I'll bet you've heard of the expression "ensemble cast," used to describe certain plays and movies. It denotes "a group story structure" where characters interact with one another in the telling of the story rather than the story focusing on any single protagonist who undergoes a catharsis.
Ensemble or group-story structures lend themselves extremely well to comic or comedic tales. That's the case with Cannery Row, where we get to enjoy a cast of funny, eccentric characters interacting with one another.
In my view, the funniest character of them all is an artist by the name of Henri whose art includes creating assemblages of chicken feathers to paint portraits of chickens. Well, as we hear two other characters, Doc and Hazel, talking about Henri, we learn he's had a turn of artistic inspiration: "…He done all our pictures with chicken feathers, and now he says he got to do them all over again with nutshell. He says he changed his—his med—medium…."
"He still building his boat?"
"Sure," said Hazel. "He's got it all changed around. New kind of boat. I guess he'll take it apart and change it. Doc—is he nuts?"
"Nuts? he asked. "Oh, yes, I guess so. Nuts about the same amount we are, only in a different way."
"But that boat," he cried. "He's been building that boat for seven years that I know of… Every time he gets it nearly finished, he changes it and starts it over again. I think he's nuts. Seven years on a boat."
"You don't understand," he said gently. "Henri loves boats but he's afraid of the ocean."
"What's he want a boat for then?" Hazel demanded.
"He likes boats," said Doc. "But suppose he finishes his boat. Once it's finished people will say, 'Why don't you put it in the water?' Then if he puts it in the water, he'll have to go out in it, and he hates the water. So, you see, he never finishes the boat—so he doesn't have to ever launch it."
When I read this, I laughed uproareously assuming Henri was a stand-in for the type of artist who never gives himself permission to finish a work of art either because he or she is a perfectionist or, worse, a controlling coward who can't bear to send the finished work out into the world where it may be criticized. That kind of artist always finds something to change. If it's not fear of criticism, it may be an artist who doesn't know what he or she wants to say in the first place. An artist like Henri operates like a chameleon; he or she always wants to incorporate the latest artistic trends into his or her work.
If Henri were a novelist he'd never finish his novel because he doesn't have a strong conviction about what he wants to say. Just as Henri is afraid of the ocean, this novelist is afraid of launching his novel into the world, and learning what readers and critics think of it; this is, finding out if it floats or sinks.
Reading about Henri tickled me because I recognized how some of Henri's artistic traits at one time summed me up perfectly as a novelist; the satirical sendup of your's truly hit far too close to home for comfort.
While it's true that at one point I may have resembled Henri, that's not the case today. True, for years I wandered in the desert, not sure what I wanted to say or how I wanted to say it. I've long since stopped wandering. I'm on my way towards completing and launching my boat. I know exactly what I want to say with my novel, and I fully expect, if it's taken seriously, as I hope it to be, people will say about it whatever they will. I'll never forget that my novel will be imperfect because, after all, it's written by a human being.
That short sketch of Henri turned me into an ardent fan of John Steinbeck's writing. I thought to myself, either Mr. Steinbeck at one point in his life came across someone like Henri (perhaps when he hung out at Cannery Row) or else, more likely, I believe, he recognized that there is a little bit of Henri inside him as well as inside every artist. It's someone who is reluctant to launch his work into the world to sail the ocean's seas where everyone can read it; it's an author who always wants to be thought of as avant-garde. But the truth of the matter is, the instant the work sails into the public domain, it starts becoming dated.
Next month: More about Cannery Row's story structure.
