Cannery Row - John Steinbeck

I haven’t posted about books in a while because I was struggling with the ones I had, and unless a book catches me like a resting kite by the wind or just gives me an ornery turn, I don’t see any point in wasting our mutual time opining about them. In fact, I don’t care to opine much at all anymore. I’ll probably just show a book, say this and that, and leave it up to you.
 
Anyhows, I ended up exchanging the duds for this one at a store in Siem Reap and got me a kite with tails. That this celebration of the well-intentioned impecunious and the naturalness of sociability found me in Cambodia was apt, I have to say. On every street in the country and on Cannery Row, a family cohesiveness makes getting on together the thing to do.
 
Personally, I go strongly with this man Steinbeck’s poetry of the ordinary, his giving a voice and pages to the odd and the damaged. When you love like this, you don’t need to romanticize, just let the “cats drip over the fences” at first light and frogs blink on the Carmel river. The tragic, too, has its place and is admitted. It is a world where violence is apportioned without ugliness. When Doc has punched Mack, he pours him a beer, and after the ruckus at the party, the ejected tuna boat crew are welcomed back in, such a good fight it has been.
 
For the ending, Steinbeck pulls out all the stops and lets sound all the music his people deserve.