Cannery Row

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.