Cannery Row

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Summary: Capturing humanity in small town coastal Cali
Review: I was pretty much blown away by this book. Unfortunately, I'm coming late to discovering Steinbeck. I read "Travels With Charley" early on and more recently "Tortilla Flat." Of his fictional works "Cannery Row" has far been my favorite to date.

From "Tortilla Flat" Steinbeck has come a long way. "Cannery Row" is more cohesive of the two; it's storyline being more linear. It still reads like a series of vignettes but each leading to the next to put together the tale, and what a tale it is. It hangs on to a thread of realism and captures a greater sense of what it is to be human, the interrelatedness of a community, despair, and hope, magnifying all of humanity within a microcosm of Cannery Row.

Again, there is a characteristic band of Monterey merry men, but this time there is the offset of people with jobs and responsibilities. Doc, who is based on Steinbeck's great friend Edward Ricketts, leader of the Oceanic Biological Institute, is an endearing character. Steinbeck paints a portrait of someone you would want to meet, instantly respect, and be lifelong acquaintances. There is a strong sense of familiarity here.

Chapter 2 is some of the finest writing I've come across. A beautiful two-page poem. "Mack and the boys, spinning in their orbits. They are the Virtues, the Graces, the Beauties of the hurried mangled craziness of Monterey and the cosmic Monterey where men in fear and hunger destroy their stomachs in the fight to secure certain food, where men hungering for love destroy everything lovable about them."

Truly elevated writing with a sense of melancholy that presents itself as part of life, hanging in the balance with the parties, grocery stores, tidal pools, whorehouses. Great book. Now on to Tom Joad.

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Summary: Captivating tale of mystery and grace
Review: Novel by John Steinbeck, published in 1945. Like most of Steinbeck's postwar work, Cannery Row is sentimental in tone while retaining the author's characteristic social criticism. Peopled by stereotypical good-natured bums and warm-hearted prostitutes living on the fringes of Monterey, Calif., the picaresque novel celebrates lowlifes who are poor but happy. Synopsis Adventures of cannery workers living in the run-down waterfront section of Monterey, California.

Synopsis Drawing characters based on his memories of real inhabitants of Monterey, Steinbeck interweaves the stories of Doc, Henri, Mack, and his boys, in a world where only the fittest survive, in a novel that focuses on the acceptance of life as it is--a story at once humorous and poignant. --This text refers to the paperback edition of this title

Synopsis Cannery Row focuses on the acceptance of life as is--both the exuberance of community and the loneliness of the individual. Creating characters based on his memories of real inhabitants of Monterey, California, Steinbeck interweaves the stories of Doc, Henri, Mack, and the boys in a world where only the fittest survive. 2 cassettes. --This text refers to the audio cassette edition of this titl

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Summary: My favorite of Steinbeck's works
Review: Another book I used while preparing to the verbal section of the GMAT. I have this one on my list of all-time favorites. Nothing is more interesting that the life of simple people who don't busy themselves with the stockmarket, business school, or even electricity. They live in California, slip under the boats, and eat whatever God sends them. Great contrast for a bschool applicant with abmitions and desires to change to change the world and beat the strongest.

Favorites:
The logic; quite similar to that in the Tortilla Flat of striving for the greater "good" for a friend. I loved how the bums justify their crimes and glorify mistakes. Some paralells can be found in some corporate repots.

Nothing beats the frog hunting scene and the "new" monetary system.

I could not stop laughing while reading - one of the funniest and profound pieces.

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Summary: Wonderfully descriptive, deeply moving
Review: I have become a big Steinbeck fan over the last few months, having read The Pearl, Of Mice and Men, Tortilla Flat, and Cannery Row during that time. The beauty of Steinbeck's style that is evident in all of these stories is that, much like a masterful boxer, he will float and spar while filling the reader in on the transpiring events, and then a paragraph comes along that literally jumps to life, like a well-timed barrage of attacks. Either in the form of layers and layers of description that make you feel as if you are feeling, smelling, hearing and seeing everything the characters are, or in the form of a humorous antecdote that causes you to read about four times faster than normal, the barrage carries you through the story.

Cannery Row is set in Monterey, CA during the Depression and focuses on a handful of characters, but the main ones are Doc and Mack. Doc runs a place called Western Biological and works collecting animals for other scientists and doing other work at his lab that is not really specified. He is rather an enigma in the town, and he is a Renaissance Man. Everybody in Cannery Row knows and loves him, including several ladies, and he is just generally a good guy that seems to be extremely intelligent. He is also a flawed character, though. He drinks beer for breakfast, is afraid of commitment with the ladies, and seems to fear genuine intimacy with anyone. He stays up late reading and listening to classical music and gets up early to do his studies/work.

Mack is a "bum" by our standards, but he fills a role that Steinbeck loves to explore. He is extremely intelligent and gifted in some areas, yet lacks the motivation to hold a steady job. He is a leader and natural salesman and politician, yet he chooses to lead a group of other bums that he calls "the boys" and lives in a shack that he finagled out of the local grocery store owner.

Through the medium of extremely well-developed characters and beautiful, descriptive narrative, Steinbeck also instructs us about the nature of humans. One of the basic things that I learned about this nature is that people who are in "down and out" circumstances are often very capable and intelligent people who simply prefer not getting caught up in the social rat races of life. This was evident in the story of the parade, and if you read the book, Doc will do a better job of explaining what I mean than I can. Steinbeck also takes subtle jabs at those of us who turn our noses up at these people, like the town people who taxed (read:extorted) the "illegal" whorehouse at an exorbitant rate in order to stay open and then frequented the establishment through the side door.

I highly recommend this book because it affected, instructed, and entertained me, and it will do the same for you.

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Summary: Learn Why Steinbeck Is Brilliant
Review: John Steinbeck is one of the great literary authors who just so happens to be incredibly fun to read. What makes Steinbeck so good is not simply what he says, but the fact that he can say it simply, clearly, and beautifully. Cannery Row is proof that great writing can also be entertaining.

The magic of Steinbeck is his ability to transport the reader, with carefully chosen phrases and well-placed details, to the world he is describing. His words breath life into the past, convincing us absolutely that Cannery Row is not simply a creation of an author's imagination, but a place rooted in a world that is as real as the hopes, dreams, tears, and losses we have all suffered. Steinbeck is one of the most honest writers available, presenting people as they actually are, showing us the beautiful side by side with the bad.

But the true delight in this book is the writing. At times the sentences vibrate with an electricity and a poetry all their own, leaping from the mundane to the profound and back again seemingly without effort:

"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."

Yet this is not simply a book of wonderful descriptions. It contains philosophies both high and low, its truths being as practical as they are lofty:

"Some one should write an erudite essay on the moral, physical, and esthetic effect of the Model T Ford on the American nation. Two generations of Americans knew more about the Ford coil than the clitoris, about the planetary system of gears than the solar system of stars."

All in all, this is the type of book people should think of when they think of good, solid American literature: it has the brains of a literary novel in the body of a bestselling paperback. Highly recommended.

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Summary: Steinbeck's "Cannery Row"
Review: John Steinbeck (1902-1968) wrote "Cannery Row" during a brief six week period during the summer of 1944. He wrote the book, he claimed, as "a kind of nostalgic thing.... for a group of soldiers who had said to me: 'Write something funny that isn't about the war. Write something for us to read -- we're sick of war.'" Steinbeck dedicated the book to Ed Ricketts. Ricketts was the model for "Doc", the main character in the book. Other characters, including Dora, the madam of the "Bear Flag Restaurant" were modeled or real-life individuals as well.
(The information in this paragraph is drawn from the Library of America edition of Steinbeck's novels -- 1942 -- 1952)

Cannery Row is set in Monterey, California during the depression. The title derives from a portion of Monterey notorious for the processing of the multitudes of fish harvested by the sardine industry. The book is loosely contstructed and consists more of a series of interconnected vigenettes than a fully developed novel.

The primary story-line of the book develops the character of "Doc" a marine biologist who collects frogs, octopuses, starfish, rattlesnakes, and other creatures for sale to museums, universities and others. Doc is highly literate, a lover of science, art and music. Doc also loves his beer and his women. He is also adored by Cannery Row denizens who live in a local flophouse (the "Palace Flophouse_-- a group of men headed by a character named Mack. Much of the book centers around the efforts of these characters to plan a party for Doc. There are many other interesting characters in the book, including Dora, the madam and Lee Chong, the proprietor of the local grocery.

There is much excellent descriptive writing in this book of a Monterey that is no more and of a collection of eccentric and too-lovable characters. There are portions of the book that seem to me to lag and not to advance the course of the story. The characters are vividly drawn, but in both the story and the characterizations I found elements of sentimentality and, perhaps, of over-simplification.

I think the heart of the book lies in chapter 23 where Doc philosophizes about his friendship with the residents of the Palace Flophouse and similar types of people on Cannery Row. Doc finds it "strange" that "the things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling are the concommitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, eogtism and self-interest are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second."

There were elements in this book that surprised me. I enjoyed the pictures of Doc and his devotion to classical music -- particularly the works of Monteverdi, Bach, Beethoven, and Debussy. Also, there are outstanding literary references. In a climactic scene late in the book, (chapter 30) Doc quotes a lengthy ancient love poem "Black Marigolds" originally written in Sanskrit and tranlated by E. Powys Mathers. The poem fits appropriately into Steinbeck's story and adds a great deal to the meaning of the book. With the music and the poetry, I found something in "Cannery Row" that I didn't expect to see there.

This is an enjoyable and readable book by a great 20th Century American novelist.

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Summary: The Players Tell the Story
Review: At the outset of this book, Steinbeck tells the reader that the only way for the story of Cannery Row to be told is to let the characters tell it. That is exactly what Steinbeck does and he does it with his usual genious.

The characters of Cannery Row are brilliantly portrayed by Steinbeck. He is in his element writing about the survivors in the lower echelon income brackets. Without the reader realizing it, in addition to the brilliant portraits of the characters, there is also a story being told. The down-and-out want to do something "nice" for Doc - the research scientist who is everyone's friend, mentor, doctor, banker, etc. The first attempt is an abysmal failuer. So might the second be characterized, except it is just what Doc was expecting - what he was not expecting was his enjoyment of the failure.

Cannery Row is on par with Steinbeck's other fine works. His characters are, as usual, unforgettable. Although the story-line does not have a lot of depth, it is the vehicle to get to know the characters. The characters are the star of this work. I strongly recommend it.

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Summary: Steinbeck's best?
Review: John Stienbeck had experimented with loosely structured tales of noble drifters before, but his musings on the theme peaked with the classic Cannery Row. Although it is not as epic as East of Eden or as urgent as The Grapes of Wraith, the novella may be Steinbeck's best book for its style, personality and heart.

There is no central storyline in Cannery Row, only a cluster of anecdotes, concerning inhabitants the lowlife district of a coastal town in pre-World War II California. From the contemplative Chinese grocer to the sociable but cynical marine biologist to the charismatic leader of a fellowship of drifters, these are some of Stienbeck's most memorable characters and their exploits are wholly entertaining.

Even though Cannery Row is free-spirited, it is not light. Themes of discontentment, emotional weakness and sometimes painful disparity between intent and outcome color the novel's vignettes. Even the book's portrayal of lighthearted drifters revolves around a heavy thesis. These are strong, capable people. What does it say about society that they can't or won't achieve anything overly tangible?

But such questions do not concern Cannery Row's greatest strength: how enjoyable it is to read. Its first sentence is about as famous as Moby Dick's and A Tale of Two Cities'. "Cannery Row is Monterey California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a dream." The prose is just as invigorating throughout, another reason why Cannery Row is a plotless masterpiece.

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Summary: Perfection in a small package
Review: I'm still on a high from reading CANNERY ROW, a good 24 hours after finishing it. This is a short book that says volumes about humanity and philosophical matters through the perfectly scribed world of bums, drunks, whores, and the workers in stinky sardine factories in the pre-tourism era of Cannery Row, Monterey, CA. There is an incredible equilibrium to this place, a leveling factor that does not allow anyone to make economic progress, and balances recklessness with goodness, loneliness with community, slapstick comedy with fine-tuned sensitivity. At the heart of the book is the character of Doc, modeled on Steinbeck's best friend, Ed Ricketts, a marine biologist with high tastes in music and literature, a loner by nature who nonetheless lives in concert with his neighbors and takes care of them. The book begins episodically, introducing sketches of the inhabitants and environment of Cannery Row, then gradually swells with the efforts of Mack and the Palace Flophouse gang to pay their dues to Doc with a party. The suspense, not to mention the comedy, builds on whether Mack and company's proclivities will cancel out their good intentions.

This is a rich book under any circumstances, but if you have read Steinbeck's LOG FROM THE SEA OF CORTEZ, a non-fiction work about a marine biology expedition he and Ricketts took, then you will get an extra layer of experience from CANNERY ROW. You will spy some funny insider jokes, you will have a fuller exploration of the Steinbeck/Ricketts theme of the interconnectedness of life, and you will marvel again at Ricketts/Doc. Steinbeck had lived in New York a few years by the time he wrote this book, but you can tell the place and its people were ever present in his heart and mind.

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Summary: Steinbeck's Most Delightful Story
Review: This is not a single story, but many stories woven into a cohesive novel. What makes this novel so enjoyable is the way one can relate to the characters. I found myself cheering for Mack and the boys during their many adventures. In my life I know people who have some of the characteristics of Doc. This an inspiring novel that leaves the reader feeling good about life. So many of Steinbeck's novel have a sad tone to them, not that the sad tone is a bad thing. Sadness and misery are a major part of life, but so is happiness. In Cannery Row we see people from all walks of life enjoying at least some happiness. This is inspiring to me. This book can be read for pleasure, critical interpertation and study, or both. The choice is yours.