I find it difficult to remember Cannery Row after over twenty years distance (I read it in high school, although it wasn't assigned. I enjoyed Of Mice and Men so much I had to keep reading), but I do envision Mack walking past the sardine factories as vividly as if I read it this morning.

The plot details, the way all the supporting characters linked up, even who Mack and the boys were doing their "thing" for (hell...I can't even remember what "thing" they were doing) are gone. I've lost my access to the details. But there is a feeling, an impression, that has always stuck with me. An impression that Mack and the boys faced life well, a way I'd like face life if I could.

And that feeling has, in turn, tainted many of my experiences with the Beats, especially the characters of Jack Kerouac.

Kerouac is sort of "the King of the Bums," but I think John Steinbeck bummed him one better with Mack, the original bum.

I'd much rather hang with the easy nature of Mack and the boys than the self-absorption and narcissism of Sal Paradise or Ray Smith -- at least I've felt that way for two decades. And that feeling is often renewed when I think about Cannery Row or the Beats who followed.

If there weren't so many books I want to read in this life, I 'd revisit Cannery Row and see if my feelings still hold up, but then maybe it's better to just let my feelings be.

I love digging Mack more than his literary offspring, and I'd hate to kill the glow that surrounds what memories I do have of Steinbeck's early 20th century California town.

It's tempting, though...so maybe someday.