Mack hits on the idea of trying to do something nice as a thank you for Doc: a surprise party. And no-one has been kinder to him and ‘the boys’ than Doc, a gentle, cultured man earning his living as a marine biologist. He does however recognise a good turn when it comes his way. But he prefers to lounge about on the fence, drinking a cocktail of slops from a local bar and doing odd jobs.

Their ringleader is the charismatic Mack, a man who if he put his mind to it would be smart enough to get a good job.

In Steinbeck’s novel, Cannery Row is populated mainly by working-class people and a group of down-and-outs who live from one drink to another, begging, borrowing, stealing and fighting. Today this is a small area crowded with tourists who swarm in and out of souvenir shops and food outlets. It’s more a collection of episodes about the people who live in the sardine canning district of Monterey, California. The is a novel which doesn’t have much of a plot. True it wasn’t very uplifting but there was a sense of warmth and affection in his characters and tinges of humour mingled with the dispiriting nature of their predicament. Not quite ready to do battle with Grapes just however, I opted for the much shorter novel Cannery Row. It brought tears to my eyes, not of pity but of joy resulting from Steinbeck’s ability to wrest humour out of the most unlikely circumstances. It was not until I joined a local book club who just happened to be reading Of Mice and Men that month, that I got an inkling that I’d misjudged the man. My first encounter with him ( Grapes of Wrath) hadn’t given me the impression he was anything other than depressing.

The last emotion I expected to experience with a John Steinbeck novel was laughter.

John steinbeck cannery row review