Cannery Row

Cannery Row is a street in Monterey, California, lined with sardine canneries during the Great Depression. Its people live on the margins: Lee Chong keeps the grocery, Dora Flood runs the Bear Flag brothel, and Doc, a marine biologist, works in his specimen laboratory.

Mack and his band of idle, good-natured men have made their home in a converted storehouse they call the Palace Flophouse. They have little money and no great ambition, but they owe Doc a good deal. Over the years he has shown them many kindnesses.

To thank him, Mack and the boys decide to throw Doc a party. It turns into a mess, and the men must set about making it up to him with a second attempt.

The book is a 1945 novel by John Steinbeck, told loosely and in episodes rather than a single driving plot. The tone is warm and funny. It watches a community of outsiders with an eye for small acts of generosity, and for friendship pulling harder than profit. Steinbeck based Doc on a friend of his, Ed Ricketts, who was also a marine biologist.

The author came back to this street and its people in 1954 with the sequel Sweet Thursday. Here the question is whether a gift from men with nothing to give can finally be got right.