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Title: Cannery Row by John Steinbeck ISBN: 0-14-017738-8 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: February, 1993 Format: Mass Market Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $8.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.21 (175 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: The Players Tell the Story
Comment: At the outset of this book, Steinbeck tells the reader that the only way for the story of Cannery Row to be told is to let the characters tell it. That is exactly what Steinbeck does and he does it with his usual genious.
The characters of Cannery Row are brilliantly portrayed by Steinbeck. He is in his element writing about the survivors in the lower echelon income brackets. Without the reader realizing it, in addition to the brilliant portraits of the characters, there is also a story being told. The down-and-out want to do something "nice" for Doc - the research scientist who is everyone's friend, mentor, doctor, banker, etc. The first attempt is an abysmal failuer. So might the second be characterized, except it is just what Doc was expecting - what he was not expecting was his enjoyment of the failure.
Cannery Row is on par with Steinbeck's other fine works. His characters are, as usual, unforgettable. Although the story-line does not have a lot of depth, it is the vehicle to get to know the characters. The characters are the star of this work. I strongly recommend it.
Rating: 5
Summary: Steinbeck's best?
Comment: John Stienbeck had experimented with loosely structured tales of noble drifters before, but his musings on the theme peaked with the classic Cannery Row. Although it is not as epic as East of Eden or as urgent as The Grapes of Wraith, the novella may be Steinbeck's best book for its style, personality and heart.
There is no central storyline in Cannery Row, only a cluster of anecdotes, concerning inhabitants the lowlife district of a coastal town in pre-World War II California. From the contemplative Chinese grocer to the sociable but cynical marine biologist to the charismatic leader of a fellowship of drifters, these are some of Stienbeck's most memorable characters and their exploits are wholly entertaining.
Even though Cannery Row is free-spirited, it is not light. Themes of discontentment, emotional weakness and sometimes painful disparity between intent and outcome color the novel's vignettes. Even the book's portrayal of lighthearted drifters revolves around a heavy thesis. These are strong, capable people. What does it say about society that they can't or won't achieve anything overly tangible?
But such questions do not concern Cannery Row's greatest strength: how enjoyable it is to read. Its first sentence is about as famous as Moby Dick's and A Tale of Two Cities'. "Cannery Row is Monterey California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a dream." The prose is just as invigorating throughout, another reason why Cannery Row is a plotless masterpiece.
Rating: 5
Summary: Perfection in a small package
Comment: I'm still on a high from reading CANNERY ROW, a good 24 hours after finishing it. This is a short book that says volumes about humanity and philosophical matters through the perfectly scribed world of bums, drunks, whores, and the workers in stinky sardine factories in the pre-tourism era of Cannery Row, Monterey, CA. There is an incredible equilibrium to this place, a leveling factor that does not allow anyone to make economic progress, and balances recklessness with goodness, loneliness with community, slapstick comedy with fine-tuned sensitivity. At the heart of the book is the character of Doc, modeled on Steinbeck's best friend, Ed Ricketts, a marine biologist with high tastes in music and literature, a loner by nature who nonetheless lives in concert with his neighbors and takes care of them. The book begins episodically, introducing sketches of the inhabitants and environment of Cannery Row, then gradually swells with the efforts of Mack and the Palace Flophouse gang to pay their dues to Doc with a party. The suspense, not to mention the comedy, builds on whether Mack and company's proclivities will cancel out their good intentions.
This is a rich book under any circumstances, but if you have read Steinbeck's LOG FROM THE SEA OF CORTEZ, a non-fiction work about a marine biology expedition he and Ricketts took, then you will get an extra layer of experience from CANNERY ROW. You will spy some funny insider jokes, you will have a fuller exploration of the Steinbeck/Ricketts theme of the interconnectedness of life, and you will marvel again at Ricketts/Doc. Steinbeck had lived in New York a few years by the time he wrote this book, but you can tell the place and its people were ever present in his heart and mind.
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Title: Tortilla Flat by John Steinbeck ISBN: 0140042407 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: April, 1995 List Price(USD): $8.00 |
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Title: Sweet Thursday (Twentieth-Century Classics) by John Steinbeck ISBN: 0140187502 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: April, 1996 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: The Grapes of Wrath: John Steinbeck Centennial Edition (1902-2002) by John Steinbeck ISBN: 0142000663 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: 03 January, 2002 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck ISBN: 0140177396 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: September, 1993 List Price(USD): $8.00 |
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Title: The Winter of Our Discontent (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics) by John Steinbeck ISBN: 0140187537 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: April, 1996 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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