No. 3 - Cannery Row

I think I may have read my favorite John Steinbeck book. The flap says: "Steinbeck's tough yet charming portrait of people on the margin of society, dependent on one another for both physical and emotional survival." And it is just that. This beautiful piecework of portraits; depicting life for the people of Cannery Row. I loved that the story centers around Mack "and the boys": a hodge-podge group of bums who become a family, but in the meantime, Steinbeck adds chapters that tell the story of one or two characters, completely unrelated, never spoken of again. Such good writing.

Two quotes stuck out to me so much that I underlined and wrote them down.

"Socially Mack and the boys were beyond pale. Sam Malloy didn't speak to them as they went by the boiler. They drew into themselves and no one could foresee how they would come out of the cloud. For there are two possible reactions to social ostracism -- either a man emerges determined to be better, purer, and kindlier or he goes bad, challenges the world and does even worse things. This last is by far the commonest reaction to stigma."

Isn't this so true? I've even seen it in cases of deep hurt or sin. We get sucked in to ourselves and then we choose how we get out of it. My pastor says it like this: we can get better or we can get bitter. My prayer is that we all choose "better" and make the hard choices to find complete healing in Jesus.

"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."

Insightful, is it not?

I'm finishing up all the Steinbeck left in my Unread Library, and I'm working on No. 14 - The Moon is Down right now.