For this first Friday
in 2016 Barry Ergang gets things started here for Fridays Forgotten Books. After
you read his review, head on over to Todd Mason’s Sweet Freedom Blog for other
reading suggestions as he is substituting for Patti Abbott again this week.
CANNERY ROW (1945) by John Steinbeck
Reviewed by Barry Ergang
Entertaining and informative
though it is, John Steinbeck’s short, fast-moving, frequently funny but also
poignant Cannery Row is not the
easiest fiction to describe, all previous adjectives notwithstanding. More a
portrait of a place, time and populace—the impoverished waterfront and
(obviously) cannery area of Monterey, California during the Depression era, and
the denizens thereof—than a conventionally-plotted work, it could stand as an
exemplar of the “episodic” novel.
As the author describes it in
the opening sentence, “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.”
The principal plot thread,
such as it is, concerns the man known as Doc, who owns and operates Western
Biological Laboratory, which supplies specimens of various kinds to
researchers. Among the inhabitants of Cannery Row are Mack and the boys (Hazel,
Eddie, Gay, Hughie, and Jones), local derelicts who have persuaded grocery/multifarious
goods supplier Lee Chong to allow them to live in a local warehouse of sorts
which he, Chong, has acquired. After fixing it up, “the boys moved in and the
fish meal moved out. No one knows who named the house that has been known ever
after as the Palace Flophouse and Grill.” And because over time Mack, the boys,
and their friends conclude that Doc merits a reward of sorts, they decide a
party at Western Biological is in order.
Anything said beyond that
regarding the plot would be a spoiler.
Intervening chapters include
historical information about the area as well as anecdotes and vignettes about
many of the other inhabitants of Cannery Row, among them Dora, owner of the
Bear Flag Restaurant, the whorehouse of which she is the madame, and some of
the women who work for her; Henri, artist and boat-builder who is not exactly
what he seems; Mr. and Mrs. Sam Malloy, pipe-renters; and a considerable number
of others.
Despite my advanced (read hoary) years, this is only the second of
Steinbeck’s novels I’ve ever read, the first having been Of Mice and Men a few decades or so ago. As I hinted at in the
first paragraph herein, and want to point out now as superbly written, it is
well worth anyone’s time.
© 2016
Barry Ergang
Examples of Derringer Award-winner Barry Ergang’s work can be found at Smashwords and Amazon. His website is http://www.writetrack.yolasite.com/
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