In the din and stink that is Cannery Row a colourful blend of misfits - gamblers, whores, drunks, bums and artists - survive side by side in a jumble of adventure and mischief. Lee Chong, the astute owner of the well-stocked grocery store, is also the proprietor of the Palace Flophouse that Mack and his troupe of good-natured 'boys' call home. Dora runs the brothel with clockwork efficiency and a generous heart, and Doc is the fount of all wisdom. Packed with invention and joie de vivre CANNERY ROW is Steinbeck's high-spirited tribute to his native California.
Blown away. I don’t know what I was expecting but it wasn’t anything like this: a veritable little shantytown of stories so flat out fantastic and bursting with rascals and joy that the title page might as well have called me out by name, saying, Psst, here, you’re going to love this forever. Steinbeck does what he promises on the first page, “to open the page and to let the stories crawl in by themselves.” Doc and Mack and the boys, spinning in their orbits, completely stole my heart.
“Mack and the boys avoid the trap, walk around the poison, step over the noose while a generation of trapped, poisoned, and trussed-up men scream at them and call them no-goods, come-to-bad-ends, blots-on-the-town, thieves, rascals, bums. Our Father who art in nature, who has given the gift of survival to the coyote, the common brown rat, the English sparrow, the house fly and the moth, must have a great and overwhelming love for no-goods and blots-on-the-town and bums, and Mack and the boys. Virtues and graces and laziness and zest. Our Father who art in nature.”
Reading updates
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Started reading
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21 May, 2012:
Finished reading
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21 May, 2012:
Reviewed