by John Steinbeck
The Viking Press, 1945, 208 pages 

John Steinbeck begins his novel “Cannery Row” with a poetic description of the fictional street in Monterey, Calif., from which it takes its title. He describes the area, with its sardine fisheries, local grocery store and neighborhood brothel, as “a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream.”

“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,” Steinbeck writes in the opening paragraph.

Published in 1945, the book unfolds in 32 short chapters recounting the lives and exploits of various figures residing on Cannery Row during the Great Depression. It’s a remarkably simple plot that revolves mainly around “Mack and the boys,” a group of goodhearted indigents who live in an empty warehouse owned by the town grocer, Lee Chong. Determined to do something nice for Doc, a marine biologist widely considered the nicest guy in town, Mack decides to throw him a party. But, as is often the case with Mack and the boys, their good intentions threaten sour results.

Although they rarely know where their next meal will come from, Mack and the boys are a contented bunch who revel in the inherent freedom of their indigence. They work when they have to, but generally avoid it. When they need some booze, they can count on Eddie to take work as a bartender for a couple of days and dump the dregs of each customer’s drink into a hidden jug, bringing home a potent mix of wine, liquor and beer. Or they bargain with Lee Chong to procure a bottle of Old Tennessee whisky, a brand affectionately nicknamed Old Tennis Shoes.

They commonly resort to slightly dishonest methods to secure their next bite of food, pint of whisky or gallon of gas, but their ploys are usually harmless, and the town recognizes and tolerates their unorthodox livelihoods.

This apparent glorification of deprivation is hardly uncommon in Steinbeck’s work. “Cannery Row” bears many obvious similarities to “Tortilla Flat,” the American author’s first major success, published a full decade earlier. Both novels take place in Monterey, where Steinbeck spent much of his life, and follow the misadventures—sometimes comical, sometimes tragic—of a group of happy-go-lucky bums who seem to voluntarily choose destitution over affluence.

“Financial bitterness could not eat too deeply into Mack and the boys, for they were not mercantile men. They did not measure their joy in goods sold, their egos in bank balances, nor their loves in what they cost.”

Written years after Steinbeck had garnered national fame for novels like “Tortilla Flat,” “Of Mice and Men” and “The Grapes of Wrath,” “Cannery Row” remains one of his lesser known works (although it was adapted to the screen in 1982 and the stage in 1995). But, like his most acclaimed classics, it deals with some of Steinbeck’s favorite themes—the Depression, anti-materialism, and the virtues of living collectively as a community indivisible from its parts.

Steinbeck clearly drew from his own life experience in this book. He modeled the character of Doc after real-life friend and marine biologist Ed Ricketts, to whom the book is dedicated. And the setting is based on Monterey’s Ocean View Avenue, which later acknowledged the honor by changing its name to Cannery Row.

Some critics have accused Steinbeck of taking an unrealistically quaint approach to the widespread poverty of the Depression era. Are homeless indigents really as satisfied with their rags as Mack and his pals? Doubtful. Nevertheless, “Cannery Row” exemplifies Steinbeck’s rock-solid faith in the basic goodness of the human spirit, which is all too easily corrupted by the lure of material wealth.

“‘It has always seemed strange to me,’” Doc says at one point. “‘The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first, they love the produce of the second.’”