# John Steinbeck - Cannery Row
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/john-steinbeck-cannery-row/585802
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Created:** [June 17, 2011, 7:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/john-steinbeck-cannery-row/585802 "2011-06-17T07:04:14Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Bearflag70](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bearflag70)
#### Post date: [June 17, 2011, 7:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/john-steinbeck-cannery-row/585802/1 "2011-06-17T07:04:14Z")
My wife and I took our daughter out to Monetery, California for a couple days. My wife and I had visited there a few times, and we had visited Cannery Row. This time, we actually stayed on Cannery Row. We didn’t have an agenda packed full of things to do, so I picked up the book, _Cannery Row_ by John Steinbeck, to see what all the hubbub was about.
I love reading about California history. I also tend to appreciate Bohemian fantasy. I’m not much of a leisure reader, at all, but I have read and really enjoyed _Siddhartha_ (Hesse) and _On the Road_ (Kerouac). I sometimes wonder if I should live a life of “voluntary simplicity” instead of chugging away at work.
Anyway, I’m about half way through the book and I’m enjoying it. It’s a nice read, simple, and it moves along. The characters are colorful and fun. I don’t know if I should be gleaning any kind of deep thoughts from it. Share whatever thought you like.
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### Author:  [@Isamu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Isamu)
#### Post date: [June 17, 2011, 7:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/john-steinbeck-cannery-row/585802/2 "2011-06-17T07:21:18Z")
Username / thread title combo win!
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### Author:  [@Meurglys](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Meurglys)
#### Post date: [June 17, 2011, 11:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/john-steinbeck-cannery-row/585802/3 "2011-06-17T11:40:57Z")
Unlike most novels assigned in school (back in the early 70s), I re-read _Cannery Row_ a couple of times and went on to read a lot of his other books. Still have half a shelf of them at home!
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### Author:  [@Farmer\_Jane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Farmer_Jane)
#### Post date: [June 17, 2011, 11:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/john-steinbeck-cannery-row/585802/4 "2011-06-17T11:45:05Z")
hey! I was just there a few days ago! 😛
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### Author:  [@BMalion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BMalion)
#### Post date: [June 17, 2011, 12:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/john-steinbeck-cannery-row/585802/5 "2011-06-17T12:08:23Z")
Great book!
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### Author:  [@brad\_d](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brad_d)
#### Post date: [June 17, 2011, 4:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/john-steinbeck-cannery-row/585802/6 "2011-06-17T16:36:12Z")
I recently read it myself, after a short vacation to Monterey with my wife and daughter.
It was an enjoyable read, and rather different from the sort of book I usually choose. I don’t think I’d read any Steinbeck since high school; once I finish with C.S. Forester’s _Hornblower_ series (i.e., many months from now, given the time I make for leisure reading), I may hit the library to grab another Steinbeck tome.
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### Author:  [@WordMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WordMan)
#### Post date: [June 17, 2011, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/john-steinbeck-cannery-row/585802/7 "2011-06-17T16:52:02Z")
I love the book -
> [@](#):
>
> Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream. Cannery Row is the gathered and scattered, tin and iron and rust and splintered wood, chipped pavement and weedy lots and junk heaps, sardine canneries of corrugated iron, honky tonks, restaurants and whore houses, and little crowded groceries, and laboratories and flophouses.
My parents live about a mile or two from Cannery Row - I have a first edition of the book, too…
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### Author:  [@teela\_brown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/teela_brown)
#### Post date: [June 17, 2011, 6:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/john-steinbeck-cannery-row/585802/8 "2011-06-17T18:07:53Z")
I love the book, too, and I read the sequel _Sweet Thursday_ while actually visiting there once. I still quote bits of _Cannery Row_ now and then - whenever I see a frog, I like to say, “We go see flog.”
I also love _Tortilla Flat_, and whenever we visit the area, we like to point out various little tumbledown wooden homes in the area (there are still a few left!) and say “There’s Danny’s house.”
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### Author:  [@Bearflag70](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bearflag70)
#### Post date: [June 19, 2011, 12:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/john-steinbeck-cannery-row/585802/9 "2011-06-19T00:05:35Z")
Well, damn it all. Steinbeck botched the geography of my childhood stomping grounds.
He writes about Doc’s road trip to La Jolla. Doc stopped for a “heavy dinner” in Santa Barbara, then got a beer milkshake in Ventura, then had a cheese sandwich in Carpinteria before continuing on to Los Angeles.
Carpinteria is _between_ Santa Barbara and Ventura. Also, the distance from Santa Barbara to Carpinteria is fairly short; I can’t imagine being hungry again at that time.
Perhaps he meant Camarillo and not Carpinteria.
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### Author:  [@Raguleader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Raguleader)
#### Post date: [June 19, 2011, 1:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/john-steinbeck-cannery-row/585802/10 "2011-06-19T01:10:37Z")
The next time you’re around that part of town, check out [Gianni’s Pizza](http://maps.google.com/maps/place?oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&q=pizzeria+monterey+california&fb=1&hq=pizzeria&hnear=0x808de45270b5fb91:0xee484909d84a3d5e,Monterey,+CA&cid=1280698147332837265). I love that place.
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### Author:  [@Bearflag70](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bearflag70)
#### Post date: [June 19, 2011, 2:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/john-steinbeck-cannery-row/585802/11 "2011-06-19T02:12:29Z")
> [@Raguleader](#):
>
> The next time you’re around that part of town, check out [Gianni’s Pizza](http://maps.google.com/maps/place?oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&q=pizzeria+monterey+california&fb=1&hq=pizzeria&hnear=0x808de45270b5fb91:0xee484909d84a3d5e,Monterey,+CA&cid=1280698147332837265). I love that place.
We tried pizza at Louie Linguini’s on Cannery Row. Terrible. Cardboard. The jambalaya was bad. It’s like microwave dinners there. Stay away.
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### Author:  [@Raguleader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Raguleader)
#### Post date: [June 19, 2011, 2:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/john-steinbeck-cannery-row/585802/12 "2011-06-19T02:26:22Z")
> [@Bearflag70](#):
>
> We tried pizza at Louie Linguini’s on Cannery Row. Terrible. Cardboard. The jambalaya was bad. It’s like microwave dinners there. Stay away.
Only things I ever ate at Cannery Row was seafood, and only if I had family visiting from out of town. Wonderful place to go for a run though. Some nice scenery makes all the difference sometimes. Note that Gianni’s isn’t on Cannery Row, but rather an entire block away, on Lighthouse Drive.
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### Author:  [@SeldomSeen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SeldomSeen)
#### Post date: [June 19, 2011, 2:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/john-steinbeck-cannery-row/585802/13 "2011-06-19T02:53:03Z")
I read \*Cannery Row \*years ago, around 1980 IIRC, thought then (and still do) that it was one of Steinbeck’s better efforts. I was living a pretty bohemian life myself at the time - albeit in Oregon rather than California - and could really relate to the characters and the lifestyle. I thought it was pretty neat that Steinbeck could write a book about guys like us.
SS
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### Author:  [@tnetennba](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tnetennba)
#### Post date: [June 19, 2011, 2:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/john-steinbeck-cannery-row/585802/14 "2011-06-19T02:59:03Z")
If you want to get lit geeky about it, there are a lot of allusions to the Arthur in those stories… Steinbeck was a scholar on Arthurian legends, and his treatment of them with vagabonds and layabouts is really enjoyable. I never pursued the parallels to carry on an intelligent conversation about it though, just know it’s there.
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### Author:  [@tnetennba](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tnetennba)
#### Post date: [June 19, 2011, 3:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/john-steinbeck-cannery-row/585802/15 "2011-06-19T03:00:24Z")
I saw Monterey once… nice little town. I liked all the Steinbeck stuff and the aquarium. If I’m ever independently wealthy and have no responsibility, it also looks like the perfect little boutique beach town to live in.
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### Author:  [@Raguleader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Raguleader)
#### Post date: [June 19, 2011, 5:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/john-steinbeck-cannery-row/585802/16 "2011-06-19T05:09:28Z")
> [@tnetennba](#):
>
> I saw Monterey once… nice little town. I liked all the Steinbeck stuff and the aquarium. If I’m ever independently wealthy and have no responsibility, it also looks like the perfect little boutique beach town to live in.
Yeah, outside of Texas, Monterey is on my top two choices of places to retire. Although it is probably much more expensive to retire in Monty than in Texas.
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### Author:  [@Jaledin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jaledin)
#### Post date: [June 19, 2011, 6:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/john-steinbeck-cannery-row/585802/17 "2011-06-19T06:38:09Z")
Nolte, where’d your hair go? Let me get some turtles. Oh, Mac, it’s you. Why don’t you play the same tune again on the piano again 🙂
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### Author:  [@Suil\_Dubh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Suil_Dubh)
#### Post date: [June 19, 2011, 7:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/john-steinbeck-cannery-row/585802/18 "2011-06-19T07:01:46Z")
“Cannery Row” is my go-to book whenever I drink too much, do something stupid, and feel lousy about it the next day.
It really is a quaint, cheerful, fantastic little book. I absolutely love it.
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### Author:  [@sitchensis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sitchensis)
#### Post date: [June 19, 2011, 7:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/john-steinbeck-cannery-row/585802/19 "2011-06-19T07:47:43Z")
I just have to add; a few days ago I put two wheels of my truck in a ditch about five miles out of the nearest town. It was a logging, fishing coastal town. Immediately I started jogging for the nearest paved road to hopefully hitch a ride into town for a tow. About a mile into my jog I came to a secluded rock pit with a couple of cars and a tarp, tent, set up, calling into the tent for a bit of help, I met a man named “Rock pit Mike” who gave me a ride into town. Come to find out he had been living in the tarp, tent, in the rock pit for 20 years. I paid him in 5 gallons of gas for his services as he saved my day.
That little experience reminded me of Cannery Row, and to let you all know that it still exists, as long as you keep moving north.
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### Author:  [@WordMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WordMan)
#### Post date: [June 19, 2011, 1:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/john-steinbeck-cannery-row/585802/20 "2011-06-19T13:28:07Z")
> [@tnetennba](#):
>
> I saw Monterey once… nice little town. I liked all the Steinbeck stuff and the aquarium. If I’m ever independently wealthy and have no responsibility, it also looks like the perfect little boutique beach town to live in.
Like I said, my parents live there - they got a house in Pacific Grove 40 years ago for less than $30,000. It is just below Monterey; Cannery Row sits pretty much on the border between the towns - PG was a Methodist campground, leading to the nicknames "Carmel by the Sea; Monterey by the Smell (of Cannery Row’s fish processing) and Pacific Grove by God 😉 Yay parents.
It is a surprisingly mixed area - yes, there is now a lot of wealth there, especially in Pebble Beach and Carmel - but for the most part it is a cool, vibrant, artsy set community if you avoid those fancier spots…
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