The first rule of good writing is to know your audience. John Steinbeck, in his 1945 novel Cannery Row, takes this advice to the ultimate with a story that is tailor made for his intended reading public. Steinbeck had spent time as a journalist during World War II in both Europe and Africa and mentions his intended audience for Cannery Row in the preface to the 1953 publication of My Short Novels, a collection of six of his novels, including Cannery Row:
"This was kind of a nostalgic thing, written for a group of soldiers who had said to me, ‘Write something funny that isn’t about the war. Write something for us to read -- we’re sick of the war’" (vii). Steinbeck ignores many of the rules of good novel writing, telling his tale in such a way that a soldier could read a few chapters, liberate the Philippines or France, and then return to the destroyer or foxhole days or even weeks later and revisit the novel. The soldier could read the book then pass it along to a buddy, or they could spend time analyzing and discussing the stories in detail. Despite Steinbeck’s honor to his audience, the novel still works, almost 60 years after the liberation of Europe and Asia from the Axis Powers. So why does a novel that ignores the rules of plot, timelines or even character development work so well today? Why are we still interested in what happens in the trivial pursuits of the residences of the Palace Flophouse and Grill, the Western Biological Laboratory, Lee Chong’s grocery story, The Bear Flag Restaurant and other residences of Cannery Row? Steinbeck gives us just a little slice of pre-World War II Americana. He does it in such a way as to allow us to observe but not to affect Cannery Row. Steinbeck knows when observing a tide pool, as soon as you enter the pool, you have affected the environment. You are no longer observing the natural habitat, but are looking at how the setting reacts to your presence. Despite taking an omniscient point of view, Steinbeck makes himself as unobtrusive as possible, looking at the environment from a small window, a peephole, to report on Cannery Row. Naturally this is easier to do with fiction, but still there is concern that an author will bring pre-conceived notions to bear on his tale. Steinbeck completely removes himself from the tale, as he mentions in the introduction:
"When you collect marine animals there are certain flat worms so delicate that they are almost impossible to capture whole, for they break and tatter under the touch, You must let them ooze and crawl of their own will onto a knife blade and then lift them gently into your bottle of sea water. And perhaps that might be the way to write this book -- to open the page and let the stories crawl in by themselves" (3). Cannery Row does contain a plot in the traditional sense, the rewarding of Doc for all he has done for the area by Mac and the Boys. The attempt is made twice, once unsuccessfully and the second time successfully. There are primary characters in the persons of Doc, Lee Chong, Dora and Mac, but all these are minor to Steinbeck’s motive, describing the Row itself. The novel is written more as a collection of 31 short stories. You could take all 31 chapters, toss them high in the air, and put them back in a new order and the novel would not suffer. Granted, there are some chapters that build to others, such as hunting the frogs before trading them with Lee Chong, but since the novel has little sense of chronological order, even these events do not need to be read in order. The chapter on the frog hunt has even been published numerous times as an independent short story. Interestingly, Steinbeck includes six short vignettes, hootedoodles, as Mac calls them in Steinbeck’s sequel, Sweet Thursday (vii), that appear to have little or nothing to do with the story line. None of the major characters appear in these hootedoodles, and they have nothing to do with the two parties for Doc. But once you realize that plot and characters are secondary to the environment, you become aware of Steinbeck’s intent with the stories of the Old Chinaman, the embalming of Josh Billings, Dr. Merrivale shooting at the flagpole skater, Mary Talbot throwing a party for neighborhood cats to cheer up her cartoonist husband, Joey and Willard discussing the suicide of Joey’s dad and the well-grown gopher setting up residence in a vacant lot. Two of these hootedoodles jump out as exceptionally frivolous, even when considering the atmosphere. The Josh Billings story is out of place, if for no other reason than it is a non-fiction story in a book of fiction. The author, Billings, whose real name was Henry Wheeler Snow, was a contemporary of Mark Twain’s and died in Monterey in 1885, a couple generations prior to the events of Cannery Row. According to Rosalind Sharp Wall in A Wild Coast and Lonely Big Sur Pioneers Shaw died at the Del Monte Hotel and a quack ‘doctor’ by the name of J.P. Heinz was paid $1,500 to embalm the prominent writer. According to the legend, Heinz did dispose of the entrails by throwing them under a bridge in Pacific Grove (Wall). According to Steinbeck expert, Peter Lisca, the Billings story was written many years before the other chapters of Cannery Row and only Steinbeck himself would know why he chose to include the story (Hughes, 77). While the Billings story does supply a subtle way of showing that Cannery Row has a long and cherished history of dealing with problems in an unorthodox fashion, unless you were knowledgeable of the Shaw anecdote, you would miss the message. The inclusion of Mary Talbot’s attempt to cheer up her husband by giving a party to neighborhood cats makes even less sense than the Billing’s tale. At least the embalmment of Billings takes place near Cannery Row. There is nothing to connect the Talbots with anything related to the environment or characters in Cannery Row. A reasonable explanation would be that the chapter was included because after editing the publisher was disappointed in the length of the book. They might have asked Steinbeck to include additional material to bring the book closer to 200 pages. Steinbeck had a short story about the Talbots laying around unpublished and tossed it in. Despite Steinbeck’s catering to his audience, the men and women in service to their country during World War II, Cannery Row is hardly a throw-away novel, intended only to entertain the troops and then tossed out with the weekly funny papers. There is a political message in the tale. Unlike other political novels from that period, such as Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead, George Orwell’s Animal Farm or even Steinbeck’s own The Grapes of Wrath, East of Eden or The Pearl, Cannery Row can be enjoyed as only a collection of stories with little or no concern for the political theme. But with a little knowledge of Steinbeck’s life, career and politics, along with historical perspective, the political ambiguity can be discovered. It helps to have a basic understanding of Steinbeck’s biography to understand the political theme he is trying to convey. Politically, Steinbeck was a life-time liberal at a time when liberalism was closely associated with communism. Steinbeck wrote sympathetically about labor unions and migrant workers of California, both groups that were often rumored to have close ties with the American Communist Party. The popularity of The Grapes of Wrath, published in 1939, and its strong sympathy with labor over management would lead many to believe in Steinbeck’s communist relationship. The Die Committee (House Un-American Activities Committee) accused Steinbeck of being a communist after he failed to deny it. In Steinbeck’s article, A Primer on the ‘30s, when he was contacted by the Monterey Herald about his communist party affiliation; he jokingly replied, "What is good enough for Shirley Temple is good enough for me." The Die Committee had accused ten year old Temple of being a communist sympathizer Shillinglan 29). Steinbeck was never a member of the communist party, he wasn’t a joiner, but did have friends who were members, and could be said to sympathize with his friends. A key to understanding the novel is in another inter-chapter that appears to have little relationship to the "plot," the parable of the well-grown gopher and his Weltschmerz¹ (190). The gopher was looking to build an ideal society, a popular dream in both the United States and Europe following the financial market collapse of 1929. Many of the economic and political systems of the early 20th Century had proven failures during the world-wide depression and philosophers and civic planners were trying to come up with a great society. Intellectuals of America thought the Soviet Union was building such a society. Mother Russia, analogous to the gopher, was making all the right choices and working hard at showing the west that they had answers to societal problems. But the Soviets, trying to protect its borders, wanted to be part of the European imperialistic movement. This desire ran into the Third Reich, just as the gopher ran up against the battle-torn bull gopher. The Soviets, under Joseph Stalin, attempting to build an ideal society, left out some of the characteristics that make a society work, such as diplomacy and individualism. Both the Soviet Union and the gopher had to compromise from their ideal to make their systems work. This is the message of Cannery Row. Perfect societies can’t work while including consideration of the individuals. In Steinbeck’s essay, I Am a Revolutionary, he writes: "The Bait of the Marxist movement was that once free of bourgeois control the masses would cease to be masses and would emerge as individuals. Authority and power would then melt away. This dream has long since been abandoned except in the baited area. Far from disappearing, power and oppression have increased. The so-called masses are more lumpen than ever. Any semblance of the emergence of the individual is instantly crushed and the doctrine of party and state above everything has taken the place of the theory of the liberated man" (Shillinglan 89-90). The gopher fable is the antithesis of Cannery Row. The society created in Cannery Row works because everyone realizes compromises are required. Lee Chong is a capitalist, believes in free markets, but knows that he can’t run his business like other enterprises. He must be part of the community and make numerous concessions to build loyalty for his store and keep people from going into Monterey for their needs. Doc is a loner, liking nothing better than his solitude. However, he recognizes in the small pond of Cannery Row he is the big fish and he has to be the Row expert on a large number of topics. Dora Flood is the strong business woman, but in the world of early 20th century Monterey, she must not display her strong side. She hides her keen business acumen behind orange hair and excessive philanthropy. Mac and the Boys are some of the more interesting compromises, since they are displayed as the ideal inhabitants. William so wanted to be part of their group that he killed himself when denied admittance into their circle. But Mac and the Boys recognize their Achilles heels, and have developed methods of dealing with people outside their circle that rarely bring their shortcomings into the light of day. As Mac says: "I been sorry all my life. This isn’t a new thing. It’s always like this. I had a wife. Same thing. Ever’thing I done turned sour. She couldn’t stand it any more. If I done a good thing it got poisoned up in some way. If I give her a present they was something wrong with it. She only got hurt from me. She couldn’t stand it no more. Same thing ever’ place ‘til I got to clowning. I don’t do nothin’ but clown no more. Try to make the boys laugh" (131-132). Mac recognized that if he and the boys tried to do too much, they’d poison it, so to get along on the Row, they kept their outside activity to a minimum in employment, entertainment and socializing. As long as they remained within their environment, their gopher hole, they could behave as they want. As soon as they exited the Palace Flophouse they were aware they would have to modify their behavior. Those unwilling to compromise, William and the gopher, ended up outside the society. The gopher was forced to change, and William who couldn’t change, was destroyed. William could be seen as a warning by Steinbeck to the Soviet Union regarding their eventual collapse. And the Row ends up as the perfect not-so-perfect society. Everyone remains aware of their place, and avoid stepping on toes. Unlike authoritative societies, each person can avoid joining a collective, retain their individual traits, but still be part of the society. The Row is able to take care of itself with minimal intervention from the outside. They have no reason to turn inalienable rights over to party or state. They maintain their individuality while making some concessions for the good of the society. Their society isn’t capitalistic, socialistic or fascism -- the big three governments of the first half of the 20th Century -- but anarchist, and yet it manages to work. Cannery Row has a similar message as Orwell’s Animal Farm, released the same year. The difference is that Orwell wrote from a socialist point of view, looking at the Soviet Union as the reason for the failure of the socialist dream, while Steinbeck wrote from the view of the American liberal, blaming socialism itself for the failure of the Soviet Union. It’s interesting that Animal Farm is usually read by the political science crowd while Cannery Row is a favorite of literary groups. Steinbeck should have left well enough alone. It’s nice to have a novel that is only a slice of life, with little or no conflict resolution -- a peep through the peephole. Does Doc remain happy in his loneliness? Does Dora retire to the Pacific? Will Lee Chong collect all of his debts? Will World War II affect Mac and the Boys? Our peep gives us no resolution, allowing the analysis to come from each individual reader’s imagination. But Steinbeck had to get back in line and follow the rules. He destroyed Cannery Row by writing the sequel, Sweet Thursday nine years later. Everything that works in Cannery Row was excluded from Sweet Thursday. Where Cannery Row’s nebulous theme has to be interpreted the theme of Sweet Thursday couldn’t be more obvious. While the environment is the main character of Cannery Row, Sweet Thursday is Doc's story. Doc’s loneliness is something to be admired in Cannery Row, in Sweet Thursday it is a devise for pity. And while there is no conflict resolution in Cannery Row, the two main characters literally go riding off into the sunset in Sweet Thursday. This isn’t to say Sweet Thursday isn’t a good read. It has its fair share of Steinbeck humor, such as Hazel’s concern that he will someday be President of the United States and the new owner of the grocery store, Joseph and Mary Rivas growing marijuana at the City Plaza in Los Angeles. He also continues with interesting names such as the previously mentioned Joseph and Mary (It is not a couple), the cook at the Bear Flag who is named Joe Elegant, and Doc’s eventual benefactor Old Jingleballicks. The problem with Sweet Thursday is that it is Cannery Row by the rules. Where Cannery Row uses humor to go nowhere, Sweet Thursday applies the humor to fit within the structure of the novel, or even as Howard Levant suggests in The Novels of John Steinbeck, a musical comedy (259). Works Cited
Notes: Interestingly, I recently learned the word Weltschmerz from reading Steinbeck’s Winter of Our Discontent. The protagonist, Ethan Hawley jokes that his Great-Aunt Deborah pronounced it Welsh Rats. According to The American Heritage Dictionary, Weltschmerz is a noun meaning "Sadness over the evils of the world, especially as an expression of romantic pessimism. [German ‘world pain’]"
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![[Cannery Row]](canneryrow.jpg)