Cannery Row

'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.' So begins John Steinbeck's novel Cannery Row and this magnificent first sentence captures the mood of the book perfectly. In what follows, the author sets out to

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capture the atmosphere of the book's main character - Cannery Row. The novel is not so much about plot, but rather about a feeling. It is a vivid slice of life.

The inhabitants of Cannery Row want to do something good for Doc, a marine biologist, who helps out everyone in the area. That is why Mack and the boys living in the Palace Flophouse with him plan a party for Doc to show him how well he is liked and to pay him back for everything he has done for them. In the end, however, Doc ends up paying for the party anyway as the party is finished before he is home and his house is trashed in the process. Plotwise there is not much more to expect, but you want to read this novel for the atmosphere Steinbeck creates and the characters he portrays. Living with Mack are Hazel and Eddie, the former a rather uneducated young man who helps out Doc by doing odd jobs for him time and again. Eddie is a bartender who brings home alcohol by pouring leftovers in glasses into a jug under the bar. This mixture of beer, wine, whiskey and everything else his customers do not finish serves as the main drink of the boys at the Palace Flophouse. When one of them offers the idea to have several jugs under the bar so as not to be forced to mix all sorts of alcohol in one jug, the idea is readily dismissed as the punch would lose its distinct character. The actual owner of the Palace Flophouse is Lee Chong, who is also the proprietor of the local grocery store providing everything the town needs. However, he lets Mack and the boys live there as he fears they would burn the house down otherwise. And then there is Dora Flood, the owner of the Bear Flag Restaurant which also serves as a brothel frequented by the fishermen of Cannery Row.

Cannery Row provides a range of themes. Living a happy life despite circumstances is one of those. The novel is set during the Great Depression and while there is a lot to be sad about living in Cannery Row, the inhabitants seem to be rather content with their lives. For instance, Steinbeck describes the time between day and night as 'the hour of the pearl', a the time when everything is calm and time seems to stop. This 'hour of the pearl' seems to be a feeling that is deeply ingrained in the inhabitants of Cannery Row. Take a look at Doc, who lives in a very simple house where he also does his work as a marine biologist. He lives alone and his days consist of work and helping others. In the evening he drinks a beer or two, listens to records and reads before he crawls under a blanket that is almost falling apart as it so very old and worn. And the next day is just the same. While this loneliness and monotony would make many people very sad, Doc seems content and to enjoy what he has. His reflections on life show that he is well aware of his situation but does not want to change it. Doc's understanding of the human condition is thoughtful and very true, especially today:

"It has always seemed strange to me," said Doc. "The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second." (p. 107)

To my mind, Cannery Row is one of the great American novels. 5 stars.

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For roughly the first half of the novel, I was just trying to get my bearings and get a feel for the lay of the land. I knew ahead of time I shouldn't look for a story; it’s more akin to a love poem to Monterey and the down-in-the-dumps Cannery Row, where whores, bums, shopkeepers and one marine

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biologist eke out a living. The living conditions Steinbeck describes here are difficult at best, but the emphasis is on observing details, as one would simply record facts, or like a camera taking snapshots without any bias. Perhaps the lack or a real plot contributes to making this world and it's inhabitants seem so real—real life doesn't follow storylines either, after all. A few characters stand out, especially Doc, the aforementioned marine biologist, who is universally loved by all the local residents, and I couldn't help but wonder how much Steinbeck put of himself in this character who has wonderful discerning tastes in music and books, if not the people he counts among his friends. It’s a short novel that is almost impossible to describe, but must be experienced at least once. I'll definitely read it again, if only to fully take in Steinbeck's gorgeous prose.

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This graceful, uncomplicated book is not only as much of a novel as any novel needs to be, it is far more than most are and many others pretend. If the slender volume were sold by the pound, it would necessarily command a very high price: the quality of Steinbeck’s writing is beyond question, and

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there is nothing in it, not even a careless crumb of a sentence, that goes to waste.

Cannery Row is not War and Peace or The Brothers Karamazov, yet its characters experience moments of revelation as profound as those in either book. The stage and setting are infinitely smaller, but the writing is every bit as important and just as large, though one might not realize it at first. When the stories first begin to “crawl in by themselves,” as Steinbeck so aptly puts it in his brief prologue, they are of a noticeably common variety. And so they remain. As they accumulate and overlap, a larger portrait of Cannery Row — the hard-scrabble, brine-encrusted, earth-bound heart of 1930s Monterey, California — appears. Eventually, the portrait grows so large that the reader realizes he is standing before a portrait of life itself.

Confident in the fullness and power of his material, Steinbeck relies little on traditional conflict and resolution. Instead, he presents the simple ways in which the denizens of Cannery Row try to help and take advantage of each other as part of a timeless human dance. Cannery Row, defined by the local fishing economy and the Great Depression, defines in turn the actions of the people living there. At the same time, the people are Cannery Row, and Cannery Row reflects their outlook and eager, lazy, enterprising approach to living. Neighbors know each other so well that there are few practical secrets; yet on a deeper level, they remain strangers paralyzed by their assumptions and struggles to survive. Small things take on great and sentimental importance. Frogs, dogs, cats, tide pools, star fish, old car parts, jugs of whiskey, conversation, humor, and whore house visits are a soothing balm for the pain of existence.

In Cannery Row, Steinbeck writes with sympathy for the underdog without passing judgment. Lee Chong the grocer is shrewd because his survival depends on it, and because it is the natural outcome of his life and personality; Mack and his loyal company of bums prefer life on the edge for genuinely lazy, honest, and mostly logical, intelligent reasons; Doc drinks his quarts of beer and listens to great music late at night in his biological lab because he knows what life could be, and would like to forget what it really is. Meanwhile, the tiny miracles crowd in, and enrich the lives of anyone willing to notice. Love and friendship shrivel where they are cultivated, and grow wild elsewhere like weeds.

If I were to try to sum up Cannery Row in a word, I think I would use personality. If I had but a single sentence at my disposal, I would write, John Steinbeck understood.

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Cannery Row is, if anything, a character study of a diverse group of characters who all live in Cannery Row. Each character's action affects that lives of the other characters, which in turn helps to shape the tenor of Cannery Row itself. In doing so, Cannery Row becomes a living, breathing

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character that can only be studies through Steinbeck's slow, methodical revelations of the lives of the characters who live there.

The central plot, if there can be said to be one, centers on four men, who would otherwise be drifters if they weren't living in an old warehouse. The men want to throw a party for Doc, the nice man who owns the Western Biological store on Cannery Row. Meanwhile, Lee Chong, who owns the grocery store across the street, and the ladies at the whore house next door also get roped into the plot. Through it all, we learn a little bit about each character, in particular Doc's past, but we never learn quite enough to know their back-stories entirely. This makes the book seem more real in that we rarely know the stories behind all of the people we come in contact with in the world around us.

For what it is, this book works, and I enjoyed reading it. The only thing missing was something that I could take from it that would affect me in some small way after reading the book, which is how I generally judge great literature. While present in the other Steinbeck novels that I have read, I really couldn't find that in this particular novel. Perhaps that is my failing more than the novels.

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My very favorite Steinbeck. In fact, I chose it as the November read for my literature class. In Cannery Row Steinbeck is at his most charming. His love and admiration for his characters comes through loud and clear. The gentle style and keen insight into the residents of Cannery Row will give any

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reader an appreciation for characters on the fringes of society. No reader can help but learn not to "judge a book by its cover"

And added bonus, if you have the right edition, is the introduction by Susan Shillinglaw. Susan Shillinglaw is the most engaging and interesting Steinbeck scholar I've found. Her introduction is filled with insights into the text and the characters.

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4 stars
One of Steinbeck’s best, but too short! Again Steinbeck draws a picture of a time and place that will remain a vivid portrait. This time it is a derelict area in Monterey, California. Probably the 1920s, although it is not said. There are T-Fords, it is on this I am guessing. Steinbeck was

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from Salinas, California, so he is writing about what he knows best: a cannery, the sea, its smells pungent, acrid and salt, the octopi and starfish and rattlesnakes and the rats, the sound of the surf, the feel of the air, the quiet at dawn and the heat at the end of a hot summer day. The stickiness and the lilting breeze and the people - who live in a discarded boiler, a rusted tunnel, the lucky in a deserted warehouse. There is a brothel and a Chinese grocery. This book is about these people and it is about friendship and it is about parties. Think back on all the parties you have been at. The ones of your youth. How they start and how they end. The food, the drink, the music and dancing and the whole atmosphere. Reading this book will back to you the parties of your own past. They are made palpable. This book is a tribute to parties, parties with people you love.

Narrated by Trevor White.

Completed April 22, 2013

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Of interest mostly because of the characters, one of whom, Doc, was modeled after Steinbeck's friend Ed Ricketts, and because of the picture it paints of Cannery Row in Monterey, California. The story is not all that memorable though.

Quotes:
The opening lines of the book:
"Cannery Row in Monterey in

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California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream. Cannery Row is the gathered and scattered, tin and iron and rust and splintered wood, chipped pavement and weedy lots and junk heaps, sardine canneries of corrugated iron, honky tonks, restaurants and whore houses, and little crowded groceries, and laboratories and flophouses. Its inhabitants are, as the man once said, 'whores, pimps, gamblers and sons of b*tch*s,' by which he meant Everybody. Had the man looked through another peephole he might have said, 'Saints and angels and martyrs and holy men,' and he would have meant the same thing."

On solitude:
"In spite of his friendliness and his friends Doc was a lonely and set-apart man. Mack probably noticed it more than anybody. In a group, Doc seemed always alone."

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"How can the .... dream {Cannery Row} be set down alive? When you collect marine animals there are certain flat worms so delicate that they are almost impossible to capture whole, for they break and tatter under the touch. You must let them ooze and crawl of their own will onto a knife blade and

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then lift them gently into your bottle of sea water. And perhaps that might be the way to write this book - to open the page and to let the stories crawl in by themselves." (page 3)

Just as the place, Cannery Row, is unique, so is John Steinbeck's book of the same name. Cannery Row is simply a collection of little stories about the larger than life characters who take up residence on the Row. Each one of them is flawed in some way; all of them are funny and lovable. We begin our tour of the Row at Lee Chong's grocery store, "a miracle of supply" where a "man could find everything he needed or wanted to be happy." (page 4) What Lee Chong doesn't supply is supplied by Dora and her "girls" at the Bear Flag Restaurant. We then are slowly introduced to the cast of characters on the Row through little stories about each one of them. Quite a list of characters make cameo appearances on the Row. Amongst them are a lady who throws parties for the neighborhood cats, a mysterious Chinese man who makes a daily trek to the Row - who knows why - and Henri the painter who "had so steeped himself in stories of the Left Bank in Paris that he lived there although he had never been there." (page 134) Our attention, however, is mostly directed toward Mack and the boys and Doc.

Mack is the leader of a ragtag group of hobos ("the boys") who live in the "Palace Flophouse" together and Doc, their neighbor, a marine biologist living and working on the Row. Doc is the heart of the story and the heart of Cannery Row itself - although he doesn't seem to suspect that. Doc, despite being a nice guy who actually has quite a few friends, is a "set-apart man" who "seemed always alone" even in a crowd (page 100). Mack decides early on in the book that they should throw a surprise party for Doc because Doc's simply a nice guy. But before the party can come to be, Mack and the boys need to come up with some $$$. This leads to some funny complications for Mack and the boys, a group of unsuspecting frogs, Lee Chong, and poor Doc himself.

Steinbeck's excellent writing and wry wit is what makes this book a wonderful read. Here you'll find wonderful similes like: "Cats drip over the fences and slither like syrup over the ground to look for fish heads (page 85)". Here's Steinbeck writing about the dawn: "It is the hour of the pearl - the interval between day and night when time stops and examines itself." (page 86) But what makes this book one of my all time favorites that I have read probably 3 or 4 times by now, is Steinbeck's witticisms that are scattered throughout the book: "Hazel (one of Mack's boys) grew up - did four years in grammar school, four years in reform school, and didn't learn anything in either place. Reform schools are supposed to teach viciousness and criminality but Hazel didn't pay enough attention. He came out of reform school as innocent of viciousness as he was of fractions and long division." (page 32)

Cannery Row is a slow paced little book full of wonderful characters, incredible writing and humor. IMO, always worth the trip!

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Cannery Row has a basic plot – the town trying to throw a party for Doc, yet it is interspersed with characters and short stories that tell of life in an otherwise forgettable place. Some of these ‘short stories’ are like dangling participles. You kind of know they are not quite right or

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don’t belong, but you understand them anyway. Even without a strong plot, this novel is an unfolding, with rich images that standalone just fine on their own.

Two major theme stand out for me: Camaraderie and Contentment.

Camaraderie – Surviving in these depressed times, even those who have little, share what little they have. Mack and his boys with each other. Dora and her ‘girls’ brought soup to the sick when the town became ill. Even Lee, the shrewd grocer, steps up and makes a deal. And finally, there’s Doc – the intellectual and the centroid of the town (and a lonely place to be as well), who always does what he can. Despite Mack and his boys destroying his house, he forgave them before they forgave themselves.

Contentment – Again surviving in these depressed times, it’s about being happy with what you little you have. Eddie and his mix of leftover alcohol blend that he, Mack, and the boys enjoy. A large, walk-in broiler that becomes a house. A warm stove that re-defined the ex-warehouse (Palace Flophouse) to be a home instead.

Side note: Doc’s character and lab was based off John Steinbeck's friend, Ed Ricketts, that had inspired the subject and this novel, who was in fact a marine biologist that operated Pacific Biological Laboratories, at 800 Cannery Row from 1928 to 1948.

Quotes:
About Lee Chong, the Chinese Grocer (who was still ultimately a force of good):
“Perhaps he is evil balanced and held suspended by good – an Asiatic planet held to its orbit by the pull of Lao Tze and held away from Lao Tze by the centrifugality of abacus and cash register.”

I wondered if this also described the memory of an elderly person or dementia:
“Hazel’s mind was choked with uncatalogued exhibits. He never forgot anything, but he never bothered to arrange his memories. Everything was thrown together like fishing-tackle in the bottom of a rowboat, hooks, and sinkers and line and lures and graffs all snarled up.”

The impact of the Model T on America – and it made me giggled:
“Someone should write an erudite essay on the moral, physical, and aesthetic 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.”

The simplicity and commonality of men – a bum (or anyone today) – also made me giggled:
“Mack awakened, started up, stretched, staggered to the pool, washed his face with cupped hands, hacked, spat, washed out his mouth, broke wind, tightened his belt, scratched his legs, combed his wet hair with his gingers, drank from the jug, belched, and sat down by the fire…. Men all do about the same things when they wake up. Mack’s process was loosely the one all of them followed.”

Doc’s observation of men: This made me pause and ponder if I agreed. No, I don’t, at least not entirely.
Doc – “The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding, and feeling, are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism, and self-interest, are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second.”

The mental punishment that Mack and his boys were inflicting upon themselves and the premise that Time does not always heal. This made me sad thinking how one just doesn’t forget some past pains.
“It’s all fine to say: ‘Time will heal everything, this too shall pass away. People will forget’ – and things like that when you are not involved, but when you are, there is no passage of time, people do not forget, and you are in the middle of something that does not change.”

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How can the poem and the stink and the grating noise -- the quality of light, the tone, the habit and the dream -- be set down alive? When you collect marine animals there are certain flat worms so delicate that they are almost impossible to capture whole, for they break and tatter under the touch.

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You must let them ooze and crawl of their own will onto a knife blade and then lift them gently into your bottle of sea water. And perhaps that might be the way to write this book -- to open the page and to let the stories crawl in by themselves.

Steinbeck does just that in this collage of vignettes about down-and-outs living near the sardine canneries of Depression-era Monterey, California. The broad story is of a group of people who want to show appreciation to their friend, Doc, a sort of marine biologist and all-around good guy. It’s beautifully written, evocative of men and place and -- who knew! -- Steinbeck can write fun. And it’s all the more meaningful to learn that Doc is based on a friend of Steinbeck, to whom the book is dedicated and in what grows to feel like a meta-appreciation from author to friend.

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This is my first Steinbeck novel. Brilliant. I am not sure whether to feel happy for the residents of Cannery Row, or sad to think that they might live in such a way for readers to find nobility in degradation. I tend to think this novel makes one sad to think that such stories could be noble, yet

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at the same time glad that despite the gloom, they can be. Steinbeck truly achieves the artist's role of making sense of a cruel world.

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What I loved most about this book was that it didn't tell a big story, nothing huge happens really. It's a group of residents living in a poor area but living the way that makes them happy. Some squat in an old fish building and some squat in an old furnace that they have gutted and made into a

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home. They all could change their situation, but they are all content with the way things are

Cannery Row tells a lot about human nature, without preaching. It's a simple book where not much happens, but I found I didn't want to put it down anyway.

"It has always seemed strange to me...The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling, are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest, are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second."

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Mack and the boys try to throw a party for Doc. That's the gist of the plot, but this is a story that aims first to conjure a mood and atmosphere. Monterey is a quiet sleepy town where quiet sleepy people live, and there is a pleasant, quiet, sleepy happiness to be had there that Doc understands

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and appreciates better than anyone. I can't start reading Steinbeck without being immediately pleased by his writing, my fingers twitching to quote him. Cannery Row revisits the Monterey setting in California that I was familiar with from Tortilla Flat. It both is and is not the same place, populated by characters similar and dissimilar. Steinbeck throws in his interlude chapters, isolated segments for added flavour. The only disturbance in these calm waters are the mentions of wife beating, with the sad impression it was intended to be amusing fun-and-games background colour. Now it lends a bit of edge, a hint of illusion overlaying what I think Steinbeck meant to convey with blind sincerity. Modern fiction likes an edge and a hint of falseness so it still works, though perhaps in a different way than originally intended.

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This is a great little book that tells of the people in Cannery Row and the way in which they interact with one another. There is a part in the middle of this book that made me laugh more than I had for quite some time while reading a book. His excellent description of characters and setting help

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you imagine the interaction they share together in this small community.

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This is a straight-forward story of a group of lower-class characters struggling to establish themselves and to find their own versions of the American Dream.

After rereading Of Mice and Men, I thought I would reread Cannery Row as well. Of Mice and Men is a very powerful book but I really love Cannery Row. The people in this book are so real. Steinbeck really wrote their lives well. As a side note, this is the first time I have read the book since

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living in Santa Cruz, near Monterey. It was really fun to read - vividly seeing the places in the book as I read was exciting.

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Hilarious story with some unique characters.

In my opinion - Steinbeck's best book! I just love it.

Evocative story of people who had worked their way to the edge of the continent, Monterey, in search of themselves and a personal absolution. Funny, warm, ironic. An excellent read.

My memories of John Steinbeck have been heretofore limited to high school, which I understand in advance doesn't make me all that objective. I was largely underwhelmed by The Pearl, and found Of Mice and Men to be about as memorable as everyone else does. Cannery Row falls for me somewhere in the

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middle of these two: it is a pleasant enough read, populated with interesting characters, but just didn't wow me like I was hoping.

The novel has a plot, but it's really more about the characters the populate its Monterey, CA, setting. Mack and his motley crew of bums spend their days in a storage facility rented out to them by Lee Chong, the local grocer. As other characters, including the local bordello owner and her prostitutes, wander in and out of the various settings, most of the characters focus on Doc, the marine biologist who lives in Cannery Row for reasons no one can quite decipher. But when Mack and the boys decide to throw Doc a party to show their appreciation for how nice he is, things don't quite go as planned.

The novel's tone is perhaps its most interesting facet, for Steinbeck clearly wants to show a certain amount of affection for the area while maintaining a certain amount of gritty realism. Though most of the action of the novel is performed by people who are generally good-hearted, Steinbeck punctuates the novel with moments of vivid violence, reminding us that the best of intentions are far from good enough. But while there is a strong us-against-the-world thread underlying the tale, Steinbeck is careful not to let it cross the line into sadness or dissatisfaction. He wants to tell a positive story, even if it can't necessarily be uplifting, and he nails that aspect of it very well.

Where the novel suffers, though, is in its plot, which is relatively simplistic. The early chapters read less like contributions to a larger narrative than as short, independent vignettes meant to give a sense of the personalities in the area. The upshot is that the story is populated with characters that feel real, with fates that we as readers genuinely feel we care about; the downside, however, is that the lack of cohesion prevents the later parts of the novel from feeling like there's much at stake. It could be an extension of the fact that such simple characters in such a depressed area just don't have that much at stake, which is fair, but it takes away from the novel's impact as a result.

Perhaps the most perplexing thing about Cannery Row is how its strength can also simultaneously be its biggest lack. It's impressive how quickly Steinbeck can get us to relate to his characters with such an economy of language, but the impact simply doesn't last too long beyond the closing of the book cover. It could be that time has diluted the work: in our present day, even in the current economic moment, it's hard to relate to Depression-era cannery folk. As such, Cannery Row probably works best nowadays If we hold it as emblematic of a particular moment, albeit one that has clearly passed.

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I enjoyed this book after reading it again for a second time about a year ago. I was much younger on the first read but I can really identify with the characters now and see how their loneliness, weaknesses and strengths combine to show in full detail how they make up any part of a community, the

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ability for leadership, perseverance, and humanity. I like to read about the characters as much as the story line. I like complex characters.

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Steinbeck is simply one of my favorite authors, His handling of characters is wonderful and his style allows you to lose yourself in his settings and scenes. This story is a fine example. Full of California characters. The state still is full of characters.