Sweet Thursday

Sweet Thursday is a novel by the American writer John Steinbeck, published in 1954 and a sequel to Cannery Row, set in the years after the Second World War.

The book returns to the weedy lots, junk heaps and flophouses of Monterey and to the characters who live off them, and its plot is a comedy of well-meant interference: Doc is short of money and out of sorts, his neighbours in the Palace Flophouse decide that what he needs is to fall in love, and their campaign is conducted with the practical cunning of people who have nothing else to organise. Mack and the boys, Dora and the girls at the Bear Flag and Lee Chong with his store are all back, and the novel treats the neighbourhood's conspiracies about Doc's private life as a civic project with minutes and strategy. Steinbeck wrote the novel with a stage in mind, since there had been interest in making Cannery Row into a musical, and his attempt to write something Broadway could use explains the differences between the two books, including a version of Mack who recites poetry and sings. Rodgers and Hammerstein eventually took it on for the stage after Frank Loesser declined, and the novel's mixture of sentiment and low comedy is closer to the theatre than to the earlier book.