Cannery Row
Ratings124
Average rating4.1
Not my favorite of his, but the characters are real as ever. I enjoyed following them.
This is wonderful. I'd only ever read one book by Steinbeck, which was Of Mice and Men a million years ago in high school.
All I really want to comment on is how much Doc ate on his drive from Monterey to La Jolla. That's a 6-7 hour drive. Maybe highways were significantly different enough that it was a much longer drive back then? He ate 3 days worth of meals. I was dumbfounded reading it. Anyway, great book. It's so descriptive and there are so many wonderful artifacts from the 1930s and 1940s.
Lighting a water heater. Soap chips. Beer cans you open with a can opener. I could go on.
Another wonderful Steinbeck novel. I liked this book, but I didn't love it. I had trouble connecting to the characters, and despite the charm of the community, I felt that there was a kind of stagnant melancholy also coloring the book—a kind of cheery monotony. I would not recommend this to people who haven't read Steinbeck before; I don't think it's the best example of his abilities, though it's certainly a good read for anyone who has read his works before.
I just returned from a trip to Monterey, California - the backdrop for Cannery Row. I downloaded this book onto my Android Nook for the return flight home and loved being transported back to all the locales I just visited.
Not sure if I would have enjoyed it as much if I hadn't just visited the area - but it was a cool book and a pretty quick read. If you've been to the Monterey/Carmel area you need to check out this book.
Damn, what I wouldn't give for this kind of welcoming, enveloping, compassionate community again.
This book will shine like sunny springtime in my memory. I love all these characters, even the frogs.
For me a 2.5. I found the tale amusing but not funny. Whilst I liked the writing, I found the ‘‘you have got to love them because their hearts are in the right place'' a little bit too sickly sweet to swallow.
What a change of pace from East of Eden and the Grapes of Wrath! Cannery Row is a small distillation of what I'm beginning to recognise as Steinbeck's trademark style, the heartfelt descriptions, the humourous yet poignant characterisations, the matter-of-fact narrative. It feels different here though, when the stakes are so much lower. I think I can only feel like the characters of Cannery Row are cute, rather than emotionally taxing in the same way that the other two books are. I particularly liked the briefer anecdotes rather than some of the more extended ones, since I felt like they had just enough flavour without wanting to do more and not having the words for doing so. The Malloys moving into the boiler, Henri and his boat, the soldiers and Dora's girls, Mary Talbot and her parties, the bachelor gopher. I get that I wouldn't enjoy a novella with solely 3 page vignettes, but I think without them Cannery Row would suffer a great deal. The more “philosophical” moments fall a little flatter, like Doc opining about capitalism and how Mack and the boys have actually figured it out. The quips get me more; I loved describing boring parties as “not parties at all but acts and demonstrations, about as spontaneous as peristalsis and as interesting as its end product” (p168). Good, tight read.
This might be one of my favorite books I've read all year so far. There's a poetry and heart in this novel that is hard to find elsewhere, and it comes from a place of absolute naturalness. It's been over a decade since I read Steinbeck in school, and I think I'll have to read, really read, more of his work soon. This little book got to me.
I first read this novel at university for a various-genres literature course. I didn't quite understand it then, although the analytic lens I acquired during the class definitely helped me understand it now, and appreciate it even better. This is the epitome, for me, of a slice-of-life novel; Steinbeck, as I wrote in the margins of one paragraph, “continues to be ingenious,” and that stands for me. The switching of different perspectives ( of different slices of life ) in-between the chapters wasn't boring, and there was nothing that rambled on that didn't come back around full circle. Each character, no matter how minor or major, had a distinct personality and a distinct purpose in the place of Cannery Row as a whole. Reading about this kind of place for me was the definition of relatable, even some near-one-hundred-odd years later. And it's because of this ability that Steinbeck has, to continue to be found and relatable, that makes me apt to give it five stars. I recommend Cannery Row for anybody who is older, and has had life happen to them, and needs to see it written down somewhere.
Not my favorite Steinbeck book but, like pizza, it is still very good.
”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.”
This book works almost as a collection of short stories/ anecdotes about the people living in Cannery Row. The writing is beautiful, funny and really makes the characters shine.
It was the first Steinbeck book I read in English and the experience is very different. I might need to reread everything else in the original versions.
100% recommended
It's been a long time since I read Steinbeck. Picked up this book off an Airbnb shelf (didn't finish during my stay so went and found a used copy). I enjoyed the easy (if not sometimes wary) camaraderie of the character cast. I gave a good LOL several times throughout the book while also feeling the weight of each's solitude (even the gopher). A few weeks ago I passed through Monterrey and saw the sardine canneries (no idea if they're still functional). It was fun to read about a place I've seen with my own eyes.
I don't believe anyone would claim that Steinbeck can't write. It's not a matter of that at all.
Cannery Row is written in short little chapters that flip and flop from the main story to other microcosms of life in this neighborhood. I spent the first few chapters reading before bed and falling asleep after a couple chapters, and then picking it up again the next day having forgotten who some of the characters are, or their place in the narrative (if there was a place for them at all). Later on I started reading it in bigger chunks and that helped with comprehension at least, but ... I never totally got a feel as to why I should care what happened to these characters. Mack was kind of endearing at first, but the more he tried to swindle people he sees literally every day, and the more he tries to do nice things for Doc (to ill-effect), the less I liked him. To my mind, the other guys he lived with were mostly interchangeable.
It's like how people always think their drinking stories are the best time, and they are a good time ... unless you're the one who's sober. I felt like the sober one at this beer- and whiskey-soaked nightmare of a party.
It was just okay.
This is just the second Steinbeck book that I've read and he's already starting to rub off on me. He writes about life with a microscopic lens, singling out individuals and their circumstances, all the while panning through the rest of the worldly distractions with a hazy eye, permeating into the everyday lives of his characters and inking the once-invisible thread that connects people. It will be a while before the image of Cannery Row fades into the back rows of my mind. For now, I will ride on through life in this bubble of romanticism, basking in my “hour of pearl”.