Cannery Row
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First published in 1945, Cannery Row is set in the faded waterfront district of Monterey, California, where sardine factories stand alongside boarding houses, vacant lots and small shops. Its inhabitants include Mack and his band of amiable drifters, Lee Chong, the resourceful local grocer, Dora Flood, who runs the Bear Flag Restaurant, and Doc, a marine biologist whose curiosity and kindness draw the neighbourhood together. When Mack and his companions decide to organise a party in Doc’s honour, their well-intentioned plans set in motion a series of comic mishaps, revealing the fragile loyalties and unexpected generosity that bind this unlikely community.
Less concerned with conventional plot than with the rhythms of everyday life, Steinbeck creates a tender, unsentimental portrait of people living beyond the margins of respectable society. The novel’s affection for its outsiders is balanced by a keen awareness of loneliness, failure and the delicate interdependence of all living things, reflected in Doc’s observations of the tide pools. Inspired in part by Steinbeck’s close friend, the marine biologist Ed Ricketts, Cannery Row is among his most intimate and playful works, a companion in spirit to Tortilla Flat and a distinctive celebration of human fellowship.
From the book
“Lee Chong is more than a Chinese grocer. He must be.”
— John Steinbeck, Cannery Row
On Cannery Row
“It is one of the least pretentious of his books, but I believe that it is the one I have most enjoyed reading.”
— Edmund Wilson, The New Yorker