Cannery Row (novel)

Cannery Row (novel)
Cannery Row is a novel by American author John Steinbeck, published in 1945. It is set during the Great Depression in Monterey, California, on a street lined with sardine canneries that is known as Cannery Row. The story revolves around the people living there: Lee Chong, the local grocer; Doc, a marine biologist; and Mack, the leader of a group of derelict people.
The actual location Steinbeck was writing about, Ocean View Avenue in Monterey, was later renamed "Cannery Row" in honor of the book. A film version was released in 1982 and a stage version was produced in 1995.
Plot
Mack and his friends are to do something nice for their friend Doc, who has been good to them without asking for reward. Mack hits on the idea that they should throw a thank-you party, and the entire community quickly becomes involved. Unfortunately, the party rages out of control, and Doc's lab and home are ruined—and so is Doc's mood. In an effort to return to Doc's good graces, Mack and the boys decide to throw another party—but make it work this time. A procession of linked vignettes describes the denizens' lives on Cannery Row. These constitute subplots that unfold concurrently with the main plot.
Characters include Lee Chong, the operator of the neighborhood grocery store, "Lee Chong's Heavenly Flower Grocery"; Doc, a marine biologist at Western Biological Laboratories, based on Steinbeck's friend Ed Ricketts, to whom Steinbeck dedicated the novel; Dora Flood, the owner and operator of the Bear Flag Restaurant; Mack, leader of a group of men called Mack and the boys; Hazel, a young man living with Mack and the boys in the Palace Flophouse; Eddie, a part-time bartender living at the Palace Flophouse, who supplies the boys with "hooch" left in patrons' glasses at Ida's Bar; and an enigmatic figure known as "the Chinaman".
Steinbeck revisited these characters and this milieu nine years later in his novel Sweet Thursday.
Major ideas
Camaraderie
Mack and the boys work together to plan a party for Doc. After a failed first attempt, where Doc is not even present, their second attempt is more successful. Their transformation into an organised group in order to do something nice for Doc shows the value of comradeship and sociality.
Contentment
Mack and the boys at the Palace Flophouse need little and appreciate much, and whatever they do need they acquire by cunning and oftentimes stealing. Doc is happy with his station in life and in the community (but many worry about his being lonely without a companion). Lee Chong could very easily go after the people in Cannery Row and collect on the debts he is owed, but he chooses instead to let the money come back to him gradually. "Henri the painter" is happy building his ever-changing boat and will continually dismantle it and start again so that he can continue building it. Cannery Row is content because its denizens are not ambitious to be anything other than who they are: their sole ambition is to better befriend Doc.
Prostitutes
Steinbeck expresses a certain respect for prostitution for its honesty of motives, while reserving moral judgment for the reader. In Of Mice and Men (1937), George has a small monologue in which he states that a man can go into a whorehouse and get a beer and sex for a price agreed upon up front - unlike less professional relationships, you know what you're going to get and what you will have to pay for it. The same theme of respect is expressed in Cannery Row in Steinbeck's descriptions of the Bear Flag: prostitution is a business that provides a service in demand, it is run cleanly and honestly, and it benefits the community.
Overcoming superficial views of people
Throughout the story characters such as Dora Flood, Mack, and Doc are all expanded upon, and they reveal that they are much more complicated than they at first appear to be. For example, Dora Flood owns the brothel and is disliked by the townswomen because of her business, but she is very generous and for two years donates groceries to hungry people. Doc, who is a loved and respected member of society, is, deep down, a very sad and lonely person who, until the end of the story, never opens up to other people.
Nostalgia
The novel opens with the words: "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." Author John Steinbeck spent some of the happiest years of his life in a house in Pacific Grove near "Cannery Row" and the laboratory of his friend, Ed Ricketts. This began in 1930 and lasted to 1941, when Steinbeck's marriage failed, and he fled eastward to marry again (eventually). After a traumatic time documenting the war in the Mediterranean campaign in 1943, Steinbeck returned home to find that his second marriage was also in difficulties. He wrote Cannery Row in 1944 in an attempt to recover a Depression era world in Monterey which was, by then, already inaccessible to Steinbeck.
Major influences for this change included the war's effect on both Steinbeck and Monterey, the breakup of Steinbeck's first marriage, and the insulation caused by Steinbeck's new wealth arising from his increasing fame and success as a writer. Steinbeck was already beginning to suspect that he would never again be able to go back to living in this, his favorite part of California. Indeed, after a failed attempt to live in California in the late 1940s, he left to spend the rest of his life in New York.
Main characters
Doc is a marine biologist who runs a biological specimen business, Western Biological Laboratories, who collects, prepares and markets specimens of fish and mammals for research and dissection. He pays bounties for certain creatures he needs, like cats and frogs. In addition to keeping live creatures on the premises such as rattlesnakes, Doc prepares the specimens in his laboratory that also serves as his living quarters. Doc, along with the grocer Lee Chong and madam Dora Flood, is the leading citizen on Cannery Row.
Lee Chong, an immigrant from China, owns and personally operates the grocery store across from Doc's lab, "Lee Chong's Heavenly Grocery". His store supplies all the needs of the denizens of Cannery Row, except for what can be had at the Dora Flood's bordello. Lee winds up owning a shack used to store fish meal when it is given to him by a debtor to settle a large outstanding grocery bill. He is forced to deal with Mack, the leader or a group of homeless men, when Mack suggests he and his boys take over the shack as a living space for which they will pay rent. Lee Chong knows that no rent will ever be paid but acquiesces to the deal as he can imagine the boys burning the shack down. Despite his realization that Mack often gets the best of him in their deals, he continues to deal with him throughout the novel, such as permitting his ancient Model T, also taken possession by him to settle a debt, to be overhauled and used on a trip to gather frogs for Doc.
Dora Flood is the owner and proprietor of the Bear Flag Restaurant, the most prominent and busiest bordello in Monterey. She is a whore with a heart of gold who greatly benefits the community with her public and private charity.
Mack is a seemingly homeless person who is the de facto leader of a group of other homeless men that congregate in Cannery Row. Mack negotiates with Lee Chong for the occupancy of a storage shack where he and the boys can live, which is fixed up and dubbed "The Palace Flophouse". Mack was once married but tells Doc he was a disappointment to his wife. The boys generally are unemployed but occasionally take jobs. Doc is aware of the cunning of Mack and the boys, but is fascinated by it as he often looks at them as he would a marine specimen.
Hazel, a simple minded but good hearted-young man who was given a female name by a mother too tired from child-bearing to realize her error at first or subsequently to care, is the most prominent of Mack's boys. Hazel goes on marine specimen hunting trips with Doc. The Palace Flop House boys also include Eddie, a part-time bartender at La Ida Cafe, and Hughie and Jones, who occasionally collected specimens of cats and frogs for Doc. They are subsequently joined by Gay, who unlike other members of the Palace Flophouse, has a wife and a home. Gay's wife was in the habit of swearing out warrants and having him put in jail, but she began to feel he liked jail and taken to beat him at night while he slept, so he moves in with Mack and the Boys. A gifted mechanic, Gay is arrested during the trip to catch frogs after he goes off to seek a Model T carburetor and disappears from the story, as he winds up back in jail.
Henri is a painter and visual artist who creates works of art out of different materials, such as feathers and nutshells. He is building a boat on blocks that he will never put out to sea. He romances a succession of women in the boat, who finally leave him due to its cramped quarters and lack of a bathroom.
Frankie is a differently abled boy suffering from neglect by his mother. The boy hero-worships Doc, whom he lets hang about his lab. Frankie has problems with motor coordination and never does anything quite right, and at times, his body fails him in the middle of performing tasks.
The ancient Chinaman is an ancient man who daily scavenges for food under the piers of Cannery Row. His appearance and being are akin to an apparition.
Real life inspiration for characters
Doc was based on Steinbeck's friend Ed Ricketts, a marine biologist and entrepreneur.
Mack was based on Cannery Row denizen Harold Otis "Gabe" Bicknell. A photo of Bricknell was used on the cover of the 1994 paperback edition of the novel.
Gay was based on aspects of Bicknell and on Grant McLean of Cannery Row, whom Steinbeck called "Mack".
Bear Flag Restaurant owner and madam Dora Flood and her sister Fauna in the sequel Sweet Thursday were based on Flora Woods Adams, a bordello owner who also figures in Steinbeck's earlier novel Tortilla Flat and in East of Eden.
The Chinese grocer Lee Chong was inspired by Won Yee, an immigrant from China who operated the Wing Chong Company Grocery. Won pioneered the drying and preparation of squid, which was exported to China. He also figures in Tortilla Flat as Chin Kee, the owner of the squid packing business that employs the piasanos for one day, so they can raise money to pay for a party. Unlike Lee Chong in Cannery Row, Chin Kee is talked about but never appears in the novel Tortilla Flat. Won died in 1934.
Sweet Thursday
Steinbeck later wrote a sequel released in 1954 called Sweet Thursday, in which several new characters are introduced and Doc finds love, with the help of his friends. The film version of Cannery Row incorporates elements from both books.
Rodgers and Hammerstein adapted Sweet Thursday into a Broadway musical Pipe Dream. Because the pair were uncomfortable with the idea of their main character being a prostitute, the show's allusions to prostitution were left vague. Although the show ran for seven months, it still lost money. Still, the score is remembered fondly by many.
Adaptations
Film
A film version was released in 1982, starring Nick Nolte and Debra Winger. The screenplay was written by David S. Ward, whose other screenplay credits include The Sting and Major League. The movie is mostly based on Sweet Thursday, the sequel to Cannery Row.
Stage
In 1994, the Western Stage in Salinas, California, commissioned J. R. Hall to do a stage adaptation of the novel to commemorate the 50th anniversary of its publication. A year later, it was produced as part of the National Steinbeck Festival. Subsequently, it was revived by the Western Stage in 2005, by the Community College of Allegheny County in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 2007, and by the City Theatre of Sacramento, Calif. in 2014.
In popular culture
The musician Will Oldham, who began his career under the name Palace Flophouse, which was later changed to Palace and Palace Brothers, got the inspiration for his early monikers by reading Cannery Row and Sweet Thursday.
The titles of the 1950 Tweety Bird cartoon Canary Row and the 1967 Tom and Jerry cartoon short Cannery Rodent are plays on words of this book's name.
In the South Park episode, "Do the Handicapped Go to Hell?", the two-year-old Ike Broflovski is reading Cannery Row with his parents, who then compliment him on reading two of Steinbeck's books in one day.
On November 5, 2019, the BBC News listed Cannery Row on its list of the 100 most influential novels.
The Bob Dylan song "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands" contains the line: "With your sheet-metal memory of Cannery Row".
Cannery Row is mentioned in the 2010 Louis Sachar novel The Cardturner.
References
External links
Gladstein, Mimi R. "Cannery Row: A Male World and the Female Reader." Steinbeck Quarterly 25.03-04 (Summer/Fall 1992): 87–97.
Morsberger, Robert E. "Cannery Row Revisited." Steinbeck Quarterly 16.03-04 (Summer/Fall 1983): 89–95.
1945 American novels
American historical novels
American novels adapted into films
American novels adapted into plays
Great Depression novels
History of Monterey County, California
Monterey, California in fiction
Novels by John Steinbeck
Novels set in California
Viking Press books