In the back room of the laboratory the white rats in their cages ran and skittered and squeaked. In the corner of a separate cage a mother rat lay over her litter of blind naked children and let them suckle and the mother stared about nervously and fiercely.

In the rattlesnake cage the snakes lay with their chins resting on their own coils and they stared straight ahead out of their scowling dusty black eyes. In another cage a Gila monster with a skin like a beaded bag reared slowly up and dawed heavily and sluggishly at the wire. The anemones in the aquaria blossomed open, with green and purple tentacles and pale green stomachs. The little sea water pump whirred softly and the needles of driven water hissed into the tanks forcing lines of bubbles under the surface.

It was the hour of the pearl. Lee Chong brought his garbage cans out to the curb. The bouncer stood on the porch of the Bear Flag and scratched his stomach. Sam Malloy crawled out of the boiler and sat on his wood block and looked at the lightening east. Over on the rocks near Hopkins Marine Station the sea lions barked monotonously. The old Chinaman came up out of the sea with his dripping basket and flipflapped up the hill.

Then a car turned into Cannery Row and Doc drove up to the front of the laboratory. His eyes were red rimmed with fatigue. He moved slowly with tiredness. When the car had stopped, he sat still for a moment to let the road jumps get out of his nerves. Then he climbed out of the car. At his step on the stairs, the rattlesnakes ran out their tongues and listened with their waving forked tongues. The rats scampered madly about the cages. Doc climbed the stairs. He looked in wonder at the sagging door and at the broken window. The weariness seemed to go out of him. He stepped quickly inside. Then he went quickly from room to room, stepping around the broken glass. He bent down quickly and picked up a smashed phonograph record and looked at its title.

In the kitchen the spilled grease had turned white on the floor. Doc’s eyes flamed red with anger. He sat down on his couch and his head settled between his shoulders and his body weaved a little in his rage. Suddenly he jumped up and turned on the power in his great phonograph. He put on a record and put down the arm. Only a hissing roar came from the loudspeaker. He lifted the arm, stopped the turntable, and sat down on the couch again.

On the stairs there were bumbling uncertain footsteps and through the door came Mack. His face was red. He stood uncertainly in the middle of the room. “Doc—” he said— “I and the boys—”

For the moment Doc hadn’t seemed to see him, Now he leaped to his feet. Mack shuffled backward. “Did you do this?”

“Well, I and the boys—” Doc’s small hard fist whipped out and splashed against Mack’s mouth. Doc’s eyes shone with a red animal rage. Mack sat down heavily on the floor. Doc’s fist was hard and sharp. Mack’s lips were split against his teeth and one front tooth bent sharply inward. “Get up!” said Doc.

Mack lumbered to his feet. His hands were at his sides. Doc hit him again, a cold calculated punishing punch in the mouth, The blood spurted from Mack’s lips and ran down his chin. He tried to lick his lips.

“Put up your hands. Fight, you son of a bitch,” Doc cried, and he hit him again and heard the crunch of breaking teeth.

Mack’s head jolted but he was braced now so he wouldn’t fall. And his hands stayed at his sides. “Go ahead, Doc,” he said thickly through his broken lips. “I got it coming.”

Doc’s shoulders sagged with defeat. “You son of a bitch,” he said bitterly. “Oh you dirty son of a bitch.” He sat down on the couch and looked at his cut knuckles.

Mack sat down in a chair and looked at him. Mack’s eyes were wide and full of pain. He didn’t even wipe away the blood that flowed down his chin. In Doc’s head the monotonal opening of Monteverdi’s Hor ch’ el Ciel e la Terra began to form, the infinitely sad and resigned mourning of Petrarch for laura. Doc saw Mack’s broken mouth through the music, the music that was in his head and in the air. Mack sat perfectly still, almost as though he could hear the music too. Doc glanced at the place where the Monteverdi album was and then he remembered that the phonograph was broken.

He got to his feet. “Go wash your face,” he said and he went out and down the stairs and across the street to Lee Chong’s. Lee wouldn’t look at him as he got two quarts of beer out of the icebox. He took the money without saying anything. Doc walked back across the street.

Mack was in the toilet cleaning his bloody face with wet paper towels. Doc opened a bottle and poured gently into a glass, holding it at an angle so that very little collar rose to the top. He filled a second tall glass and carried the two into the front room. Mack came back dabbing at his mouth with wet towelling. Doc indicated the beer with his head. Now Mack opened his throat and poured down half the glass without swallowing. He sighed explosively and stared into the beer. Doc had already finished his glass. He brought the bottle in and filled both glasses again. He sat down on his couch.

“What happened?” he asked.

Mack looked at the floor and a drop of blood fell from his lips into his beer. He mopped his split lips again. “I and the boys wanted to give you a party. We thought you’d be home last night.”

Doc nodded his head. “I see.”

“She got out of hand,” said Mack. “It don’t do no good to say I’m sorry. I been sorry all my life. This ain’t no new thing. It’s always like this.” He swallowed deeply from his glass. “I had a wife,” Mack said. “Same thing. Ever’thing I done turned sour. She couldn’t stand it any more. If I done a good thing it got poisoned up some way. If I give her a present they was something wrong with it. She only got hurt from me. She couldn’t stand it no more. Same thing ever’ place ’til I just got to downing. I don’t do nothin’ but down no more. Try to make the boys laugh.”

Doc nodded again. The music was sounding in his head again, complaint and resignation all in one. “I know,” he said.

“I was glad when you hit me,” Mack went on. “I thought to myself — ‘Maybe this will teach me. Maybe I’ll remember this.’ But, hell, I won’t remember nothin’. I won’t learn nothin’. Doc,” Mack cried, “the way I seen it, we was all happy and havin’ a good time. You was glad because we was givin’ you a party. And we was glad. The way I seen it, it was a good party.” He waved his hand at the wreckage on the floor. “Same thing when I was married. I’d think her out and then — but it never come off that way.”

“I know,” said Doc. He opened the second quart of beer and poured the glasses full.

“Doc,” said Mack, “I and the boys will clean up here— and we’ll pay for the staff that’s broke. If it takes us five years we’ll pay for it.”

Doc shook his head slowly and wiped the beer foam from his mustache. “No,” he said, “I’ll clean it up. I know where everything goes.”

“We’ll pay for it, Doc.”

“No you won’t, Mack,” said Doc. “You’ll think about it and it’ll worry you for quite a long time, but you won’t pay for it. There’s maybe three hundred dollars in broken museum glass. Don’t say you’ll pay for it. That will just keep you uneasy. It might be two or three years before you forget about it and felt entirely easy again. And you wouldn’t pay it anyway.”

“I guess you’re right,” said Mack. “God damn it, I know you’re right. What can we do?”

“I’m over it,” said Doc. “Those socks in the mouth got it out of my system. Let’s forget it.”

Mack finished his beer and stood up. “So long, Doc,” he said.

“So long. Say, Mack — what happened to your wife?”

“I don’t know,” said Mack, “She went away.” He walked clumsily down the stairs and crossed over and walked up the lot and up the chicken walk to the Palace Flophouse. Doc watched his progress through the window. And then wearily he got a broom from behind the water heater. It took him all day to clean up the mess.

John Steinbeck, Cannery Row

Monterey is a city with a long and brilliant literary tradition. It remembers with pleasure and some glory that Robert Louis Stevenson lived there. Treasure Island certainly has the topography and the coastal plan of Pt. Lobos. More recently in Carmel there have been a great number of literary men about, but there is not the old flavor, the old dignity of the true belles-lettres. Once the town was greatly outraged over what the citizens considered a slight to an author. It had to do with the death of Josh Billings, the great humorist.

Where the new postoffice is, there used to be a deep gulch with water flowing in it and a little foot bridge over it. On one side of the gulch was a fine old adobe and on the other the house of the doctor who handled all the sickness, birth, and death in the town. He worked with animals too and, having studied in France, he even dabbled in the new practice of embalming bodies before they were buried. Some of the old-timers considered this sentimental and some thought it wasteful and to some it was sacrilegious since there was no provision for it in any sacred volume. But the better and richer families were coming to it and it looked to become a fad.

One morning elderly Mr. Carriaga was walking from his house on the hill down toward Alvarado Street. He was just crossing the foot bridge when his attention was drawn to a small boy and a dog struggling up out of the gulch. The boy carried a liver while the dog dragged yards of intestine at the end of which a stomach dangled. Mr. Carriaga paused and addressed the little boy politely: “Good morning.”

In those days little boys were courteous. “Good morning, sir.”

“Where are you going with the liver?”

“I’m going to make some chum and catch some mackerel.”

Mr. Carriaga smiled. “And the dog, will he catch mackerel too?”

“The dog found that. It’s his, sir. We found them in the gulch.”

Mr. Carriaga smiled and strolled on and then his mind began to work. That isn’t a beef liver, it’s too small. And it isn’t a calf’s liver, it’s too red. It isn’t a sheep’s liver— Now his mind was alert. At the corner he met Mr. Ryan.

“Anyone die in Monterey last night?” he asked.

“Not that I know of,” said Mr. Ryan.

“Anyone killed?”

“No.”

They walked on together and Mr. Carriaga told about the little boy and the dog.

At the Adobe Bar a number of citizens were gathered for their morning conversation. There Mr. Carriaga told his story again and he had just finished when the constable came into the Adobe. He should know if anyone had died. “No one died in Monterey,” he said. “But Josh Billings died out at the Hotel del Monte.”

The men in the bar were silent. And the same thought went through all their minds. Josh Billings was a great man, a great writer. He had honored Monterey by dying there and he had been degraded. Without much discussion a committee formed made up of everyone there. The stern men walked quickly to the gulch and across the foot bridge and they hammered on the door of the doctor who had studied in France.

He had worked late. The knocking got him out of bed and brought him tousled of hair and beard to the door in his nightgown. Mr. Carriaga addressed him sternly: “Did you embalm Josh Billings?”

“Why—yes.”

“What did you do with his tripas?”

“Why—I threw them in the gulch where I always do.”

They made him dress quickly then and they hurried down to the beach. If the little boy had gone quickly about his business, it would have been too late. He was just getting into a boat when the committee arrived. The intestine was in the sand where the dog had abandoned it.

Then the French doctor was made to collect the parts. He was forced to wash them reverently and pick out as much sand as possible. The doctor himself had to stand the expense of the leaden box which went into the coffin of Josh Billings. For Monterey was not a town to let dishonor come to a literary man.

John Steinbeck, Cannery Row

I first started listening avidly to Joni Mitchell’s music as a teenager in the 1970s, after being introduced to her albums by a college roomate, who adored Ladies of the Canyon and Blue. We were attending conservatory in Baltimore, both studying piano performance. Officially, we were there to discover our callings as musicians, to be initiated into music’s secrets and gain some control over its brute power. Just as importantly, thought not listed on the curriculum, we were learning to sort through our own raw and confusing emotions as we formed our adult selves, and for both of us, the two programs of study were inseparably linked.

Lloyd Whitesell, The music of Joni Mitchell

For my part, I agree that an uncritical attitude toward analytical precepts and the process of canonization is untenable. Nevertheless I hope that as listeners, we would be prepared to appreciate technical skill and subtlety wherever we encounter it, without enshrining it as a necessary standard of value.

Lloyd Whitesell, The music of Joni Mitchell

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