Chief among them are Lee Chong the grocer, Dora Flood the brothel madam, ‘Doc’ the research scientist, and Mack and his gang of men who are something between gangsters and disciples. Had the man looked through another peep-hole he might have said: ‘Saints and angels and martyrs and holy men,’ and he would have meant the same thing.Ĭannery Row is quite a leisurely tour of the different inhabitants of the street – a mix of vignettes of their lives and something of an ongoing plot, though it is really more of an ongoing set of characters. Its inhabitants are, as the man once said, ‘whores, pimps, gamblers, and sons of bitches,’ by which he meant Everybody. Cannery Row is the gathered and scattered, tin and iron and rust and splintered wood, chipped pavement and weedy lots and junk heaps, sardine canneries or corrugated iron, honky-tonks, restaurants and whore-houses, and little crowded groceries, and laboratories and flop-houses. Now it is neglected no longer! And I really enjoyed the atmosphere and tone of Steinbeck’s tribute to a small Californian town.Ĭannery 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. My friend Matt recommended Cannery Row (1939) by John Steinbeck back in 2009, and I ordered a copy which has sat on my shelves for 15 years.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |