Part One – Cannery Row
by James Roland
I realized that I was 26 years old and had never read the classics, so now I”m catching up, one volume at a time. You can read the intro to this blog series here.
Don’t pick up Cannery Row if you hate the sting of salt air, because you will taste it as you read.
Is it fate that I started reading Steinbeck’s classic novel just before America’s greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression? Because, if so, what happens when I finally finish Lord of the Flies on a South Asian island next month?
I picked up Cannery Row after hearing a fantastic short story read aloud at our party for the first print edition of RedFence (available now!).
Read and written by Dennis Anderson, the story followed a burdened family man as he inadvertently resurrected the ghost of Doc (one of two central male characters in Steinbeck’s highly autobiographical “novel”) for a single night.
The prose was beautiful and the descriptions so vivid that I immediately picked my copy of Cannery Row off the shelf and hopped on a plane. Two hours later, the plane touched down, and the only reason I wasn’t done from cover to cover is because I couldn’t bear to see it end.
The narrative is a mildly chronological patchwork of people, buildings, and animals. Each chapter averages three to five pages and each one is a nugget of literary gold. They could be read separately, but from front to back they build a tight emotional arc that’s just as gripping as any deftly woven action plot.
Cannery Row is a real place, though depicted by Steinbeck with such awe and omniscient detail that the geographic location could never match the mythical stretch of shanties, vacant lots, and whorehouses.
Gone is much of Steinbeck’s cynicism that many literary-types talk about in boring college courses. A few of the tales, particularly the standalone chapters that alternate with an overarching narrative about the local boys attempting to throw a party, have a particularly harsh ending. However, they seem void of anger. When Steinbeck spends three pages to tell the tale of a lonely gopher who loses his perfect burrow in exchange for a mate, his underlying feelings towards women might be on display, but the prose feels mournful rather than vindictive.
The book only extends to 120 pages, but the images and characters resound much farther. It’s simple and elegant; there is no heavy-handed philosophy or great deeper meaning, just poor folks making a living in such loving detail you don’t even yearn for more, because you feel like you know them completely.
