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. 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 bitches,' 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."

So begins Steinbeck's Cannery Row, which I recently finished for my book club. When I found out the choice for this go round, I may have cursed because I had alluded the reading of Steinbeck in high school and didn't want to start now. Man, what a fool am I to let a prejudice about a class where we didn't even get to Grapes of Wrath spoil me on a writer. Which is to say I loved this book. I think the opening chapter is a brilliant description of place and sets the stage for his meandering snippets of life in that place.

I loved following the tales of life in Cannery Row and grew to be fond of all of its misfit inhabitants. But what really sold the book for me were the descriptive chapters. One starts out describing early morning there and paints a beautiful picture of the rusty place. My favorite bit, though, describes the cats and dogs. "Cats drip over the fences and slither like syrup over the group to look for fish heads. Silent early morning dogs parade majestically picking and choosing judiciously whereon to pee." How perfect is that?

From hereon out, I solemnly swear to never scoff at the classics until I've read them for myself.

Comments

[Amanda]

I got burned on Steinbeck by that class also. Something about rushing through The Grapes of Wrath in 3 days and then missing questions on the quiz because the answers were *only* in the Cliff's Notes and not the book chapped me . . . But I tried again a few years later with Of Mice and Men and I decided I still didn't like Steinbeck!