Whenever I read a classic novel, or something by a renowned author, I stare blankly at the document in which I intend to write my review, deeply anxious and uncertain. “But, Cannery Row has been read by a million people before me, studied by thousands of students, what else can I possibly say about it?” Even though the act of reading the novel can be immensely pleasurable, when it comes to writing about it I freeze. I even considered rewriting the lyrics to Bob Dylan’s “Desolation Row” to reference Cannery Row (“Mack and the boys they’re restless/they need somewhere to go/as Doc and I look out tonight/from Cannery Row” it could work, I tell you.) in order to avoid actually talking about the book itself. (You have to wonder, what will I be like when I get around to that William Faulkner marathon I have planned? Interpretive dance review of The Sound and the Fury?)

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. 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. Its inhabitants are, as the man once said, ‘whores, pimps, gamblers, and sons of bitches,’ by which he meant Everybody. 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.

John Steinbeck‘s Cannery Row is set in the waterfront street known as Cannery Row in Monterey, California. Somehow, in the space of what is comparatively a novella, Steinbeck lets us into the worlds of a multitude of characters who reveal themselves to be more than our initial impressions of them and a testament to the necessity of community. The narrative is fractured between different characters as the poorer inhabitants of the street attempt to throw a party for Doc, a marine biologist who has offered much to the community. While the intention, led by the bums of the Palace Flophouse, is good, the follow through just doesn’t go quite to plan; but, the community eventually pulls together to throw a party that honours the kind-hearted Doc.

Within the narrative itself, Steinbeck – mainly through Doc’s observations of marine life, but also through the omniscient voice of the narrator – reflects on the natural world and how it reflects our own. Seemingly tranquil sea life proves to be capable of the the most vicious violence, the bums catching frogs for money is described with the detail of a bloody battlefield, a gopher builds a home in a safe area but cannot find a mate so moves on to a more dangerous area. The attention to these aspects of nature reveals life on the Row to be similarly delicate ecosystem.

Early morning is a time of magic in Cannery Row. In the grey time after the light has come and before the sun has risen, the Row seems to hang suspended out of time in a silvery light. The street lights go out, and the weeds are a brilliant green. The corrugated iron of the canneries glows with the pearly lucence of platinum or old pewter. No automobiles are running then. The street is silent of progress and business. And the rush and drag of the waves can be heard as they splash in among the piles of the canneries. It is a time of great peace, a deserted time, a little era of rest.

Despite the brevity of the text, the nuanced cast of characters and their stories feel complete. To add more to them would be going overboard. Steinbeck’s simplicity possesses an innate awareness of the aspects of these characters which make them a.) interesting to a reader and b.) integral to the Cannery Row hive. They may not be extraordinary people, but their talents, their humanity and their generosity lend them a dignity which cannot be denied. Dora, the madame of the Bear Flag brothel, sends her girls out to look after the children of the town when influenza strikes and the ill cannot afford medical assistance, despite it being the busiest time of year at the brothel. Lee Chong owns the grocery store, and though the locals owe him large amounts of money, he doesn’t chase it up – knowing that eventually they’ll repay him rather than trek to the market in the next town. Henri the local artists constantly builds and dismantles his boat, never wishing to complete it.

Financial bitterness could not eat too deeply into Mack and the boys, for they were not mercantile men. They did not measure their joy in goods sold, their egos in bank balances, nor their loves in what they cost.

After the first disastrous attempt to give Doc a party – to which he doesn’t even arrive, and great damage is inflicted upon his house – the street not only makes outcasts of the perpetrators; but begins to suffer itself. It’s as though if one part of this community is ill at ease, the whole community faces great misfortune. As Mack and the boys are gradually forgiven, the town heals, the illness and misfortune lifts. It’s a beautiful illusion, and it is impossible not to feel a deep yearning for a sense of community as deep and essential as is evident in Cannery Row. Does community like this exist anymore? Did it ever?

‘It has always seemed strange to me,’ said Doc. ‘The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding, and feeling are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism, and self-interest are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second.’

Cannery Row is a deceptively simple story – the inhabitants of a street gather to throw a party for an honoured resident – but the heart and the faith in humanity that Steinbeck imbues this story with is amazing, and difficult to forget. Celebration of good deeds and genial warmth are essential to the proliferation of the human spirit, and despite their lack of ambition or lofty pursuits, and in this the folks of Cannery Row are richer than most. Sweet Thursday is a sequel set years after the events in Cannery Row, although I will be trying to get a copy soon, I think I’ll let the pleasures of Cannery Row linger a little while longer.