The primary purpose of this Student Initiated Course will be develop a better understanding and appreciation of the works of John Steinbeck and their social, cultural, and historical context and impact. Students will read both fiction and nonfiction works by John Steinbeck and engage the works by analyzing, critiquing, and discussing the works in class.
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Cannery Row
Hi all,
For Cannery Row, feel free to post whatever you find interesting or what you think might be productive for a class discussion.
In all the creative writing classes I've taken at Stanford, one of the things they really stress about a story is the getting the "point of view" right. In some writing workshops there's even a feeling that breaking the point of view constitutes a violation of some unwritten rule of creative writing. Conventional wisdom says the point of view should be limited to the main character or narrator, etc., and not broken except for good reason. And yet, in "Cannery Row", the point of view seems to transcend nearly all of the characters, great and small, who occupy the world of Steinbeck's novel. The result for the reader is a feeling like Doc must have gazing into the tide pool; absorbing the personalities of a diverse and distinct range of specimens, all of whom influence each other and the ecosystem as a whole.
Following "The Log from the Sea of Cortez", "Cannery Row" offers another aspect of Steinbeck's understanding of how people and organisms sharing an environment interact and change each other. Because we the readers absorb the thoughts, feelings, and motivations of not one but all of these characters, the novel comes across much more as a collective story of a community rather than a single individual's tale.
The entire time I was reading "Cannery Row", I couldn't help but draw parallels between Mack and crew in the Flophouse Palace and our first characters in Tortilla Flat. Steinbeck's character sketches are almost identical in some aspects, especially the desire to good and the inevitability of trouble. The frogs and disaster for Doc's party really illustrated the similarities. Despite the similarity, I liked Cannery Row much more than Tortilla Flat. Perhaps it was the more realistic characters (in my opinion) or the setting, but I found this a more heartwarming view of mankind than we see in East of Eden and some of his other works.
Steinbeck is consistent throughout everything we've read thus far in his ability to portray humans and their interpersonal relations realistically. He has an inherent understanding of community, how people interact with one another, and how little details create personality. Although Cannery Row is filled with vignettes of the experiences and perspectives of different people, the novel remains consistent to community and Steinbeck's voice. Steinbeck proves his mastery over setting and characterization once again, and he displays his love for marine biology and his world view that science and humanity are subjects intrinsically related.
I never cease to be amazed by Steinbeck's ability to break up a story without losing the story or draw disparate pieces that do not logically go together into a unified whole. Somehow, even though almost every other chapter has nothing to do with Mac and the boys, Cannery Row feels as complete to me as if it were one story told all the way through without digression. Interestingly, most of the intercallory (sp?) chapters deal with either sun rise or sunset, and many talk about the 'hour of the pearl' or moments when time stands still on cannery row. I think perhaps why the book holds together well is because all of the different vignettes fit in as seamlessly as the passage of time. Each diversion from Mac and the boys is really just marking the passage of time and taking note of those everyday moments when life does not seem to be progressing but just existing for a moment. And yet, through out everything, Steinbeck builds this sense of community that you guys have previously mentioned. I think Cannery Row is my favorite work of Steinbeck's precisely because he does so many things and tells so many stories, apparently without even trying to.
I definitely agree with Lindsay about the parallels to Tortilla Flat. While reading this, I couldn't help think they were the same characters again.
Unlike Lee, I was distracted by the short shorts between chapters about the boys. I felt they actually could have been weaved into the fabric of the longer sections about the boys and would have felt less jarring.
What I find interesting is that he dates the men to be much older in this novel then Tortilla Flat, which surprised me. I felt as if they were similar ages, mid 20's to early 30's...but they were actually much older in this book, leaving more questions in my mind about how Steinbeck uses misfits of all ages in his novels (all usually wonders, able to find a home anywhere). To me, I am beginning to find this character sketch repetitive (maybe because I did not read East of Eden) and I feel that Steinbeck is saying more about this one small segment of humanity, then larger pictures we seem to try and draw out in class.
The parallels to Tortilla Flat are impossible to ignore, and actually even the intermittent serious tones seem similar (Danny's going off the deep end, Doc's regretting punching Mack in the face).
Yet I agree with the above comments that Cannery Row feels like an improvement over Tortilla Flat in many ways. The narrator's entrances into the story through poking overt fun at characters or human "truths" might come off as annoying in another novel, but here are not because they resist grand statements. I also admired Steinbeck's willingness to be straightforward, most strikingly when Doc talks about the omniscience of Mac and boys. He describes their contentedness, which the stories suggest gradually, in the way a reader might when analyzing the characters.
But why not have Doc understand the significance of Mac and the boys' way of living? Here, overtness is realistic.
The trend in these comments seems to be the comparison to (or improvement upon) Tortilla Flat, and that was a little notion that popped into my head as well during reader. I like how Lindsey said that the realism of Cannery Row made the characters more likable than Tortilla Flat.
On one hand, it would be hard to agree that Cannery Row presents more warming characters than Tortilla Flat. The guys of Tortilla Flat develop plotlines that are generally friendly and endearing, while Cannery Row starts by having the first two vignettes about characters who kill themselves. But I agree that somehow we end up enjoying the development of characters in Cannery Row more than Tortilla Flat. I think this has to do with the environment that is constructed around the characters. Lindsey also hinted that the characters may be more warming because of the realism in the characters or setting, which I half-agree with. I think the characters have a lot of similarities across the two books, but the area of the Flat and the Row are quite different in their construction. The Flat is presented as an absolute to extend the legendary nature of the stories. The Row, on the other hand, is full of rich and specific details which synthesizes a real place (Steinbeck spends over two pages just describing things inside Western Biological). From the concrete place of Cannery Row, I think it is easier for us to relate to or connect with the characters of the latter book.
I think it's really interesting the Steinbeck uses multiple viewpoints but never directly the viewpoint of Doc. It as if Doc was so much larger than life that addressing him directly could not have captured everything that was Doc - nor everything that was Cannery Row.
It reminds me of the quote from Log from the Sea of Cortez: "We knew that what seemed to us true could be only relatively true anyway. There is no other kind of observation....let us..not be betrayed by this myth of permanent objective reality. If it exists at all, it is only available in pickled tatters or in distorted flashes."p.2-3
I feel the the multiple viewpoint reflect the multiple, or partial truths of the cannery row society and particularly doc that attempt to give us a tattered flash of who doc was and how steinbeck felt about him without doing him the injust of trying to pretend he knew how doc would actually feel, act, think..
Similarly in the appendix, "about ed ricketts" in the log from the sea of cortez Steinbeck tries to capture ed through stories rather than just a linear timeline of his life.
In all the creative writing classes I've taken at Stanford, one of the things they really stress about a story is the getting the "point of view" right. In some writing workshops there's even a feeling that breaking the point of view constitutes a violation of some unwritten rule of creative writing. Conventional wisdom says the point of view should be limited to the main character or narrator, etc., and not broken except for good reason. And yet, in "Cannery Row", the point of view seems to transcend nearly all of the characters, great and small, who occupy the world of Steinbeck's novel. The result for the reader is a feeling like Doc must have gazing into the tide pool; absorbing the personalities of a diverse and distinct range of specimens, all of whom influence each other and the ecosystem as a whole.
ReplyDeleteFollowing "The Log from the Sea of Cortez", "Cannery Row" offers another aspect of Steinbeck's understanding of how people and organisms sharing an environment interact and change each other. Because we the readers absorb the thoughts, feelings, and motivations of not one but all of these characters, the novel comes across much more as a collective story of a community rather than a single individual's tale.
The entire time I was reading "Cannery Row", I couldn't help but draw parallels between Mack and crew in the Flophouse Palace and our first characters in Tortilla Flat. Steinbeck's character sketches are almost identical in some aspects, especially the desire to good and the inevitability of trouble. The frogs and disaster for Doc's party really illustrated the similarities. Despite the similarity, I liked Cannery Row much more than Tortilla Flat. Perhaps it was the more realistic characters (in my opinion) or the setting, but I found this a more heartwarming view of mankind than we see in East of Eden and some of his other works.
ReplyDeleteSteinbeck is consistent throughout everything we've read thus far in his ability to portray humans and their interpersonal relations realistically. He has an inherent understanding of community, how people interact with one another, and how little details create personality. Although Cannery Row is filled with vignettes of the experiences and perspectives of different people, the novel remains consistent to community and Steinbeck's voice. Steinbeck proves his mastery over setting and characterization once again, and he displays his love for marine biology and his world view that science and humanity are subjects intrinsically related.
ReplyDeleteI never cease to be amazed by Steinbeck's ability to break up a story without losing the story or draw disparate pieces that do not logically go together into a unified whole. Somehow, even though almost every other chapter has nothing to do with Mac and the boys, Cannery Row feels as complete to me as if it were one story told all the way through without digression. Interestingly, most of the intercallory (sp?) chapters deal with either sun rise or sunset, and many talk about the 'hour of the pearl' or moments when time stands still on cannery row. I think perhaps why the book holds together well is because all of the different vignettes fit in as seamlessly as the passage of time. Each diversion from Mac and the boys is really just marking the passage of time and taking note of those everyday moments when life does not seem to be progressing but just existing for a moment. And yet, through out everything, Steinbeck builds this sense of community that you guys have previously mentioned. I think Cannery Row is my favorite work of Steinbeck's precisely because he does so many things and tells so many stories, apparently without even trying to.
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree with Lindsay about the parallels to Tortilla Flat. While reading this, I couldn't help think they were the same characters again.
ReplyDeleteUnlike Lee, I was distracted by the short shorts between chapters about the boys. I felt they actually could have been weaved into the fabric of the longer sections about the boys and would have felt less jarring.
What I find interesting is that he dates the men to be much older in this novel then Tortilla Flat, which surprised me. I felt as if they were similar ages, mid 20's to early 30's...but they were actually much older in this book, leaving more questions in my mind about how Steinbeck uses misfits of all ages in his novels (all usually wonders, able to find a home anywhere). To me, I am beginning to find this character sketch repetitive (maybe because I did not read East of Eden) and I feel that Steinbeck is saying more about this one small segment of humanity, then larger pictures we seem to try and draw out in class.
The parallels to Tortilla Flat are impossible to ignore, and actually even the intermittent serious tones seem similar (Danny's going off the deep end, Doc's regretting punching Mack in the face).
ReplyDeleteYet I agree with the above comments that Cannery Row feels like an improvement over Tortilla Flat in many ways. The narrator's entrances into the story through poking overt fun at characters or human "truths" might come off as annoying in another novel, but here are not because they resist grand statements. I also admired Steinbeck's willingness to be straightforward, most strikingly when Doc talks about the omniscience of Mac and boys. He describes their contentedness, which the stories suggest gradually, in the way a reader might when analyzing the characters.
But why not have Doc understand the significance of Mac and the boys' way of living? Here, overtness is realistic.
The trend in these comments seems to be the comparison to (or improvement upon) Tortilla Flat, and that was a little notion that popped into my head as well during reader. I like how Lindsey said that the realism of Cannery Row made the characters more likable than Tortilla Flat.
ReplyDeleteOn one hand, it would be hard to agree that Cannery Row presents more warming characters than Tortilla Flat. The guys of Tortilla Flat develop plotlines that are generally friendly and endearing, while Cannery Row starts by having the first two vignettes about characters who kill themselves. But I agree that somehow we end up enjoying the development of characters in Cannery Row more than Tortilla Flat. I think this has to do with the environment that is constructed around the characters. Lindsey also hinted that the characters may be more warming because of the realism in the characters or setting, which I half-agree with. I think the characters have a lot of similarities across the two books, but the area of the Flat and the Row are quite different in their construction. The Flat is presented as an absolute to extend the legendary nature of the stories. The Row, on the other hand, is full of rich and specific details which synthesizes a real place (Steinbeck spends over two pages just describing things inside Western Biological). From the concrete place of Cannery Row, I think it is easier for us to relate to or connect with the characters of the latter book.
So this comment is a bit late and I apologize.
ReplyDeleteI think it's really interesting the Steinbeck uses multiple viewpoints but never directly the viewpoint of Doc. It as if Doc was so much larger than life that addressing him directly could not have captured everything that was Doc - nor everything that was Cannery Row.
It reminds me of the quote from Log from the Sea of Cortez: "We knew that what seemed to us true could be only relatively true anyway. There is no other kind of observation....let us..not be betrayed by this myth of permanent objective reality. If it exists at all, it is only available in pickled tatters or in distorted flashes."p.2-3
I feel the the multiple viewpoint reflect the multiple, or partial truths of the cannery row society and particularly doc that attempt to give us a tattered flash of who doc was and how steinbeck felt about him without doing him the injust of trying to pretend he knew how doc would actually feel, act, think..
Similarly in the appendix, "about ed ricketts" in the log from the sea of cortez Steinbeck tries to capture ed through stories rather than just a linear timeline of his life.