John Steinbeck

Cannery row

Alawander Bouston 

Early morning is a time of magic in Cannery Row. In the gray time after the light has come and before the sun has risen, the Row seems to hang suspended out of time in a silvery light. The street lights go out, and the weeds are a brilliant green. The corrugated iron of the canneries glows with the pearly lucence of platinum or old pewter. No automobiles are running then. The street is silent of progress and business. And the rush and drag of the waves can be heard as they splash in among the piles of the canneries. It is a time of great peace, a deserted time, a little era of rest. Cats drip over the fences and slither like syrup over the ground to look for fish heads. Silent early morning dogs parade majestically picking and choosing judiciously whereon to pee. The sea gulls come flapping in to sit on the cannery roofs to await the day of refuse. 

Sarah Sammis

Although I know it's not the sequel to The Long Valley, Cannery Row feels like the natural progression from Steinbeck's 1938 collection of short stories. Like so many of Steinbeck's books, both take place in and around Monterey county so there are bound to be similarities by their locals alone.

Steinbeck was best when writing short fiction. Cannery Row works as a novel but the different chapters could easily stand alone as short stories. What ties them all together are the characters and the slight progression of the narrative.

The plot is really basic: Mac and his friends who have been squatting in the local grocer's warehouse, decide to throw a party for the local marine biologist. When it goes horribly wrong, they try again with a new party to cheer the doctor up. Intertwined with this simplistic but cute story are vignettes of life along Cannery Row during the Depression.

My favorite chapter, though, was Doc's drive down to La Jolla to collect baby octopuses. I liked it for my own experience of making that drive and because I grew up near La Jolla and know the beaches well.

In this tough yet charming portrait of people on the margins of society, Steinbeck focuses on the acceptance of life as it is—both the exuberance of community and the loneliness of the individual. Drawing on his memories of friends in Monterey, California, he interweaves the stories of Lee, Doc, and Mack, the inhabitants of Cannery Row. What results is a procession of linked vignettes and a novel that is at once Steinbeck’s most humorous and poignant works, filled with human warmth, camaraderie, and love. Penguin Random House Canada is proud to bring you classic works of literature in e-book form, with the highest quality production values. Find more today and rediscover books you never knew you loved.

Cannery Row

Jaden Nelson

Hello Steinbeck! First of all, the star rating was an accident (as weird as that sounds); I was trying to decide between 3 and 4 stars and my finger twitched to 4 stars, so I figured it was meant to be. 

What a nice little book. It's hard to describe what makes Cannery Row such a fun read, but I'll do my best to put it into words. This book is like a warm blanket around you mind. It's a quaint little story of life as a whole, centered around the community of Cannery Row. There isn't a whole lot of plot to the book, but it doesn't need it. I came to love, understand, and pity the characters of Cannery Row. The book was a quick read, but less like an "on the edge of your seat" thrilling cliff hanger book and more like being on an ocean wave, pushed along by the tide where you see new things as you move along. While I didn't find a clear theme in the book, I think I started to catch a glimpse of some themes (for example: the wise "advice" on pages 135 and 137). The setting of the book (Cannery Row-which is based off of a real location in California now also called Cannery Row) is one of the main elements of the book that makes it such an absolutely beautiful read. Every so often-as mentioned in the introduction-inter chapters in the book provide "a little era of rest....when time stops and examines itself." Steinbeck's writing is almost graceful and describes things wholly and concisely. I am glad I started with Cannery Row as my first Steinbeck because it was a perfect length and help me see why he is so highly esteemed. I have already purchased a copy of Cannery Row , and I plan to reread it to return to the simple and wholesome characters, fun story, and beautiful setting of Cannery Row, California.

Erik Wallace

More of a wandering book than I expected, but there are some fantastic characters in this story.

Trish

Underwhelming after the masterpiece that is East of Eden. Perhaps I was expecting too much. Nonetheless, this is an excellent series of character studies. I feel strange describing its plot because it's so simple and mindless that I swear there hardly is one. Rather, Steinbeck takes his time describing rich characters in Cannery Row and how they associate with each other.

Dave | Storyphoria

Full review at:
https://aicpod.com/2022/02/28/john-st...


After the heaviness of The Grapes of Wrath and the dark hopefulness of The Moon is Down, Cannery Row becomes a perfect follow up. While things are difficult for the characters of this story, there are some ups and downs of course, overall this feels like a light-hearted celebration of place. As if you are getting a peek at news accounts and journals that share all the juicy secrets that place has gathered over the years.

It meanders and strolls at it’s own pace, never too high, never too low, and it does what the first page sets out to do. These stories seem to have crawled onto the blank page of their own free will, and while there is no real strong plot the stories of Cannery Row have a way of pulling you along as they crawl across the page. And while it’s certainly not a “page turner”, Steinbeck’s ability to draw readers into a casual story of place is truly wonderful.

Ryan LaFerney

meh. I wish I enjoyed this more than I did but to be honest, the vignettes of folk in this story was sort of dull. Steinbeck has some occasional prose that is fantastic though.

A.L.L.

Funny and very human. There are moments where the humanity is so raw and truthfully written it's a little uncomfortable or so stark you have to laugh. It's brilliant in it's simplicity.

Cannery Row (Penguin Modern Classics)

Jade Flynn

Steinbeck again offers an intuitive look into humanity. His prose is as graceful and delicate as always but the overall plot is not as refined as the later published East of Eden which I was enamored by. I'll obviously be reading more Steinbeck.

Andrea Badgley

Cannery Row, set during the Great Depression, is a surprisingly (and subtly) funny character sketch of the rundown community along the strip of sardine canneries in Monterey, California. From the Chinese grocer, Lee Chong, to the specimen-collecting Doc, to the bums Mack and the boys at the flophouse, to Dora and the girls at the neighborhood brothel, to the tomcats and freed frogs and lonely gopher without a mate, the inhabitants of Cannery Row – along with the smell of the tides, the whang of rocks thrown against corrugated metal, and the pearly light of the quiet mornings before each day’s antics begin – exhibit the personality of a place through both its people and its atmosphere. Steinbeck has captured and characterized place brilliantly in this way and has shown a California different from all the other books I’ve read. The only similar portrayal was Kerouac’s The Dharma Bums, but Kerouac’s focus was human characters while Steinbeck’s aim was to characterize Cannery Row, the place, through its residents.

I was looking forward to California for the excuse to read a Steinbeck I haven’t yet read. Cannery Row did not disappoint. Steinbeck’s sentences had me reaching for my pen and notebook nearly every page to record his genius lines; his prose is rhythmic and beautiful:

 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…

There is something about Steinbeck that moves me. He writes close to the earth and deep into our humanness, and he is able to evoke an atmosphere that satisfies my hunger for a sense of place, scratches my itch for exploring our humanity – our eccentricities and foibles, our kindnesses and will to keep trying – and that asks the big questions, like how do we go on in the face of disappointment and failure, and what would a beer milk shake taste like?

For more on Cannery Row, please see Steinbeck, Steinbeck, he’s my man.

Cannery row

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