Cannery Row

Don’t know how I’ve missed reading this book all these years. It appears to be a series of vignettes of the characters in this coastal fishing and canning village. So far it has covered the local general store, a flop house, a brothel, and a biological station. The protection racket that has a group of homeless men ‘renting’ space from the Chinese Store owner speaks to the nature of the neighbourhood. For a lad who grew up in the farming country of the Salinas Valley the author seems to know a great deal about aquatic life. And so the book is not about fishing or fish processing but a collection of characters who live and work around a particular street corner on Cannery Row. The spiritual home of the area is of course the Palace Flophouse where the only important matter before most of the group is where the next drink is coming from. Work is only the means of attaining it and to be shunned otherwise.