Not Sure About the Heart

[thisnewday]

Having FINALLY finished Jay Parini's bio of John Steinbeck--a consumation months in the making and devoutly wished, lol--I've decided to re-read Cannery Row, which I once loved and have a new copy of on my perilously-stacked bookcase, as well as Tortilla Flat, which I also have but had never read.

I've also ordered Sweet Thursday, which was written as a sequel to Cannery Row and was later incorporated into the movie of that title which starred Nick Nolte and Debra Winger. Which I also have on my perilously-stacked bookcase. And which, if the literary landslide doesn't bring me down, I'm also gonna watch.

I'm sort of wondering how I'm gonna feel, this time, about Cannery Row. The first time I read it was during my pre-hippie, bohemian wannabe days, and life has changed, just a little, in the exactly half-century since then. I absolutely loved it then and wonder if I'll still love it now. Same with the movie.

I actually have a Bantam Paperback copy of Sweet Thursday among my perilously piled periodicals. (There are some magazines in there too, I'm almost sure of it. I totally respect and support the responsible use of literary devices such as consonance, assonance, dissonance, and alliteration. And I mention all of them only because I don't want any to feel left out, not because I no longer remember the effing differences between them.)

But the previously-mentioned paperback has such teeeeny, tiiiiiny print that I'd probably go blind trying to read it. So we know the eyes have changed, since our youthful stroll down the streets of Cannery Row.

We're just, you know, not sure about the heart...

LPK
Dreamwidth
11.2.2018

Comments

[mallorys_camera]

I wrote an entire novel about John Steinbeck about eight years ago. And I owned a store on the real-life Cannery Row for a decade. :-) :-)

The cultural anthropologist Joseph Campbell lived briefly in Monterey in 1931-1932, and he fell in love with Steinbeck's first wife, Carol.

My novel was only peripherally about the love triangle, though. I'd imposed a kind of magic plot onto the interactions between the two men in which Steinbeck and Campbell traveled back in time and tried to prevent the burning of the Chinese fishing village that stood on McAbee Beach until Italian fishermen torched it in 1906.

I finished the first draft and then kind of forgot about it. I should fish it out and look at it again one of these days.

[thisnewday]

Yup, I remember Parini's mention of the romance, and how it damaged the marriage, but not much about the context which, along with mention of the consequences, is important too.

However, I think I may be excused for the vagueness of my recollection since it took me forever to read the dang book, lol. So I'm gonna go back and re-read that part of it.

Honestly, Patrizia, you do amaze me with the number and diversity of your careers, enterprizes, accomplishments.

One of my dreams, back in the day, was to ride my small-displacement Suzuki cross-country to California and I blew the engine in the hills just south of Syracuse. Such has been my life.

Since I never made it there, I'd be interested in hearing about your store on Cannery Row. (I did travel to SF several times, when my youngest daughter was at Le Cordon Bleu, but never down to Monterey which I've always wanted to see.)

Sounds like the novel might be interesting too...

[mallorys_camera]

The novel was pretty interesting. I should pull it out and look at it again. I had this idea for a series of novels about Famous Writers and Weird Supernatural Things that happened to them as they were writing.

Steinbeck's Weird Supernatural Thing, as I say, was this sort of time tunnel that opened up between 1932 and 1906 so that when he went scavenging in tide pools with Doc Ricketts and Joseph Campbell, he ended up in the Chinese fishing village that got burned down.

My Little Store sold hot sauce and other chili-themed products. I made the hot sauces from my own recipes, and some of them had Steinbeck-themed names: Beast of Eden; The Chilis of Wrath etc. :-)