Cannery Row
Novel by John SteinbeckWikipedia
6
MENTIONS
4
EPISODES
4
PODCASTS
Search complete. 6 mentions across 4 episodes found for "Cannery Row".
Sep 3, 2026
Carmelita Valdez McKoyGUEST
It's in the Salinas Valley.
Carmelita Valdez McKoyGUEST
Anybody who's familiar with the author John Steinbeck, East of Eden, Grapes of Wrath, Cannery Row, Tortilla Flats, was born and raised in Salinas, California, and wrote about the area.
Carmelita Valdez McKoyGUEST
So James Dean fans, if you've seen East of Eden, that takes place where I grew up.
Liam CarmeloHOST
Oh, what? Really?
Chris BaggHOST
Yeah, but it probably could have been a much slenderer and better and more well rendered.
Chris BaggHOST
I mean, I think in the hands of Steinbeck, you're going to get something, you're going to get more of a cannery row or something like that, where it's short, it's tight, you get the point, it's complicated, it's beautiful, and you're out.
Chris BaggHOST
And then this, I think that's such a great point that you brought up, that the family becomes... just this kind of proxy for for everyone that's poor in the stockyards and that turns it from this place of like okay this could be a really useful social novel um and it and it flattens it and that's a bummer you know like like you know tolstoy would sometimes sort of like wander into these areas of like pastiche and whatnot.
Chris BaggHOST
And you're like, what are we doing here? We're just out in the fields, cutting wheat down, talking about God.
30 MINS LATER
Chris BaggHOST
that's about it.
Chris BaggHOST
And, you know, so I guess I would say that I have like a good dutiful American high schoolers experience of John Steinbeck.
Jesse DukesHOST
I mean, Cannery Row is so masterful, I think.
Jesse DukesHOST
Cannery Row is great.
Joseph OgilvieGUEST
And, you know, that kind of chimed with, you know, this kind of ongoing thing that had been in my head of, you know, where are these fish coming from? What, you know, what do the systems look like? How does this all kind of fit together? And I started kind of following that and trying to work out, you know, what happened to all the sardines, you know, once they were ground up and turned into fertilizer.
Joseph OgilvieGUEST
And then obviously it chimed with Steinbeck and Cannery Row.
Joseph OgilvieGUEST
And so that was this kind of, you know, suddenly seeing this kind of like ecological, I don't know, ecological destruction as the backdrop to this book that I'd always loved.
Joseph OgilvieGUEST
I sort of, you know, got more and more interested and I kind of got to work out what's going on here.
Terry GorryHOST
I think his writing is beautiful.
Terry GorryHOST
I love East of Eden, Grapes of Wrath, Of Mice and Men, Cannery Row, Tortilla Flat.
Terry GorryHOST
So Steinbeck.
Terry GorryHOST
Thirdly, Graham Greene, The Power and the Glory, The Heart of the Matter, The End of the Affair, The Quiet American, Brighton Rock.