Cannery Row

Rating:
Summary: Fantastic
Review: I slept through school and never read any of the classics by Steinbeck or Hemingway, etc.

I got into Steinbeck this summer and Cannery Row was the first book. I loved it. The characters, the language, the communication, the dialogue, the funny farcical stories ...

Two chapters really hit me like a ton of bricks - Chapter 14 when Steinbeck talks about "the hour of the pearl" and then Chapter 15 when Mack and the boys try catching frogs in the dark of night. Chapter 14 may be one of the finest pieces of writing in the history of literature, and I say that in the context of what I have read. Nevertheless ... I put the book down for an hour and tried to absorb that of what I just read. Then Chapter 15 had me laughing wildly.

I have not seen the movie version of Cannery Row, which, I guess, is a combo of Cannery Row and Sweet Thursday. Regardless, the book version of Cannery Row is a must read. Terrific.

Rating:
Summary: Small but Wonderful!
Review: This is a small and quick read, but it is wonderful. I read it first in high school and then again in college and then maybe three times since just for the joy of it. Most anything Steinbeck is great, but this is a gem!!!

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant in its simplicity
Review: Cannery Row is a series of vignettes of life on the California coast in the 1930's. The recurring theme Steibeck seems to explore is the nature of friendship - be it the idol-worship of a mentally handicapped kid, the esprit de corps of a group of ne'er do wells, or the stoic relations the central character of "Doc" has with the rest of the community. It was brilliant.

But Steinbeck's writing was also brilliant - the imagery is vivid, the character descriptions real, and the events that unfold in the tiny, blue-collar town of Monterey are plausable. It is easy to read, and easy to understand why it is considered such a classic of American lit.

Rating:
Summary: Joyfully Wise
Review: This tale, my very favorite Steinbeck novel, combines lyricism and unforgettably warm characters. The whole 'plot' (or lack thereof) seems adrift in a sea of humor. With but a loose structure, the light-heartedness carries the reader through a time and place that instills one with a love of humanity and all our happy foibles.

Having read it numerous times, I think that the character Mac is the inspiration for Kesey's own Mac (R.P. McMurphy in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest) and I believe that Steinbeck's aggrandizement of the 'deadbeats' as the 'true philosophers' to be the source of the Coen brother's modern classic, The Big Lebowski (with other influences, admittedly).

Steinbeck appears to have been a great seer. I never tire of this perennial read because it fills with a love of the everyday. Cannery Row is a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light...

Rating:
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.

Rating:
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.