Every now and then I read a book from a list of the accepted literary classics in an endeavour to become better acquainted with The Canon. The latter has taken a reputational battering in recent decades from many quarters. Some have argued that there is no such thing, others that it is the preserve of privileged white men whose entitlements necessarily excluded minorities and women and many others besides. It is perfectly reasonable to argue that many were excluded from taking up writing or being published by dint of their sex or nationality, but unreasonable to say that the works that do comprise said Canon are not very good. They are - that is why they are a part of it.

And so it was that today that I finished Steinbeck's slim volume, Cannery Row. Steinbeck is a good writer in every sense, though Cannery Row came in for some criticism at the time. It seemed an inferior text to The Grapes of Wrath, curiously devoid of plot, somewhat fragmentary in structure. It reads, so critics argued, like a series of vignettes, characters at the edge of society whose paths only cross because of their proximity. That's true enough but that does not make it an inferior work, just a different one. The story of these grifters and outsiders is largely held together by being centred on the character of Doc, a marine biologist who lives adjacent the canneries. A group of out-of-work men who are bunked down in an old shed want to throw a party for Doc because they recognise he is a swell guy. Cannery Row is essentially the story of how this comes about, going predictably pair-shaped as it eventuates. The novel is the process of getting the party up.

So different, I guess, from Of Mice and Men where there is a discernible plotline. Though as for that, it is full of the same types of characters, people locked out of the American Dream