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Book Club April 2015 Discussion: Cannery Row (spoilers)
The time has come to discuss the April 2015 MobileRead Book Club selection, Cannery Row by John Steinbeck. What did you think?
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I say Can it! :rofl:
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From the title, I had thought the story would be about the canning industry or set in a cannery, so I was wrong on that account. It turned out that the characters included a mercenary scientist, a pack of bums and a houseful of prostitutes! Silly me. There wasn't a very strong storyline or any evil characters. I had wondered if the banning of The Grapes of Wrath with its (negative) portrayal of Californian citizens had influenced Steinbeck in any way to showcase goodwill among a local population that would not normally be associated with warm and fuzzy feelings. I felt the book was well-written but not overly entertaining or thought-provoking. My favourite character was Lee Chong the grocer, who was good for a few chuckles.
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No, the evil and the hope in the book is the nature of man itself. I absolutely loved this book and still do. I've read a few more short Steinbeck novels, but this one is my favourite or the bunch so far (The Pearl, Of Mice and Men, and Tortilla Flat were the others). I can see Steinbeck's writing not faring well with many in a longer story like The Grapes of Wrath. He is prone to over-description. But that is what I love about this book. His descriptions of place and people just hit me and in a short book like Cannery Row it doesn't get a chance to wear on one. I reread bits and pieces as I had already read this one recently and I'm still struck by his descriptions.
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I love this book and love it every time I re-read it (and the novels I re-read can be easily counted on one hand).
I want someone to explain chapter 4 to me though....the old Chinaman and the 'crossing' of him? |
Steinbeck has wonderful descriptive powers and the book is worth reading if only for his beautiful imagery. Cannery Row would be terrific without its people.
But, oy, those people! Stock characters, whores with hearts of gold, inscrutable Chinese, feckless drunks, in a tale told with a tone both twee and patronizing. Ugh. |
I love those characters!
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I suspect the ghost of Mark Twain was hovering over Steinbeck's shoulder when he wrote it. The characters seemed like modern northern cousins of Tom and Huck.
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Here's what I said on Goodreads:
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I last read this as a young 'un, on my father's recommendation; it was one of his favorites. I can appreciate the language and writing now as I couldn't then, but I'm still meh on the story. I suppose I'm supposed to take away some message about the resilience of the human spirit and the kindness of those at the bottom, but it didn't seem real to me, and as a fable, it failed to enchant. The most real person in it was the poor fellow who lost his legs on the railroad track.
Another thing I didn't care for is the whiff of misogyny. Other than the aformentioned whores with hearts of gold, the women were loons. Curtains in a boiler! Tea parties with cats! At least the men in the book lived for themselves; the virtuous women (including the ones who tried to shut down the Bear Flag) seemed only to live through their menfolk. Admittedly, it's not much of a sample, but so far in this thread we've got two yay votes from men and two nay votes from women. I wonder if this trend will hold? |
I gave it a real try. As mentioned prior to its selection I really didn't feel like reading another Steinbeck having not liked East of Eden and really detesting Grapes of Wrath. This was the best of them, but I really didn't like it.
I find all of his writing just feels very self-indulgent. The elaborate descriptions are fine for a while, but just get to be too much for me. This also felt like a book of short stories, which would have been preferable because the connective tissue that tried to make it a novel was thin. I haven't seen the movie, but as I imagined the place, the characters and the actions I couldn't help but picture the story animated Pixar style. |
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Well, issybird, I liked it, and liked it a lot. Yes, the characters are a bit of a caricature, but all drawn from very real characters of the time. Certainly, there were different roles for men and women of the time and I don't try to impose my current standards on that.
What I got out of this book was Steinbeck's love of the people and the place. All of the characters of Cannery Row are essentially good. The employees of the Bear Flag Restaurant (Dora's bordello), are just that - employees doing a job for which they are treated well by a reasonable boss. They provide a service, and like everyone else in the small community, they are a part of that community. Lee Chong is hardly inscrutable, and even the nighttime wandering "Chinaman" is treated with respect by Steinbeck, if not always by local youths. Doc is, of course, the main character and in many ways the denizens of Cannery Row are filtered through his eyes even though it's not told as his story. Cannery Row, and all the many other places like it across the world, live a hard-scrabble existence. When the boats were in and the fishing had been good, there was some money to be passed around. But when the fishing was bad, there was the darn little to support the community but each other. And a person like Doc who had an actual source of income external to the vagaries of the community was a resource of some value even without his abilities with sick puppies. This is a book about love. And basic humanity. I'm really glad it was chosen this month, I'd likely not have read it. |
I've worked with people that are the stock characters of the book. I think those experiences and my time living in Newfoundland and visiting outports where fish processing is the only way of life makes me like this book all the more.
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I first read Cannery Row about 20 years after it was published when I was about sixteen. I adored it because I had known - or been related to - many similar characters. But unlike most books, they are seen through each other's eyes, and therefore with love and humor, rather than through the eyes of the rest of society who would see them as stereotypes and outcasts.
Perhaps, Issybird, you have led a sheltered life. I also found Lee Chong to be far from inscrutable. I've loved Steinbeck from my earliest years. He heard the people with no voice and told their stories in his books. At times he was more successful than others, but he was always real. |
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Breifly, to me, the characters read "cute" and Steinbeck's attitude toward them was condescending. Personally, and now I'm bringing the personal to it, but I'm talking about myself, I tend more toward Thoreau's "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation." There wasn't enough desperation in this sanitized Cannery Row for it to ring true to me. No doubt a reflection on something lacking in my background. |
You are absolutely right, issy, and I apologize. That certainly sounded more personal and judgemental than I intended. I have enjoyed, and learned from, your posts over the years, and have immense respect for your background that has made you such a delightful contributor to MR.
Apparently I am a bit too emotionally attached to John Steinbeck. |
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Speaking only out of my own experience, particularly when young when I identified with this book, desperation and humor go hand in hand. This was their life. There was no point in self pity or hand wringing, but there was always plenty to laugh about.
Full disclosure since I've already revealed myself to be a biased participant in this thread: Steinbeck's viewpoint was like that of my father (and Will Rogers) who could turn the most desperate situation into an occasion for hilarity and reveal the most disreputable people to be lovable. That is why it felt real to me. It is impossible to be unbiased with those kinds of associations. But from now on I will try hard to be objective. |
I really enjoyed the book. It's a good evocation of a very particular setting that has resonance anywhere.
I can see the criticism of Steinbeck being condescending and the more rosy disposition of the novel. Perhaps Steinbeck is an antidote to Dostoyevsky? :D However, I don't necessarily see this cheerfulness as a bad thing. I thought the book was still revealing about human nature and it had an optimism about it that I liked. Maybe the book wasn't written simply to let us who are in comfortable homes have a view of these people's bleak or desperate existences, but rather to illuminate how people living a hard and low-caste life can be good people, are still just people like anyone else and can still make the best of things, have good times and enjoy life despite it all - and even despite themselves - without being too saccharine and while still maintaining a certain level of realism. It can come off as condescending but I think he was celebrating these people. I liked how Steinbeck correlated "whores, pimps, gamblers and sons of bitches" to "Saints and angels and martyrs and holy men", and I also liked this excerpt: Quote:
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I just finished. I remember, vaguely, having read the Grapes of Wrath and The Pearl and Of Mice and Men but to be honest I don't remember whether I liked them much or not.
spoilers ahead Spoiler:
All in all it was an enjoyable book to read and I'm glad the book club chose it because otherwise I likely never would have. Quote:
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I really enjoyed Cannery Row.
Last year I read Grapes of Wrath which I gave 4 stars, intending 4.5 stars, but now nostalgically remembering as 5 stars. Although this was a very different reading experience to GoW, I felt there was a similarity in how Steinbeck treated the characters. Like some others have mentioned, I really sensed the love Steinbeck had for the characters in Cannery Row, but I felt it equally in the darker novel. Quote:
While reading this "novel", I remembered the stories my mother and father used to tell me of growing up in very poor homes. Their stories (particularly my father's) were of larger-than-life characters and humorous events. And despite the obvious lack of means, the memories are of joy and mischief, and the tales of struggle are always told with a certain fondness and nostalgia. This is what I felt when reading Cannery Row. In the end, I didn't quite like it quite as much as Grapes of Wrath, but I definitely enjoyed it. I haven't decided on my next Steinbeck, but there will definitely be one. |
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The only Steinbeck in my current TBR is Travels With Charley - In Search of America:
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Sounds like a great travel book.
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http://truthaboutcharley.com/travels...rley-timeline/ |
Thanks for the link. So Steinbeck "took no notes and left no expense accounts" during his travels with Charlie? That means me had to rely upon his memory, and as we all know, memory (with the possible exception of the memories of Marilu Henner and maybe 11 other people) lies. No wonder Mr. Steigerwald had such a hard time retracing his journey step by step.
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I read Dogging Steinbeck a couple of years ago, and I was not surprised. It was the many attempts to create my own Travels with Charley that clued me in that Steinbeck was a great embellisher. Here is my Goodreads comment which was 'liked' by Steigerwald:
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John Steinbeck was a product of the American West who took the side of those who suffered most during the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl, not only in his books, but also in his life. He was reviled as a Communist and socialist until he no longer felt at home there. People have a long memory and probably no other author is so beloved in the land of his birth, the central California coastal region. The National Steinbeck Center is the only U.S. museum dedicated to a single author. I was there only a few weeks ago, and there are well-visited statues and memorials everywhere. I can only imagine how bewildering the intense love of Steinbeck can be for those who don't enjoy his writing or understand his iconic status. I know Travels with Charley was something of a fraud, he was an alcoholic, and had conflicted children. Still, 'Bah Humbug Steinbeck' statements affect me something like "Niagara Falls" in the old Abbott & Costello skit: "Slowly I turned...step by step...inch by inch... " ;) I re-read Grapes of Wrath with the club, but wisely refrained from taking part in the discussion. :o |
This is more a comment about Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath, but I have trouble talking about that novel without choking up. It starts when someone asks me what it's about and I try to describe the Dust Bowl era and what happened to people as a consequence, both with the banks taking over farms in the east and the exploitation of workers in the west.
That's bad enough and I can have difficulty expressing my thoughts about this without becoming emotional. But then I try to explain how through this, Steinbeck portrays a family in a way that demonstrates his love of the people who were caught up in this mess. He leads us through the demoralisation and the dehumanisation of these people while also elevating them to us through the main characters. But I can't quite get it out. I have to stop myself. Luckily, in Cannery Row, I get a similar feeling from Steinbeck's portrayals without the side effects. Had to throw this out there because I was questioned again about Grapes of Wrath last night and I had the now familiar experience of not being able to express myself clearly without consequence. |
Yes caleb this is steinbeck at his core!
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Grapes of Wrath was undeniably one of the great American novels of the 30's. It told a simply terrible story that was representative of hundreds of thousands, if not millions of stories, but it told it with love and respect for the people. No matter how great a novel it is, it's not an EASY novel.
Cannery Row, OTOH, is perhaps not one of the great American novels, though it is certainly a superb novel. But unlike Grapes of Wrath, it IS an easy novel. Very accessible, the story is one certainly of poverty and limited prospects, but not at all of tragedy. I'm glad I've read both of them. I'll never read Grapes of Wrath again. I know how it ends, I know who the villains are, and I don't need to be reminded. It's in the same category as The Jungle by Upton Sinclair. A book I'm glad to have read, and really glad was written, but not a book to revisit for pleasure. Cannery Row is a book I can well imagine revisiting for pleasure. I'm really glad we read it this month. Thanks to whomever nominated it. ETA: sun surfer nominated Cannery Row. Excellent. I'd give you some K, but apparently I have done so too recently. :) |
It took me longer than expected but I read it :)
First thing, I really like it, but I think I will be able to explain why in a better way if I take time to gather my thoughts. However, I was following the story, mostly, until the last chapter. There, I have to admit that I got lost. Can someone explain how it ends? Does the fact that Doc goes back to reading the poem mean that despite his efforts to "disaster-proof" his house, everything went wrong and he's going to keep going on as he always does? Did I miss something? :chinscratch: |
I loved chapter 31 ... penultimate ... about the gopher! ;)
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Today would be Steinbeck's Birthday. Read Cannery Row!!
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Oh, but I already did. And watched the movie. All last year when we read this for the Book Club. I'm not quite ready for a re-read. :)
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