The Great American Road Trip

Destination: Northern California (Monterey)

Book: Cannery Row by John Steinbeck

In Cannery Row, John Steinbeck makes poetry of an once ordinary place, Monterey California, and makes mythological figures of working men and women. (A little trick that he specialized in).  In the introduction to Cannery Row, he asks: “How can the poem and the stink and the grating noise–the quality of light, the tone, the habit, and the dream–be set down alive?’

And comparing writing to his other passion, marine biology and the capture of sea creatures, he answers, “…open the page and let the stories crawl in by themselves.” Continue reading Steinbeck and Northern California →