In Monterey, Sweet Thursday is sunny and clear, a day when anything can happen.
Returning to the scene of Cannery Row, Steinbeck brilliantly creates its bawdy, high- spirited world of bums, drunks and hookers, telling the story of what happened to everyone after the war. There are colourful characters old and new: Doc, still there for everyone else but feeling strangely sad himself, and Suzy, the new hustler in town who might just be the girl to save him.
Reviewed by Mick Herron in Slightly Foxed Issue 66.
Partying down at the Palace
MICK HERRON
Sweet Thursday, published in 1954, is a sequel to Cannery Row (1945). Both are set in the Californian town of Monterey, once a bright and bustling place whose canning industry meant that the locals could always find employment when all else failed, but which in the post-war years – ‘when all the pilchards were caught and canned and eaten’ – has become a sleepy backwater, no part of which is dozier than Cannery Row itself, where the same few dollars make the same regular journeys between saloon and grocery and brothel, everyone owes money to somebody else, and nobody’s really keeping score . . .
Extract from Slightly Foxed Issue 66, Summer 2020
Partying down at the Palace
Sweet Thursday, published in 1954, is a sequel to Cannery Row (1945). Both are set in the Californian town of Monterey, once a bright and bustling place whose canning industry meant that the locals...
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