Cannery Row by John Steinbeck Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Cannery Row
Book Review: An Ambivalent Excursion into a Vanished Past
Summary: 4 Stars
I was given this book by my bishop and I'm glad I read it. Today, Monterey California's Cannery Row, where Steinbeck told of poor folk and sardine canning, has been developed into a world of quaint shops, high prices, and quizzical tourists.Doc's Western Biological Company, where he collected lab animals for science, has morphed into The Monterey Bay Aquarium, one of the worlds great aquariums and conservation organizations. (A very favorite place of mine.) The freewheeling life Steinbeck depicts at the Palace Flophouse is today thought of more sordidly as "homelessness." Too bad. Poor folk have stories and grace; indeed, their stories are deep and diverse. The grace of the lives within this book is abundant, the sense of life as scaps in a quilt, not "lifestyle." This is a book about men. Women who are not whores with hearts of gold are domesticators and nags. Its central image is the tidepool, battered, changeable, and full of life and hidden tragedy. Its scene stealer is a spoiled pointer puppy named Darling.Book Review: An Eden for those rough around the edges.
Summary: 5 Stars
I loved it. I love the idea of a place where you can bruise your knuckles on someone's skull without fear of a reprisal drive by shooting; a place where you can go on week long benders without fear of liver damage or DUI's; a place when you decide when to work and when not to. I loved it so much, 'cause there ain't no place like that 'round here.Book Review: An insider's view of those who live in the now
Summary: 5 Stars
"Financial biterness could not eat to 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". (Page 119)"They just know the nature of things too well to be caught in that wanting". (page 142)
I guess that for every reader there is a paragraph in which somehow the author summarizes the scope of its novel. For me is the one transcribed above. Each character have a gentelness a lightness which can be accomplished by any person at any pointy in life. Then life ceases to be a maze to be cracked and becomes in and out of itself a surprising aventure. How they get there?, well this is a novel not a self-help book so the process is not described, but a key (the same one)is offered to you in every page with amazing friendliness, elegance and style. Be kind to yourself.
Book Review: BORING
Summary: 2 Stars
Steinbeck spends far too much time describing the setting instead of a plot. I kept waiting and waiting for ANYTHING to happen and nothing did. Although interesting in the first two chapters, you quickly get sick of the disjointed "plot". A vivid setting does not make up for the absence of a story.Book Review: Beautiful
Summary: 5 Stars
Cannery Row is like a painting. Created with a careful hand and wise heart, it is a simple portrait about a very eccentric and eclectic community that lives by the sea. The characters are foolish and their lives often are ridiculous but there is a familiarity. These are people that we know. These are sensibilities and personal virtues that we understand and share. They are us on our worst days and our best. If we had the chance to observe our lives from a far off place, we may see a story that unfolds like this book. Written in a style that is both lyrical in its efficiency and beautiful in simplicity, it is an easily accesible work that can be appreciated by everyone. This book does lack the gravity of other Steinbeck novels. Often presenting the plight of man immersed in modern society, drowning in the consequences of modern ideology, Steinbeck takes a softer, more humorous approach in this portrail of the human spirit. This book reads more like poetry about the daily rhythms of everyday life. This book is not going to rock nations, shatter governments, or upsurpt the foundation of any belief system that you adhere to but it will leave you with a private smile and a warm feeling for a small seaside community that exists somewhere at sometime.