Cannery Row (1945)

I just wrote a long review and then closed the wrong tab. Oops.

I loved this: a timeless tribute to a particular place and time, a vivid setting filled with a community of memorable characters. Doc: the fount of all wisdom on Cannery row. Mack and his gang of misfits from the Palace Flophouse. Mr and Mrs Sam Malloy who live in an old boiler. Lee Chong, the proprietor of the remarkably well-stocked local store where you can buy anything at any time, particularly "Old Tennis Shoes" whiskey. There's not much real plot, unless you can count Mack's ongoing well-meaning ineptitude and desire to throw a party for the Doc, but it's interwoven through and binds together the portraits of people and places, and even animals (like the poor gopher with the perfect burrow but no mate to share it with).

Fantastic book. ( )

I've long had a bias against John Steinbeck. I don't know why, it's just been there, like a gargoyle you thought was a good idea when you saw it at a fairgrounds and you bought it and the damn thing turned out to be of real stone, not styrofoam, like you thought, and now you've got this stone, heavy bastard of a thing in your living room, staring down at you while you sip a cup of tea in front of the TV and try to focus on whatever's on.
But we were down in Monterey a weekend or two ago, sleeping overnight in the aquarium down there, and I figured, "hell, you know, why don't I try reading Cannery Row, what harm could it do?"
So I started it. And wouldn't you know it, like throwing out the gargoyle, it was a good idea. I really enjoyed this book. It was short, sweet, a beautiful picture of some misadventures and some great characters and scenes. And it's all done in good humor. There's no malicious undercurrent running through this group of miscreants it chronicles, nor is there any in the grocer who abides them. And there's certainly none in the Doc or the girls from the whorehouse. It's a picture of humanity that paints it in a very positive light, even when a guy heads off to get a replacement part for a broken down Model T Ford and winds up in prison or the gang meet a man all on his lonesome, take advantage of him in the politest way possible, even steal from him, sort of, leaving him with a destroyed home and surely no little anger at how he's been misused.
And even when things get ugly, and they do, it's not so ugly that the redeeming qualities of these people don't shine through. ( )

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 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 ( )

This is the Steinbeck for people who don't think they like Steinbeck. ( )

Very few writers can bring you to the intimate level of familiarity and comfort with the people and times as Steinbeck. I could see, smell and feel Cannery Row. I have been a fan since The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden when Steinbeck first knocked my socks off.

In Cannery Row, Mack is the leader of a rag tag group of men who really don't mean harm but seem to inadvertently cause it everywhere they go. Much time is spent scheming and planning but not in a terribly malicious way, mostly they focus on getting what they need with the least amount of work possible.

Doc runs the neighborhood lab and is a marine biologist; a stable, kind presence. To show their affection, Mack and his boys decide to throw Doc a surprise party. Good intentions and bad karma equal a disaster. There is a round two for the party- givers which has better results.

The parallel stories of Lee Chong, Dora and Hazel blend in seemlessly and add richness to the main narrative. Although a short read, I took the time to really savor the words. So much in so few pages.

Lovely ( )