and wonder.

And then the old Chinaman with the loose sole on his shoe flip flapped up the street every evening and every morning in the eternal round of the day, so that the story plays out as a small vignette against the ongoing tide of sea and humanity. (and wouldn't Steinbeck be appalled by what they have made of Cannery Row with it's tourist shops and restaurants, now?) No wonder Cannery Row is one of my all time favorite novels.

Author: Steinbeck, John

Date Published: 1945

Length: 6 hr 1 min

Narrator: Farden, Jerry