Cannery Row

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Summary: It was a great and interesting book!
Review: John Steinbeck does a masterpiece with this book. His characters are symbolic and create an exciting allegory.

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Summary: A great portrayal of the importance of community!
Review: In school, most students are forced to read some boring books that their teachers call "classics." But of course most students don't fully grasp the meaning of most of the books. When I was forced to read Cannery Row, I thought, oh no, not another book. But, during the course of reading this piece, I found that the book made me think. Cannery Row deeply described the importance of the community around you. And in doing so, I came to realize that not everything should relvove around an individual. The people around you help to make you who you are. They are the ones to shape your perspective. Cannery Row portrays this excellently. It is a great book, that all people, not just students should read.

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Summary: Just a LITTLE Favor
Review: This book was so and so. One aspect of the book that I enjoyed was that the way Steinbach described evetything so vividly in detail. No detail escaped with out being mentioned. Overall the book was about a small place on the coast and the people that where living there. It first went into developing the characters and then gets into the main character, Doc. Doc is always trying to help everyone and offering his help. Throughout the whole book everyone is trying to repay or give back to Doc because the people of Cannery Row feel that they own Doc something. The people come up with a plan to throw him a party, but the plan backfires and Docs' house ends up getting messed up the party has a negative reaction. In the end all ends well and feeling are patched up. I guessed what I learned was that trying repay a favor doesn't take much, just a little acknowledgement

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Summary: A little story about the town I was born in
Review: This book is a standing testament to a part of California that no longer exists. Steinbeck tells the story of the old residents of Monterey- once a quiet cannery town and now like any other little city in CA- overrun by tourists, crass comercialism, and land developers. " Cannery Row" is about the kind of people that used to inhabitat Monterey- honest, good-hearted, simple folks. The Row is now gone but survives in this classic tale.

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Summary: A work of genius
Review: The clearest distillation of Steinbeck's greatness as a writer

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Summary: Cannery Row is bold by its extreme subtlety.
Review: Cannery Row is one of the boldest books ever written by Steinbeck due in large part to its subtlety. The fact that the entire novel revolves around Mack and the boys and their attempt to throw Doc a party is an example of this. Aside from proving the cliche, "it's the thought that counts," Cannery Row shows that their is a little good in all of us.

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Summary: Steinbeck's Classic
Review: Cannery Row is the story of a small town where life is simple. Coming from a large city, I love to read about a time when no one had to lock their doors at night and when people use to work on the "honor system." Definately a book to read if you need to remember what is really important in life. The only downfall is that (like many of today's works) the book comes down to your level instead of asking you to step up, to challenge yourself. Still, an incredible work!

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Summary: Cannery Row: accounts on the true strength of life
Review: A profoundly uplifting novel about the life of people who survived the Grapes of Wrath exile. Views on the true basis of one's existence; love and compassion, seen through the eyes of a detached and analytical observer who studies a tightly knitted community perched on the shore of an impossible Eden; just as he would have a tide pool. Richly served with the help of abundant humour, tenderness and sorrow. As close as one can get to the meaning of life!

Rating:
Summary: Unconventional But WORTH YOUR TIME
Review: For Cannery Row, Steinbeck delved into the back-pages of his mind and brought to light a place and characters that he knew intimately. First published in 1945, Cannery Row is a semi-autobiographical work lacking a traditional narrative structure that describes in intimate detail the characters Steinbeck knew and loved in Monterey, California.

Cannery Row is more a collection of stories than a single story in itself. Each of the stories are connected in some way, and all are connected by their common locale. The novel does not have a beginning, middle, and end, in the traditional sense. Reading the book is like visiting a foreign country for a few weeks; one stays long enough to get to know the landscape and the locals, yet remains a foreigner. Steinbeck paints a vivid and detailed portrait of a unique place, specifically Ocean View Drive, in Monterey, California (since re-named Cannery Row due to the popularity of the book).

Cannery Row is populated with bums, prostitutes, Chinese, Poles, Greeks, soldiers, fisherman, factory-workers, cops and a marine biologist. The central characters are Doc, the marine biologist, Lee Chong, the grocer, Dora, the madam of the local brothel, and a group of bums who live in an old building known as the Palace Flophouse; Mack, Hazel, Jones, Eddie and Hughie. The characters form a tight-knit community in which residents help each other in times of need and celebrate together in times of joy.

As he did in The Grapes Of Wrath and Of Mice And Men, Steinbeck focuses on the fringe-dwellers, the disenfranchised, the outsiders. His characters live in a community outside of mainstream society and live by their own rules and customs. Steinbeck is not concerned with the canneries of Cannery Row or the people who work in the factory, but rather those who live around the factories in the grey light of dusk.

Cannery Row is a Darwinian world in which only the fittest survive. It is a world of suicide and loneliness, dreams and hope. In the first line of the book Steinbeck describes Cannery Row as "a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream."

Steinbeck was undoubtedly one of America's greatest authors. Time and again he displays his gift for constructing brilliant sentences that leap off the page like spawning salmon. His eye for detail is simply stunning.

Readers familiar with Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London and Kerouac's On The Road will find similarities between those works and Steinbeck's loving portrayal of the forgotten people of Cannery Row, those that Kerouac dubbed the "fellaheen."

Though Cannery Row is a very experimental book in many ways, and challenges our ideas of what a novel is, it is extremely rewarding and pleasurable to read. Steinbeck creates a world so perfectly detailed that one is tempted to pack up and hit the road, bound for Monterey and the Palace Flophouse. He made the "beat" lifestyle appealing before Kerouac had even put pen to paper. Every reader with even the faintest interest in American literature and culture owes it to themselves to read Cannery Row. Pick up a copy! Another book I need to recommend -- completely unrelated to Steinbeck, but very much on my mind since I purchased a "used" copy off Amazon is "The Losers' Club" by Richard Perez, an exceptional, highly entertaining little novel I can't stop thinking about.




Rating:
Summary: Simple Pleasure
Review: Cannery Row...

A delightful little book filled with just
about every "plot twist" known to man.
I was reminded of Voltaires "Candide",
numerous Greek tragedies, triangle relationships.

At the end of the day?

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Surprise is not always welcome.
No good deed goes unpunished.
Don't be afraid to ask for help.

"Darling" the dog is what brings them
back together.

Never underestimate the power of animals
in our life.

Hope you enjoy this book as much as I did.
I loved its gentle prose, despite what we
all knew Doc was doing.

He gathered animals to kill, sent them off
to universities, schools, to be dissected
for medical purposes.

Did any of you get that?
Or is just me?

Just my take.
Enjoy the book.
It is a beautiful journey
through simple live, unfettered
by wealth, nor the pursuit of...
Best
H.