. Spinning .

It is a great matter to observe propriety in these several modes of expression, as also in compound words, strange (or rare) words, and so forth.  But the greatest thing by far is to have a command of metaphor.  This alone cannot be imparted by another; it is the mark of genius, for to make good metaphors implies an eye for resemblances.  (Aristotle, Poetics,  Part XXII)

And here lives Steinbeck’s gopher. 

Cannery Row is well described in detail of "across the street" and "down the tracks," etc., and it is a neighborhood held together by the canneries.  It is a working part of town; it is not sleek and beautiful.  Yet, I do not see it as grimy or poverty ridden.  This, I believe, is what Steinbeck’s message is in part; that the place is the people, the people are the place.

Within the narrative structure of Cannery Row and the stories of its primary characters, Doc, Mack, Lee Chong, and the rest, we met Mary Talbot, who loved parties; two little boys, Joey and Willard, who sparred mentally dangerously close to cruelty; and a gopher, who makes his home in the vacant lot and builds an underground paradise, lays in a larder, and goes out to seek the one thing missing, the one thing that will not come to his door–a female gopher.

The gopher goes outside his territory in his quest because this pull of companionship–or simple need–is more important than his home.  He finds one, but she is kept by an old battle-worn male, and the gopher is forced to fight and flee.  Even in his gopher palace he is not content.  He must travel outward, far from the safety and beauty of his chosen home to the more likely possibilities of a garden, where traps abound yet promise of a female awaits.

There is a Chinaman who does nothing but wander from one place in town to another every dusk and dawn.  He is a thread of "within" and "without" the boundaries of Cannery Row.  He is alone and no one knows him; a child named Andy boldly questions him and is frightened off by what he sees within the Chinaman’s eyes.  It is, I think, the unknown, the unfamiliar.

Cannery Row becomes more than embellishment or Spectacle as Aristotle would proclaim it.  It is, I feel, the grounding and the proper place for the action and the characters to belong.  Their world, as they created it.  As Mack near ruined it with the dishonoring of his deed.  As it recovered and became a good place again with the coming together of all the residents at the second party. 

It is a living thing.

I stopped too soon, and yet while another party rages as before–again, intent gone astray as led instead by human nature–the meaning is there and vague, unclear.

Doc enjoys this second party; a surprise he soon finds out about and plans as well, buying whisky and food, locking away the valuables to keep them safe.  It starts out slow and tentative, builds with booze and banter, yet controlled and well-enjoyed by all.  Then slows down, as Steinbeck tells us: 

The nature of parties has been imperfectly studied.  It is, however, generally understood that a party has a pathology, that it is a kind of individual and that it is likely to be a perverse individual.  And it is also generally understood that a party hardly ever goes the way it is planned or intended.  (Cannery Row, p. 172)

After the raucous dancing music is replaced with Monteverdi, as the whiskey dries up and is supplanted with the mellowing of wine, Doc reads from a book of poetry.  The poem tells of an aching for lost love.  All are moved and quiet. 

The next morning, Doc wakes up to a similar mess as to the first party, yet he is smiling, content.  Is the difference in the being there?  To have partaken of the feast, to have enjoyed despite one’s own intent of best behavior?  To have known a first love, to have a right to the memory of it–is that what makes the difference in a life?

I think that Aristotle’s theory of the Character as being central by mode of Thought and moral leaning to react to actions here is what’s at work.  Is giving in to the revelry a moral flaw?   These are good people gathered here to share in an event.  Is weakness what allows enjoyment of the party, of life itself?

Mack, Doc, and all the residents of Cannery Row have been affected by the string of events that are no more serious to world matters than a bringing together of people in appreciation of the goodness inherent in one of their own.  By knowing to appreciate, they too are to be considered good, and this, despite Aristotle’s insistence on class as part of nobility, is what makes them real and grants them access to a Tragedy in their lives, however small in import on a scale of human wrongs. 

I’ve finished this most exquisitely written novel, and enjoyed the writing as much as the story, and gained quite a bit in having taken the time to study the elements of story as put forth in Poetics.  Even as I seek out the next bit of fiction to read, I find myself insisting that the book is done and over with…but then, there is the gopher…

"The element of the wonderful is required in Tragedy.  The irrational, on which the wonderful depends for its chief effects, has wider scope in Epic poetry, because there the person acting is not seen."   Aristotle, Poetics, Part XXV

Mary Talbot, Mrs. Tom Talbot, that is, was lovely.  She had red hair with green lights in it.  Her skin was golden with a green cast and her eyes were green with little golden spots.  (…) When she was excited, and she was excited a good deal of the time, her face was flushed with gold.  Her great-great-great-great-great grandmother had been burned as a witch.    John Steinbeck, Cannery Row, p. 142

The element of the wonderful, as Aristotle suggests, is a necessary part of Tragedy.  While at this point in Poetics he is speaking of Epic Tragedy, poetry format rather than narrative or stage play, when speaking of story style of one such as Steinbeck, I would not hesitate to apply it and slap "poetry" labels upon it.

The above excerpt is one of several that Steinbeck slips in among the story of Mack and Doc and Cannery Row.  It is an encapsulated metaphor as is the book, the party being, I suspect, life itself.  In the brief chapter (24) that is the exclusive story of Mary Talbot and her husband Tom, we meet another idealist who believes deep in her heart that attitude is all.  Despite the bill collectors, the joblessness with no near prospects, Mary believes that parties can cure Tom’s depression, his realistic view: "Mary came softly in, for the blue-gray color of his gloom had seeped out under the door and through the keyhole.  She had a little bouquet of candy tuft in a collar of paper lace.  (p. 25)

As a determined realist, my fantasy reserved for escape rather than to cotton-candy wrap the world as it exists, I seek the answer to the optimistic attitude that claims it offers opportunities closed to those with dour expressions, hopeless outlooks.  A smile alone will never do it, but it may, by reason of its own false bravado and effect allow another person entry into one’s space and leave a glow within that thus inspires. 

Action, though, action I agree (with Aristotle) is the Plot.  That Diction, Thought and Character are only the modes.  For plot is carried by action, and reaction is a direct response born of character and thought.

I’m finally getting to finish this novel, having sidetracked myself for the better part of a week or more in analyzing it.  I find, having ventured a few chapters further that the episode of the planning and the party for Doc has had a profound effect on the characters, and must say that I am glad at least that I recognized it as the story, although feel now that I perhaps should have read the book through before focusing on it to write the essay (which I’m now calling "done," even as I feel it could have been less unwieldy had I not jumped so quickly into it).

There are two chapters in particular that Steinbeck has slid in among the pages of the story that need to be delved into a bit deeper.  They are metaphorical, they are to be pondered; they are meant to offer commentary and inspire thinking about the story in a way other than strictly narrative.  I believe that the story is both better understood and expanded by these additions, and will need to complete the book before I can go back and apply them. They seemed to be narrator input that came of understanding that which we could not be completely aware of without having read through the scenes presented to the characters of Cannery Row, and yet I’m sure that they reveal a knowledge of man himself and his world not completely related to Mack and Doc and Lee Chong and the others exclusively.

Meanwhile, I find Steinbeck’s voice and style thoroughly absorbing, pleasant and skilled, much as in the way of Cormac McCarthy where character takes on the burden of the human race and is of primary importance to the story in revelation of human nature and its action and reaction to the world regardless of circumstance and time.

Unreal.  I’m up to twelve pages, single-spaced, and still working.  Although the vast majority of the text is taken up in quotations from either Poetics or Cannery Row, there is some input by me in comment.  This is not what I had intended, but this is what it grew into as a project. 

Too bad it’s only for my own purposes–wins me no degrees, no recognition, not even a lousy grade, which is why I haven’t as yet gotten into a bibliography, although I probably will add it in just to cover my ass since this is currently available online as I work on it.  And after all this, I’ll probably keep it there until I’ve gotten over myself on the effort alone.

However, I shall have learned from this endeavor that in future readings I shall simply nod and smile to myself and think: Hmmm.  Sounds like Aristotle had something to say about this.  And just keep reading.

It doesn’t look like I’ve done much yet, but I don’t have a written outline–that’s not my style of writing–so I just started from point A and with the help of my notes, will continue on from there.  But, just to prove I’m seriously doing this (It will be constantly updated as I go along):

Aristotle’s Poetics as Applied to Steinbeck’s Cannery Row

This post started out as a comment in response to those by Steve and Mark at this post of mine, but in my usual rambling manner, got too ungainly to fit into one of those little comment boxes:

I think that even if Steinbeck had not been aware of Poetics, it was learned in some manner.  What Aristotle put together was not something he made up, but rather what he observed and kindly put down in an essay as to what he found to be the "recipe for success" or at the least, the traditional and established norm, as well as discussing the roots of literature form.  Much of the nature of Aristotle’s essay can be absorbed through reading as well as studying literature and writing, although most of this, I’m sure, has been based on Aristotle’s input anyway.  Even everyday conversation gives us a feel for storytelling.

But I am intrigued by the notion of going so far back into these written basics to see what holds true in Steinbeck’s writing.  Unfortunately, I’ve gotten in deep, over my head maybe even, and I’ve starting writing it in a Word Document that will be linked here, and it will have to be broken down into sections rather than a rambling piece.  Right now I’m concentrating on the building up of Tragedy (vs. Comedy, which started me on this whole thing, the tragi-comic situation Steinbeck created) and there may need to be subheadings or whatever on Plot, Character, etc. as each is valued by Aristotle in Poetics.

In other words, it’s turned into a project.  But the easiest way to understand and post about Poetics is exactly what inspired me to do it–having read it, and then seeing it in action as it applies as I read Cannery Row.  It is easier, I think, to find the "rule" or "law" or "norm" as Aristotle lays them out and apply them to the novel, than to write of Poetics and seek out examples.  Especially since they have been recognized in Cannery Row as becoming familar.

Yes, story is important, although it need not be epic in nature, just something that touches the heart or stirs the mind to interest. 

For me, the enjoyable journey through a story is fed by good writing. 

I can’t get excited, particularly with a novel, about story regardless of its magnitude because it is just that; a product of the imagination.  Hell, there’s more in life every day to get hepped up about.  But with the narrative structure, the plot… (and here I have Aristotle to back me:

But most important if all is the structure of the incidents.  For Tragedy is an imitation, not of men, but of an action and of life, and life consists in action, and its end is a mode of action, not a quality.  (Poetics, Part VI, para. 5)

…the plot is particularly a product of good writing.  Believe me, I know this well; my stories often fall flat because despite the flow of words, the arrangement and choice of sequence to build the conflicts to follow an arc isn’t there.

While I am still working on applying Poetics to Cannery Row (It’s actually much easier to see what Aristotle means when you read something, remember something that Aristotle wrote, then go back and reread both, his essay becomes clear.), I need to dig out the most relevant section from Poetics to examine the sequence of events in Cannery Row that I just posted on yesterday.  It may take several postings to cover all the aspects, but that’s what I’m trying to do now, pick out the most relevant and obvious of Aristotle’s statement as well as select carefully from Cannery Row to best display the theory without going into a 12-page thesis (which I see now I could easily do.  In fact, if I ever went for a Masters, I’d seriously consider applying Poetics to a literary work.)

A most interesting development in the reading…

For many chapters, Mack and the boys have been planning a party for Doc just to show their appreciation of him.  Well, it starts out as they need to make money to be able to throw a party, so they visit Doc and find that he needs frogs, at least 300 of them.  Back and forth haggling with Lee Chong for the use of his truck–for which they barter its repair, getting gas, getting there while Doc is off on his own trip collecting baby octopi, and an incredible series of mishaps to get all ready, the party is almost pulled off, but Doc is late returning home, and in the manner of Suttree‘s Harrogate, the best intentions leave a mess without proper planning.  Eight hundred frogs are traded to Lee Chong for food, booze, decorations, etc., and while the party goes on fueled by drinking and fighting and general merriment before Doc even gets there, his lab is destroyed and the frogs all escape.

That’s a brief summary without all the details that make this part of the narrative so intense and enjoyable, but the point that struck me is what do we have here? 

A comedy of errors that makes itself into a tragedy. 

So now I need go back to Aristotle to see what he would say about this, after explicitly delineating the separate branches of Comedy and Tragedy by specific values.  Plot would be primary in Tragedy, and the Characters imitative of comedy, and this may well fit with the theory.  This will take me some time…

When a writer wants to express more than a story, when he wants to reveal not just a personality but a human trait, one of the best means is through one of the characters in a segment of story.  Steinbeck has established the character of Doc as knowledgeable, tolerant, patient and kind.  A bit of a loner, too, although he numbers all he knows as among his friends.

The following is a bit of backstory relating to Doc’s early years at University, where he takes off on a walking trip after a bit of a trial.

And everywhere people asked him why he was walking through the country.

Because he loved true things he tried to explain.  He said he was nervous and besides he wanted to see the country, smell the ground and look at grass and birds and trees, to savor the country, and there was no other way to do it save on foot.  And people didn’t like him for telling the truth.  They scowled, or shook and tapped their heads, they laughed as though they knew it was a lie and they appreciated a liar.  And some, afraid for their daughters or their pigs, told him to move on, to get going, just not to stop near their place if he knew what was good for him.

And so he stopped trying to tell the truth.  He said he was doing it on a bet–that he stood to win a hundred dollars.  Everyone liked him then and believed him  They asked him in to dinner and gave him a bed and they put lunches up for him and wished him good luck and thought he was a hell of a fine fellow.  Doc still loved true things but he knew it was not a general love and it could be a very dangerous mistress.  (p. 99)

Ain’t that the truth.  Does honesty scare people?  Do they only understand someone on their own terms?  Do we live in our own created world of normal, exclude anyone different, fear if their aspirations seem loftier in purpose and so degrade it by relegating it to an oddness in another?

And the sentence, "afraid for their daughters or their pigs," — is not, I don’t feel, a leveling of women to animals, but rather a metaphor for what is important to them; honor, and property, the loss of either is more vital to maintain and protect than being open to honesty. 

Steinbeck is religious about reaffirming his images within a few pages of what he has presented.  In this short chapter on Doc, we learn that he carries around a suggestion once made to him to try a beer milkshake.  He realizes, having learned the ways of human nature, that this request would be suspect.  But on this short journey he is making to seek specimens, and after being annoyed by a hitchhiker, the moment is right:

Doc walked angrily to the counter of the stand.

The waitress, a blonde beauty with just the hint of a goiter, smiled at him.  "What’ll it be?"

"Beer milk shake," said Doc.

"What?"

Well here it was and what the hell.  Might just as well get it over with now as some time later.

The blonde asked "Are you kidding?"

Doc knew wearily that he couldn’t explain, couldn’t tell the truth.  "I’ve got a bladder complaint," he said.  "Bipalychaetorsonectomy the doctors call it. I’m supposed to drink a beer milk shake.  Doctor’s orders."

(…) "It sounds awful," said the blonde.

"It’s not so bad when you get used to it," said Doc.  "I’ve been drinking it for seventeen years."  (p. 101)

And so we go through life, learning what can be openly expressed, and what is best left unsaid, kept to ourselves.  This is the plane of life on which we commonly operate, on which we interact with each other.  Is heaven–if there be one–a place without veils?

There are several forms of imagery:  simile, metaphor, solid description.  Steinbeck uses them all to best advantage, but in his description he is concise, that is, using many words perhaps, but each word is strung in a list that results in a rat-a-tat-tat picture-perfect target hit with his bullets:

Coffee in its own can was simmering on its own rock, far enough from the flame so that it did not boil too had.  Mack awakened, started up, stretched, staggered to the pool, washed his face with cupped hands, hacked, spit, washed out his mouth, broke wind, tightened his belt, scratched his legs, combed his wet hair with his fingers, drank from the jug, belched and sat down by the fire.  "By God that smells good," he said.

Men all do about the same thing when they wake up.  Mack’s process was loosely the one all of them followed.  (p. 74)

Steinbeck uses this "listing" method quite often, when giving a description in full sentences of "then he…" would have seriously detracted from the story and slowed the pace.  This quickness of action gives a full image, and keeps it interesting and lively.

Here’s imagery:

The Carmel is a lovely little river.  It isn’t very long but in its course it has everything a river should have.  It rises in the mountains, and tumbles down a while, runs through shallows, is dammed to make a lake, spills over the dam, crackles among round boulders, wanders lazily under sycamores, spills into pools where trout live, drops in against banks where crayfish live.  In the winter it becomes a torrent, a mean little fierce river, and in the summer it is a place for children to wade in and for fishermen to wander in.  Frogs blink from its banks and the deep ferns grow beside it.  Deer and foxes come to drink from it, secretly in the morning and evening, and now and then a mountain lion crouched flat laps its water.  The farms of the rich little valley back up to the river and take in water for the orchards and vegetables.  The quail call beside it and the wild doves come whistling in at dusk.  Raccoons pace its edges looking for frogs.  It’s everything a river should be.  (p. 72)

He’s no slouch at simile either:

Behind him the rabbits stirred in the bush.  Then the sun came up and shook the night chill out of the air the way you’d shake a rug.  (p. 71)

Cats drip over the fences and slither like syrup over the ground to look for fish heads. (p. 81)

And personification: 

The water chuckled on the stones where it went out of the deep pool. (p. 78)

The more I read the masters, the more I am convinced that good writing is quite possibly primary to even good story. 

There are, of course, some deeper things I’ve discovered in Cannery Row that need be more fully covered.  A two-page chapter slipped in, seemingly unrelated to the story but bursting with metaphorical sense of it.  These, I need to get back to.

I’m sure the comparison has been made, not only in the writing styles of Steinbeck and McCarthy, but in these two novels in particular.

Each holds a treasure box of character, history and a hard look at a society that may be very different than our own.  A group of ne’er-do-wells, surviving as best they can in the downtimes of America, in the downtimes of their lives, their environment. 

While Bud Suttree is the obvious protagonist in Suttree despite the indepth personality McCarthy bestows upon the others, I am finding it harder to select the main character in Steinbeck’s Cannery Row.  While Doc seems to be the levelheaded philosophical intellectual as is Bud Suttee, I realize that the character of Mack, a leader of a work-whenever-the-need-arises-only band of men seems to be the main interacter with all the others.  He is the second character introduced in the novel, immediately after the grounding of Lee Chong and his grocery store.  He is portrayed as a wily, clever manipulator, though most are aware of this and attempt to prepare for him.  He is a winner of whatever he seeks to gain–though it not be much.

And my beloved Harrogate of Suttree seems to come in the guise of Hazel, one of Mack’s main group:

"Oh!" said Hazel, and he cast frantically about for a peg to hang a new question on.  He hated to have a conversation die out like this.  He wasn’t quick enough.  While he was looking for a question Doc asked one.  Hazel hated that, it meant casting about in his mind for an answer and casting about in Hazel’s mind was like wandering alone in a deserted museum.  Hazel’s mind was choked with uncatalogued exhibits.  He never forgot anything but he never bothered to arrange his memories.  Everything was thrown together like fishing tackle in the bottom of a rowboat, hooks and sinkers and line and lures and gaffs all snarled up.  (p. 34)

There is a difference in intelligence between Hazel and Harrogate, the latter being more able to see to his own survival via great schemes that haven’t been thought out all the way through (the bats!) while Hazel’s concentration is more geared towards being sociable, likeable, needing the wealth of simple communication to survive.  But there is an innocence about both that is endearing. 

Steinbeck gives his characters more of an individuality that does not seem as yet as reliant on the another for story.  Although they do touch and meet just as Bud Suttree’s friends and certainly Harrogate stands out as a strong second to Suttree in importance to the narrative.

While there seems to be a narrative structure introduced by “In the evening, just at dusk, a curious thing happened on Cannery Row.” (p. 24) for example, the chapters appear more to be unrelated episodes from the overall lives of those characters Steinbeck has presented.

We get the basis of the setting in Lee Chong’s grocery store, then his acquisition of the warehouse which becomes the Palace Flophouse, and then by directing us around the locale we are given Dora and her Bear Flag Restaurant, a whore house she has madamed for fifty years.

This method of grounding the reader within the setting and tieing in the characters to their spaces reminds me of Cormac McCarthy’s Suttree and it is an excellent way of bringing the reader into the world of the story.  While Suttree does follow a more linear narrative structure, we are unsure of the exact passage of time in Cannery Row. Steinbeck’s establishment of setting however does give us the feel of building Cannery Row to its present state at the time of story, and allows some history to reinforce the image.