Cannery Row / Sweet Thursday

 

"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." - John Steinbeck, Cannery Row

I recently finished reading John Steinbeck's Sweet Thursday; I've read Cannery Row a few months before. Both are great pieces of writing that show that Steinbeck is indeed as brilliant in his comic work as he is in his more 'serious'/tragic writings (e.g. Of Mice and Men). I would heartily recommend them.

Both novels take place in Cannery Row, a waterfront street in Monterey with many sardine-canning factories. This is actually the nickname of a real place (pictured below), previously called Ocean View Avenue. [It was officially renamed Cannery Row in honour of Steinbeck's novel.] Cannery Row takes place in the Great Depression, while Sweet Thursday is a sequel, revisiting the colourful characters and their lives after WWII has ended.

Reading both books makes you feel as if you've actually lived there in Monterey. It really takes skill to make one feel nostalgic for a place that one has never even been to, and Steinbeck achieves this quite effectively in both novels through his careful eye for detail. He intersperses longer chapters mainly driven by the plot with shorter chapters that are basically vignettes about life in Monterey. His characters are very well fleshed-out. They are ordinary folk - bums, hookers, shopkeepers - but he writes about them very warmly with good humour and a heartfelt sense of sympathy for their lives, thoughts and aspirations, challenging us as readers to look beyond first impressions.

Take for example, the two different proprietors of the Bear Flag House (a brothel) in Cannery Row and Sweet Thursday. Dora is kind-hearted and generous, paying grocery bills for hard-up families hit by the Depression and donating to charitable causes. Fauna, who takes over Dora in the sequel, tries to turn the brothel into a finishing school, passes on her expertise on social decorum to the girls, and tries to marry them off to reputable men. (She even has a board in the house with a golden star for each girl in the House that has been married off.) Instead of the stereotyped Madam that exploits her prostitutes, both proprietors are genuinely interested in the well-being of their girls.*

Central to both novels is the immensely likeable character, Doc, who owns the Western Biological Library that supplies specimens of species. He goes to the nearby tide pool, rich in wildlife, to procure samples that he sells for money. Doc is a gentle personality whom all the occupants of the Row go to for advice and help, but somehow he always seems lonely and melancholy. His kindness motivates the characters to do something for him to show him how much he is loved in the neighbourhood, and this is the driving plot of both novels. In Cannery Row, Mack and his boys, a bunch of vagrants, decide to throw him a party but end up [SPOILER] ruining his house. In return, they try to make up for it with another party. In Sweet Thursday, Doc feels strangely depressed, and the whole community in the Row thinks he needs a woman and end up trying to pair him up with Suzy, a new hustler who has come to town. [SPOILER] As with any romantic comedy, after overcoming difficulties with each other (Suzy thinks he's too good for him, Doc is too shy, etc.), they succeed.

Doc is based on Ed Ricketts, a marine biologist and a very good friend of Steinbeck that influenced him greatly. Steinbeck himself joined Ricketts on a six-week long boat expedition to the Sea of Cortez, producing The Log from the Sea of Cortez in 1951. In fact, Western Biological in the novel is based on Ricketts' Pacific Biological Laboratories in Monterey (pictured below).

I really enjoyed both novels. I must admit I got rather misty-eyed at the ending of Cannery Row because it is just so beautifully written. I couldn't say the same for Sweet Thursday but it is really good nonetheless. Look, these aren't 'major' novels like The Grapes of Wrath or East of Eden, with a grand sweeping story and stark exposure of social injustice, but for their shorter length they are admirable minor works faithfully and nostalgically capturing the feel of a place that is no longer there. They are sweet. They are sentimental. They are something that will stick in your memory like the smooth aftertaste of well-brewed tea. Read it on a sunny and lazy afternoon. 

*Is it a fair accusation to say Steinbeck romanticises the poor? If he does (I think it is difficult to say that he doesn't), is it for justifiable reasons?

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I am currently working through Volume 1 of Clifford R. Backman's wonderful The Cultures of the West: A History. It is very concisely written and a good book for a broad survey of the history of Europe and the Middle East. Expecting a dry textbook, I've found Backman's work insightful and informative instead. Also, instead of having boxes at the side for historical sources, he works them inside the narrative of the text, which is a highly effective approach that saves you from the distraction of switching between texts.