Cannery Row: (Centennial Edition)
Product Description: Today, nearly forty years after his death, Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck remains one of Americas greatest writers and cultural figures. We have begun publishing his many works for the first time as blackspine Penguin Classics featuring eye-catching, newly commissioned art. This season we continue with the seven spectacular and influential books East of Eden, Cannery Row, In Dubious Battle, The Long Valley, The Moon Is Down, The Pastures of Heaven, and Tortilla Flat. Penguin Classics is proud to present these seminal works to a new generation of readersand to the many who revisit them again and again.
Subjects: Fiction, Literature - Classics / Criticism, Classics, Fiction / Classics, Fiction / Literary, Literary, Cannery Row (Monterey, Calif.), Community life, Love stories, Marine biologists, Monterey (Calif.),
good book for everyone
i thought this would be a stupid book becuz we had to read it for an english class, but it was actually pretty interesting. i read to the end before the class, for once
Cannery Row
If you're a person who likes stories with lots of action and an exciting plot, then this book probably isn't for you. If you're a person who likes unique and fascinating characters, then this book is DEFINITELY for you. Cannery Row is about everybody's hometown. It follows the lives of a handful of townspeople--a group of bums led by Mack, a scientist, a whorehouse madam, a shopkeeper--and somehow Steinbeck manages to get me to sympathize with and understand each of them while at the same time making them very real and very flawed. While I might cross the street in real life in order to avoid an encounter with an aggressive "bum," I fell in love with Mack and his boys living in Cannery Row.
This book is more similar to East of Eden than to Grapes of Wrath. It's short, very easy to read, and I didn't want it to end.
A "funny little book."
What John Steinbeck does so well, time and again, is show us real people, living real life. Nothing really fantastical, yet just a bit out of the ordinary. But real as dirt.
Reading him makes me wish I did not have to use the past tense when speaking of how he writes.
I just finished his 1945 novel, Cannery Row.
I thoroughly enjoyed it.
The book is not so much about plot, as it is an evocation of time and place. Almost, at times, a panoply of connected vignettes.
Short, economic chapters; never a suffocating moment.
The "cannery" district of Monterey California comes alive, as we meet people like Lee Chong, the shrewd, yet good-hearted general store owner.
From aspirin to zippers, if Lee Chong ain't got it, you ain't need it!
Then there's Mack, the self-appointed ringleader of a veritable posse of down-and-outers. These guys don't work. [I envied them all the way through...] They just sit around all day and cause unintentional mayhem for the whole town, the main victim being Cannery Row's one seeming intellectual, the marine biologist known as "Doc."
The central thrust of Steinbeck's novel is that Mack and his boys want to throw Doc a party. Doc is such a "nice guy" and he is always out there helping others, Mack figures it's time to repay him with a bit of a shindig.
Amazing how such good intentions can go awry!
The first attempt at a party is a complete disaster. The second attempt, this time the event being Doc's alleged birthday, is not much better, but by now Doc has taken precautions. Getting wind of his own party plans, he himself does most of the organizing, and feigns surprise when people start arriving.
But what's the use?
At the end of this second party, his front door is again knocked off its hinges, and by now even the police have given up on arresting these well-intentioned hooligans!
It's a terrific little novel [almost a novella] in which my lasting impression shall be the fact that all friendships, indeed, all human relationships, must be willing to embrace imperfection. Not just in the other person, but also in our own self.
In a subtle way, Doc learns through his bumbling friends, that he is not an island. In fact, he may even need these guys, from time to time.
Even he, self-sufficient Doc, may be in need of someone!
I often look into Steinbeck's Letters [a book] to get a better appreciation for the time frame of some of his writings. Of Cannery Row, he said, back in 1943, to a friend... "I'm working on a funny little book and it is pretty nice."
I concur.
It is funny. It is nice.
The character of "Doc" was based on Steinbeck's real-life friendship with a man by the name of Ed Ricketts.
I read Cannery Row in preparation to reading a new book I recently picked up, entitled Beyond The Outer Shores: The Untold Story of Ed Ricketts, The Pioneering Ecologist Who Inspired John Steinbeck and Joseph Campbell.
It's by Eric Enno Tamm, and I look forward to beginning it, next week.
I highly recommend Cannery Row, to all and sundry.
It's not East of Eden.
It's not Grapes of Wrath.
But it's definitely Cannery Row!
Disappointing
This is the seventh Steinbeck novel I have read, and also one of the worst (The Short Reign of Pippin the VII is worse). I loved The Red Pony and Of Mice of Men, so I branched out, reading some of his lesser known works. Big Mistake. This novella has no focus, no character you can relate to, no plot to speak of, no definitive climax, and no business being read. I daydreamed through most of it.
The reason I don't give it one star is because Steinbeck, like in most of his novels, provided a great description of post-war Cannery Row, and did a decent job of presenting violence on the periphery (kind of like the news today). We see glimpses of violence but we, nor the characters are ever directly affected. Furthermore, the novel's ending is decent, comparing Doc's lonely isolation to that of a gopher being attacked while trying to seek out a mate. Unfortunately, most things leading up until the ending is uneventful, constantly interrupted by dead-end subplots, and lacking in intrigue.
No emotional attachments
I enjoyed parts of this book, but it did not draw me in nor give me any emotional attachments to the characters. It seemed to be divided into shorter stories that make up the book in whole. This left me missing details and there didn't seem to be a smooth transition between stories. I enjoyed hearing about Mack and the boys and their adventures, but at other points Steinbeck seemed to introduce characters that don't play any part in the story. The look at the blue collar life and discussion of what type of work makes one happy did interest me as I am going through a career crisis.
