We spent a half hour this morning discussing the first sentence of Cannery Row. Once, when Susan was lecturing to nursing home residents in Florida, someone told her that Steinbeck was a bad writer. She used this sentence as an example. Susan (and our group) disagrees, but it's more interesting to delve into why we disagree. Here's the sentence.
"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 and flophouses. Its inhabitants are, as the man once said, ‘whores, pimps, gamblers, and sons of bitches,’ by which he meant Everybody. Had the man looked through another peephole he might have said, "Saints and angels and martyrs and holy men,’ and he would have meant the same thing."I can share our thoughts, but I'm curious to read yours.
(The former Wing Chong grocery store on Cannery Row. Note the subsequent development.)
(Listening to The Snake in the front room of Doc Rickett's lab)
(Back of Doc Rickett's house. You can see the cement holding tanks in the foreground.And the Intercontinental hotel on the right.)Tonight is the Cannery Row movie, a 1982 adaptation billed as 'the best love story of the year.' (Did they read the book?) It stars Nick Nolte and Debra Winger. I plan to be entertained.
(Example of the size of an average Monterey sardine.)
5 comments:
One of the reasons I really like that quote is because it's so evocative. You get a strong sense of the place Cannery Row used to be, even though it's changed so much.
I get a visceral response to that paragraph with a strong desire to go on reading (guess I'll have to check out the book and read it again, it has been a few years). For me, that's what defines great, not just good, writing. It is not "good" writing in the current definition of the word, especially for the state of Texas with its stultifying writing test for high school students. But how anyone could say the person who wrote such an incredibly evocative, riveting book is not a good writer is totally beyond me. He makes you aware you are a part of this community and the Everyone he is describing and, perhaps, makes you hope he would see you as belonging to the final group rather than the first one, although the implication remains that we are all part of both groups. I think he's right. Thanks so much for sharing that. I look forward to hearing about your discussion.
This passage is a one-word writing course. It's important not only in a literary sense, but also in a social sense. The previous two comments used the operative word to describe the quote - "evocative". It provides a sensory experience where the reader can close his or her eyes and see the chipped pavement and weedy lots and smell the sardines.
Well said, each of you. I'm glad that you all see the value in the opening line.
When I read the opening I thought about how Steinbeck works with the heroes in his books--they are always flawed and not respectable folks. The sinner is the saint and out of filth is beauty--such are the themes of Grapes of Wrath and others. Very cool idea to play with.
Post a Comment