Steinbeck, John: Cannery Row

What a delight to return to Steinbeck's California, and where better than the warm, but ultimately wizzened Monterey. Cannery row is a story about a place and life therein, a place not necessarily like home, but with a familiar intimacy nontheless.

At the Western frontier of the world, in one of the gloomier sectors of America's history, is Cannery Row. No imagery can do better justice to Cannery Row than Steinbeck's own tidepool analogue. It is a tightly-packed microcosm of symbiotic relationships, where each character is as distinct as the lifeforms that populate a tidepool. Each with average characteristics, mundane outlooks and flatlined prospects. But alongside the darkness and solitude, lives beauty, life and balance. The story is about that equilibirum that keeps the community anchored and the inter-dependencies between the struggling creatures that populate the Row. How they rely on one another for life outside existence. Mack and the boys, with their bare-bones lifestyle, stripped of complexities, luxuries and constrictions, Doc with his fine-tuned life-in-statis, and the girls at the whore house with their patchwork quilt. Each esentially lacking the basic glue that binds mankind in intimate relationships, instead binding themselves to the community. Economy figures highly in the daily events, but is carefully tamed and controlled. Simplicity, the very essence of Cannery Row, dictates one input and one output. Shopping away from Lee's store (a wonder in itself, stocking all a Cannery Row inhabitant could desire) is as unfamiliar and undesirable as working in the Canneries. Instead the inhabitants rely on the tidepools.

Perhaps my favourite concept in Cannery Row is the inclusion of a series of interchapters; tiny stories lived in Cannery Row, inconsequential to the plot. These wonderful little sculptures, just momentarily, give you time to blink and see the tidepool from a different perspective. The most significant of these is the story of the gopher, and his doomed paradise - a stark outline of reality against fantasy which stimulates an empathy localised to Steinbeck's tales. The bleak acceptance that the characters have of life within their own world is quite typical of Steinbeck's work; the paralysis of the American Dream; a time when dreams had lost their currency. Though the depression was only transient, it lasted long enough that people had to build a life within it. Perhaps Cannery row is America through a macro lens. A simple story with isolated, grayscale characters brought into technicolor by basic human emotion, resulting in an blurred montage of stunted ideology. Community is a sense quite frequently alien today, perhaps due to a requirement for it that is equally diminished. Steinbeck captures a nook of history and community and lets us wade in it, just for a while. Then we slip off our waders and forget the uneventful, inconsequential life that was Cannery Row as the high tide comes and sweeps it away.

Dickens, Charles: Hard Times

Except maybe Shakespeare, is there an author more famous than Dickens? How many other authors have been immortalised through the adjectivisation* of their name? I think that really must be the definition of fame and celebrity; the adjectivisation of one's name; Marxism, Newtonian, Cartesian, Leninism, Dickensian. Kafka almost gets there, with Kafka-esque, and a number of philosophers and sociologists do, but few storytellers (Clancian, Grishamian? Come on!).

Hard times is set in an imaginary industrial, British any-town. Like many of Dickens' books, it focusses less on the elite, and more on the lower-classes, I'm sure this must be a reason for its popularity. It observes the discourse and interactions that emerge from circumstance. Hard times is not richly plotted nor overly complex, it is a linear plot but crafted with such care that each paragraph is like a poem in itself. The characters are rich, realistic and individual with such traits as to make them believable. There exist three environments in literature, the now, the then and the alternative. The then, or the historic, is rendered with such detail and accuracy that you really feel like you are observing these places and people rather than a pithy echo.

I feel it is often easier to empathise with those whose plight is more desperate which often amounts to those down on their luck. In turn, it is frequently the case that 'down on their luck' is synonymous with having little money. This is part of Dickens' magic, he gets to the raw nerve, talks to you on a one-to-one basis. Him and I understand the same things, that's what I like. Perhaps this is why people often compare Dickens to King, though this may be doing Dickens a disservice (Steinbeck would fit the bill better in my opinion), it is clear how the comparison is made.

I think in the future when reviewing Dickens' books I will have to start on the basis of the plot, much like comparing King's books, the style should be taken for granted. In that case by self-comparison, this is not one of Dickens's greatest, the plot is not outstanding, the characters only marginally memorable. But, still a classic book.


*I don't think this is a word, but the English language is not that prescriptive!

Homer: The Odyssey

Translated by T E Lawrence.

Not many books can live up to a title as profound as this one. It conjours up not mere adventure, rather a journey of epic importance. The episodes within this story are well known, they are some of the oldest and most creative ever imagined; their survival through centuries, indeed millenia are testament to this. However, it's not the events that I remember this book for, it's the writing. This is not to denegrate the influence this book has had on literature and story-telling, rather to highlight the value that translation and interpretation of a text has on its enjoyment. This is the only translation I have read, but I have glanced through others, including some modern interpretations, they each bring their own angle to the story. T E Lawrence (of Arabia) colours Ulysses and the whole cast with a particular aesthetic. Each word has its place in the sentence, each word is required, each sentence is vital. I like that in writing. I like tight sentences, otherwise it just seems a little 'fluffy'. The style is almost 'classical' Dickensian; if Dickens had translated the Odyssey, it would have sounded like this. I have never read a book so slowly. I have tried various different reading techniques, but when I am enjoying something, I savour each word. With a piece like this, it is only fair to give each word its full value. This is something that has been crafted, not spat out by a group of ghost-writers. It is a classic text, the highlight of a fading genre.

Defoe, Daniel: Robinson Crusoe

Classic literature survives the ages. There's a reason for that; distinction. Whether it be artistically distinct, distinct in it's deeper meaning or distinct in its description. Robinson Crusoe is a Classic.

I picked Robinson Crusoe from a load of classics that I had bought cheap. I'm not sure what drew me to it; perhaps it was the latent adventure, perhaps it was the intrigue; how could a book, based mostly on a desert island, keep me occupied? Tom Hanks' Castaway didn't. Who was Man Friday? How did Crusoe get there? And where exactly is there? I started to read.

The adventure starts in Hull, from where Crusoe sets sail, much against his parents' will. This had me intrigued, being from that neck of the woods (if grimey northern cities can be compared to woods). I was immersed into Colonial times, a period of World history both triumphant and tragic. I sailed down the coast with Crusoe, exploring Africa, South America and the West Indies. All was going well, until that fateful event.

Having been exposed to numerous later tellings of similar stories, and having seen numerous films, it was all a little expectant. I knew he would struggle for food, shelter and health. I knew he would try to get off the Island. But even so, I was hooked. Time panned out between each simple event. Things we take for granted were were atomised into their most simple parts. But what deepened this was that the things that we couldn't survive with now, hadn't even been invented in Defoe's time. Crusoe couldn't have wished for a battery operated torch if he had wanted to. This not only highlighted the desperation of Crusoe's plight but also the fickle, materialistic society we live in. Throughout the book I imagined myself in that situation, theorised how I would survive, what I would do. It would be easy. But of course, it wouldn't. How ever much Ray Mears TV I had seen (incidently very little), I would be up the creek without a paddle, nor the means to make one.

And of course, the Savages. Looking at the time the book was written, it's not suprising that Man Friday would immediately be subservient to the White man, irrespective of his attire and obvious lack of power. This is something I have thought on since reading the book, and something that remains a mystery. Perhaps it is a metaphor for the treatment of slaves; the desperate situation of both, the balance of Providence's kindness on each, the reliance on each other, yet still, Crusoe is Master, Friday is servant. Perhaps poignant centuries later, but at the time was it mere normality. Still, a minor aside - once they are settled in their micro class-system, they operate well together and become dependant on one another (again, perhaps a reference to Defoe's dislike for slavery), and ultimately they suceed in their quest, to return to civilisation, and eventually Yorkshire!

An excellent book. The more I think about it, the more I see shreds of forward-thinking flaking of the pages. Perhaps it has been said before, perhaps I'll take a look, but this seems less a story of survival and more a story of breaking humanity and race-relations down to the lowest level, and highlighting the flaws in society not nature. But then I think, was he that smart? Yes, I reassure myself, I see all others as equals, why shouldn't he? But is that not just another case of, I'd survive on a desert island?