I could give a little party, she insisted. Just a small affair. Nobody will dress. It's the anniversary of the founding of the Bloomer League--you didn't even remember that.Cannery Row, one of the Steinbeck books that I got a hold of when just beginning to sprout my tendrils above the garden soil, has wielded a mightier grip over me than most books. Tortilla Flat, being similar in my mind, has an equally iron-fisted hold on the course of my dreams.
Mack and the boys, too, spinning in their orbits. They are the virtues, the Graces, the Beatitudes of the hurried mangled craziness of Monterey and the cosmic Monterey where men in fear and hunger destroy their stomachs in the fight to secure certain food, where men hungering for love destroy everything lovable about them.Mack and the boys are the Beauties, the Virtues, the Graces. In the world rules by tigers with ulcers, rutted by strictured bulls, scavenged by blind jackals, Mack and the boys dine delicately with the tigers, fondle the frantic heifers, and wrap up the crumbs to feed the sea gulls of Cannery Row. What can it profit a man to gain the whole world and to come to his property with a gastric ulcer, a blown prostate, and bifocals? Mack and the boys avoid the trap, walk around the poison, step over the noose while a generation of trapped, poisoned, and trussed-up men scream at them and call them no-goods, come-to-bad-ends, blots-on-the-town, thieves, rascals, bums. Our Father who art in nature, who has given the fight of survival to the coyote, the common brown rat, the English sparrow, the house fly and the moth, must have a great and overwhelming love for the no-goods and blots-on-the-town and bums, and Mack and the boys. Virtues and graces and laziness and zest. Our Father who art in nature.
It has always seemed strange to me, said Doc. 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.
Who wants to be good if he has to be hungry too?
Blaisedell, the poet, had said to him, "You love beer so much. I'll bet some day you'll go in and order a beer milk shake." It was a simple piece of foolery but it had bothered Doc ever since. He wondered what a beer milk shake would taste like. The idea gagged him but he couldn't let it alone. It cropped up every time he had a glass of beer. Would it curdle the milk? Would you add sugar? It was like a shrimp ice cream. Once the thing got into your head you couldn't forget it.
But if ever there were a motto for a life described by a book, Cannery Row's would be 'Simple as it should be.' The life of Mack and the Boys and Doc and Lee Chong and Dora and her girls is a life that sounds too idyllic to be true, but has enough realism to make you wonder. Steinbeck doesn't pull any punches; some of the saddest most heart-wrenching instances I've ever heard are in his writing, some are in Cannery Row, yet the life is one I would have, for all this.
Could a man be foolish enough to choose it?
Could a man be dreamily distracted enough (from ledgers) to notice the beauty of Nature's balance book?
There is one chapter towards the end of Cannery Row that deals with two characters who are alive only in a few brief pages. Mary and Tom Talbot. I know a girl who is like Mary, or who's inside, who's narrator, that girl not yet tied down beneath the world's webs, still strives for her parties.
Throw a party, Mary, infect the whole house with gaiety and use your gift as a weapon against despondency. More than anything in the world, Mary Talbot loved parties. She loved to give parties and to go to parties. Since Tom Talbot didn't make much money Mary couldn't give parties all the time so she tricked people into giving them. Sometimes she telephoned a friend and said bluntly, 'Isn't it about time you gave a party?' Regularly Mary had six birthdays a year, and she organized costume parties, surprise parties, holiday parties. Christmas Eve at her house was a very exciting thing. For Mary glowed with parties.
A life full of parties, this is what Cannery Row is about because there is so much that needs celebrating. But celebration with the richness of feeling that is this:
Even nowkeep glowing with parties, m.
If I see in my soul the citron-breasted fair one
Still gold-tinted, her face like our night stars,
Drawing unter her; her body beaten about the blame,
Wounded by the flaring spear of love,
My first of all by reason of her fresh years,
Then is my heart buried alive in snow.
Even now
If my girl with lotus eyes came to me again
Weary with the dear weight of young love,
Again I would give her to these starved twins of arms
And from her mouth drink down the heavy wine,
As a reeling pirate bee in fluttered ease
Steals up the honey from the nenuphar.
Even now
My eyes that hurry to see no more are painting, painting
Faces of my lost girl. O golden rings
That tap against cheeks of small magnolia leaves,
O whitest so soft parchment where
My poor divorced lips have written excellent
Stanzas of kisses, adn will write no more.
Even now
Death sends me the flickering of powdery lids
Over wild eyes and the pity of her slim body
All borken up wtih weariness and joy;
The little red flowers of her breasts to be my comfort
Moving above scarves, and for my sorrow
Wet crimson lips that once I marked as mine.
Even now
They chatter her weakness through the two bazaars
Who was so strong to love me. And small men
That buy and sell for silver being slaves
Crinkle the fat about their eyes; and yet
No Prince of the Cities of the Sea has taken her,
Leading to his grim bed. Little lonely one,
You clung to me as a garment clings; my girl.
Even now
I love long black eyes that caress like silk,
Ever and ever sad and laughing eyes,
Whose lids make such sweet shadow when they close
It seems another beautiful look of hers.
I love a fresh mouth, ah, a scented mouth,
And curving hair, subtle as smoke,
And light fingers, and laughter of green gems.
Even now
I remember that you made answer very softly,
We being one soul, your hadn on my hair,
The burning memeory rounding your near lips;
I have seen the priestesses of Rati make love at moon fall
And then in a carpeted hall with bright gold lamp
Lie down carelessly anywhere to sleep.
Even now
I mind the coming adn talking of wise men from towers
Where they had thought away their youth. And I, listening,
Found not the salt of the whispers of my girl,
Murmur of confessed colors, as we lay near sleep;
LIttle wise words and little witty words,
Wanton as water, honied with eagernes.
Even now
I mind that I loved cypress and roses, clear,
The great blue mountains and the small gray hills,
The sounding of the sea. Upon a day
I saw strange eyes and hands like butterflies;
For me at morning larks flew from the thyme
And children came to bathe in little streams.
Even now
I know that I have savored the hot taste of life
LIfting green cups and gold at the great feast.
Just for a small and a forgotten time
I have had full in my eyes from off my girl
The whitest pouring of eternal light--
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