John Steinbeck's Cannery Row tells the fictional story of a community by using an ensemble cast of what are truly "characters" who, during the worst days of the Great Depression, live in a poor industrialized neighborhood called Cannery Row just outside Monterrey, CA.
Its story structure is called "episodic" because the overall story can be broken down into individual, easy-to-watch-or-read "episodes" or "chapters," short stories that all work together to tell a longer and much larger story. Typically, episodic stories have "ensemble" casts of characters who play off one another to bring off the entire work. That's certainly the case with Cannery Row and Schitts Creek.
The word "ensemble" is French in origin. It may sound like a "fancy" word in English, but in French all it means is "together."
Whether you're viewing comedy TV shows like Schitts Creek or reading novels like Cannery Row, the episodic story structure lends itself very nicely to humor. And invariably, I've found, episodic stories feature an ensemble cast of characters.
Sure, Schitts Creek has its lead characters and its "stars;" so does Cannery Row, but the primary concern of both works is to tell a story of a community, using an ensemble cast, not just one or two principal protagonists.
So, for just a moment, let's look at the episodic story structure of Cannery Row. I think it's very soundly devised, beginning at the spiritual center of the community, and moving outward.
At the very heart of Cannery Row is Lee Chong who knows everyone because virtually everyone in the neighborhood owes him money. The novel starts off describing Lee Chong and his grocery. It goes on to tell how, after Lee purchases a nearby vacant building in payment for grocery debts, he negotiates a deal with a character named Mac "and the boys" (his cronies) to occupy the property in exchange for a monthly "rent" which Lee knows very well Mac and the boys will never pay.
So, given Cannery Row's episodic "start at the center and move outward" story structure, it's not surprising that the next major chapter (which is chapter three; chapter two is what I'd call an "interlude") discusses how Mack and the boys move into this vacant property; how they furnish it, and come to name it "The Palace Flophouse."
We learn that Mack is a no-account, extremely clever "bum," who's the ringleader of "Eddie and the rest, and whose ultimate goal is to live a life that never requires one to show up at a job. (Just as well, because during The Great Depression in the 1930s, there were an extremely limited number of those to go around.)
The next chapter describes the property directly to the left of the Palace, "the stern and stately whore house of Dora Flood; a decent, clean, honest, old-fashioned sporting house where a man can take a glass of beer among friends."
From this brief description I think you can begin to see how the novel's story structure contributes to making Cannery Row delightfully entertaining to read.
Cannery Row pushes beyond mere ensemble. It allows for individual characters, or pairs of characters to "have their own chapters" while the lead characters are off-stage. It's a perfect story structure for a novel like Cannery Row, where the tone is comic, and the reader gets to enjoy a series of eccentric and poignant characters mixing it up.
An episodic story structure is extremely solid when it's used to tell a comic or comedic story. Think of the TV show Office from the 1990s, or Ricky Gervais's current series, After Life. In both shows we see an ensemble cast that supports a story that's larger than any one character. But this kind of cast can also be used to support heroic or adventure stories.
As for why we binge on episodic comedies or action adventures like the ones mentioned here; I think it's that we feel extremely comfortable with the "set-up" of each show while individual chapters or, in the case of TV, individual "episodes" deal with specific stories, some with limited cast members “on stage” at the same time. That's the case with Steinbeck's comic novel Cannery Row as well as with Steinbeck's classic tragedy, The Grapes of Wrath, which I'll be discussing next month. Don't miss it.
