Book review: "Cannery Row" by John Steinbeck

Early in my reading of "Cannery Row," I kept waiting for the main characters to appear.

The first character John Steinbeck introduces in thie 1945 novel set in Monterey, California, is Lee Chong, a taciturn Chinese grocery store owner who provides much of the neighborhood's food and liquor, while giving out just enough credit keep all the locals in his debt.

Next, Steinbeck introduces us to five seldom-employed men who squat in a small building formerly used to store fish meal that they call the Palace Flophouse. The men "had in common no families, no money, and no ambitions beyond food, drink, and contentment."

Then there's Dora Flood, who runs a busy brothel nearby, and Doc, a scientist who collects marine specimens to sell to laboratories, while at night sitting home alone listening to classical music and sadly recalling a lost love. 

All of these seemed like side characters to me, so it took me a bit to realize they are the main characters.

And I guess that's the point. Steinbeck is not interested in showing us the lives of the rich or the powerful, or even the ordinary middle-class. "Cannery Row" is all about the lives of people on the fringes, imperfect people who build a quirky community of their own. It is based on real people Steinbeck met while living in Monterey in the 1930s.

Steinbeck braids together a collection of stories, some of which are tied loosely together and some of which are stand-alone vignettes. 

To say this a quirky tale is an understatement. There is a embalming gone wrong, a quest for a beer milkshake, and a man building a boat with no intention to finish it. It is amusing to watch the Palace Flophouse guys attempt to throw a party for Doc, but end up getting it disastrously wrong.

The book mixes touches of poignancy with Steinbeck's wry sense of humor. Refering to the ubiquity of the Model T Ford at the time, and its persistent need for repair, the author says, "Two generations of Americans knew more about the Ford coil than the clitoris, about the planetary system of gears than the solar system of stars."

"Cannery Row" is a fairly short book, but I didn't read it fast. This is partly because Steinbeck loads every paragraph with a lot of meaning. If you read too fast, you'll miss it. Here, for example, is his description of Hazel, one of the Palace Flophouse gang.

"Hazel’s mind was like wandering alone in a deserted museum. Hazel’s mind was choked with un- catalogued exhibits. He never forgot anything, but he never bothered to arrange his memories. Everything was thrown together like fishing-tackle in the bottom of a rowboat, hooks and sinkers and line and lures and gaffs all snarled up."

Mostly the book centers on Palace Flophouse men, led by a man named Mack. Sure, they steal food, overdrink, fail to pay their debts, and botch their attempts to help people, but Steinbeck looks at them and respects them for their commitment to a simple life:

"What can it profit a man to gain the whole world and to come to his property with a gastric ulcer, a blown prostate, and bifocals? Mack and the boys avoid the trap, walk around the poison, step over the noose while a generation of trapped, poisoned, and trussed-up men scream at them and call them no-goods, come-to-bad-ends, blots-on-the-town, thieves, rascals, bums."

This is only the second Steinbeck book I have read. The other is "The Pearl." "Cannery Row" is better.