The Log from the Sea of Cortez

by Steinbeck, John; Astro, Richard

  The clearest picture of the differences between Steinbeck and Ricketts regarding the proper course of human action for those who can “break through” can be drawn from a short film script Steinbeck wrote during the composition of Sea of Cortez, and an essay Ricketts wrote in response. Steinbeck returned to Mexico for a short time during the summer of 1940 with filmmaker Herb Klein to make a study of disease in an isolated village; this study was made into a well-received documentary entitled The Forgotten Village. The script focuses on the initiative of a young boy, Juan Diego, who is outraged because a deadly microbial virus, which has polluted the village’s water supply and has killed his brother and made his sister seriously ill, is being treated by witch doctors when real medical help is nearby. Juan Diego leaves the village to find the doctors of the Rural Health Service, who return with him to cure the problem. Noting that “changes in people are never quick,” Steinbeck prophesies that, because of the Juan Diegos of Mexico, “the change will come, is coming; the long climb out of darkness. Already the people are learning, changing their lives, working, living in new ways.”

  After reading Steinbeck’s text, Ricketts wrote an essay he called his “Thesis and Materials for a Script on Mexico”—actually an antiscript to Steinbeck’s. In it, Ricketts noted that “the chief character in John’s script is the Indian boy who becomes so imbued with the spirit of modern medical progress that he leaves the traditional way of his people to associate himself with the new thing.”

  The working out of a script for the “other side” might correspondingly be achieved through the figure of some wise and mellow old man, who has long ago developed beyond the expediencies of economic drives and power drives, and to whom for guidance in adolescent troubles some grandchild comes.... A wise old man, present during the time of building a high speed road through a primitive community, appropriately might point out the evils of the encroaching mechanistic civilization to a young person.

  In his best fiction, Steinbeck worked out the conflict between primitivism and progress, between his own view of the world and that of Ricketts—both of which were based, of course, on a scientific view of life organized around the concept of wholeness which is as spiritual as it is biological. And the Ed Ricketts characters in Steinbeck’s fiction (they are several and are usually named “Doc”) are those who are somehow cut off. They see and understand, but they cannot act on the basis of that understanding for the betterment of the species. Doc Burton in In Dubious Battle sees and understands the plight of the striking apple pickers in the Tor-gas Valley, but he wanders off into the night, frustrated by his inability to act on their behalf. He is “reincarnated” as Jim Casy in The Grapes of Wrath, who returns as Christ from the wilderness, and, seeing life whole, realizing that “all that lives is holy,” gives his life to aid the dispossessed and disinherited. And there is Doc in Cannery Row, who wants only to “savor the hot taste of life,” even as the Row itself (which for Doc and his friends is “a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream”) is really an island surrounded by an encroaching society which will ultimately destroy it. Little wonder the book is dedicated “to Ed Ricketts, who knows why or should.” And there is its sequel, Sweet Thursday, where the Ricketts character seems even more isolated in a book which is less sweet than bittersweet. And finally there is that strange play-novelette, Burning Bright, in which the Ricketts character (named Friend Ed) teaches the Steinbeck character (Joe Saul) how to see and understand things whole and then how to receive (a trait which, in “About Ed Ricketts,” Steinbeck identified as among Ricketts’s greatest talents).

  In the Log, Steinbeck writes a passage which could easily have been taken from the work of William Emerson Ritter (it appears nowhere in Ricketts’s notes on the trip), in which he reflects that “there are colonies of pelagic tunicates which have a shape like the finger of a glove.” Steinbeck remarks that “each member of the colony is an individual, but the colony is another individual animal, not at all like the sum of its individuals.” And, says Steinbeck, “I am much more than the sum of my cells and, for all I know, they are much more than the division of me.” There is “no quietism in such acceptance,” notes the novelist, “but rather the basis for a far deeper understanding of us and our world.” This is Ritter’s organismal conception, which Steinbeck learned at Hopkins and discussed for so many years with Ricketts. At the core of the argument is the premise that, since given properties of parts are determined by or explained in terms of the whole, the whole is directive, is capable of directing the parts. In other words, the whole acts as a causal unit—on its own parts. As stated above, W. C. Allee’s doctrine of social cooperation among animals was unconscious and involuntary; the process of cooperation was automatic. What appealed to Allee and to Ricketts was that this concept offered them an approach to reality that enabled them to break through to a view of the total picture. But seeing and understanding the whole picture, what Jim Casy calls “the whole shebang,” and acting on the basis of that understanding, are two different things. Sea of Cortez enables us to see Ricketts and Steinbeck searching for and finding whole pictures. Steinbeck’s novels and Ricketts’s more recently published essays and articles provide us with a deeper understanding of the similarities and differences in their respective worldviews.

  We read Sea of Cortez for its own sake as a first-rate work of travel literature. We read it also to understand the range and depth of Ricketts’s impact on Steinbeck’s fiction. And this permits us to see Steinbeck’s fictional accomplishments in a new and fresh light. In so doing, we see not just the absurdity of arguments raised by those who attacked this or that Steinbeck novel on the basis of his alleged belief in any particular political ideology. We see also that his thinking is not worn and obsolete, but is as current as the modern environmental movement, which it predates and with which it has so much in common. If we read and consider Sea of Cortez in all its complexity, we see John Steinbeck fusing science and philosophy, art and ethics by combining the compelling if complex metaphysics of Ed Ricketts with his own commitment to social action by a species for whom he never gave up hope, and whom he believed could and would triumph over the tragic miracle of its own consciousness.

  SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING

  Allee, W. C. Animal Aggregations. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1931.

  Astro, Richard. John Steinbeck and Edward F. Ricketts: The Shaping of a Novelist. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1973.

  ——. Edward F. Ricketts. Western Writers Series. Boise, Ida.: Boise State University Press, 1976.

  Benson, Jackson J. The True Adventures of John Steinbeck. New York: Viking Press, 1984.

  Boodin, John Elof. Cosmic Evolution. New York: Macmillan Press, 1925. Fadiman, Clifton. “Of Crabs and Men,” New Yorker, December 6, 1941, 107.

  Fontenrose, Joseph. John Steinbeck: An Introduction and Interpretation. New York: Barnes and Noble, 1964.

  Hedgpeth, Joel W. “Philosophy on Cannery Row.” In Steinbeck: The Man and His Work. Edited by Richard Astro and Tetsumaro Hayashi. Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, 1971.

  Knox, Maxine, and Mary Rodriguez. Steinbeck’s Street: Cannery Row. San Rafael, Calif.: Presidio Press, 1980.

  Lisca, Peter. The Wide World of John Steinbeck. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1958.

  Lyman, John. “Of and About the Sea,” American Neptune, April 1942, 183.

  Mangelsdorf, Tom. A History of Steinbeck’s Cannery Row. Santa Cruz, Calif.: Western Tanager Press, 1986.

  Person, Richard. History of Monterey. Monterey, Calif.: City of Monterey, 1972.

  Ricketts, Edward F., and Jack Calvin. Between Pacific Tides. 3d ed. Foreword by John Steinbeck. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1952.

  ——. The Outer Shores. 2 vols. Edited by Joel W. Hedgpeth. Eureka, Calif.: Mad River Press, 1978.

  ——. “The Philosophy of Breaking Through.” Unpublished MS, 1933.

  ——. “A Spiri
tual Morphology of Poetry.” Unpublished MS, 1933.

  ——. “Thesis and Materials for a Script on Mexico.” Unpublished MS, 1940.

  Ritter, William Emerson. The Unity of the Organism, or the Organismal Conception. 2 vols. Boston: Gorham Press, 1919.

  ——and Edna W. Bailey. The Organismal Conception: Its Place in Science and Its Bearing on Philosophy. Berkeley: University of California Publications in Zoology, 1931.

  Steinbeck, Elaine, and Robert Walsten, eds. Steinbeck: A Life in Letters. New York: Viking Press, 1975.

  Steinbeck, John. Cannery Row. New York: Viking Press, 1945.

  ——. The Forgotten Village. New York. Viking Press, 1941.

  ——. The Grapes of Wrath. New York: Viking Press, 1939.

  A NOTE ON THE TEXT

  The history of the publication of Sea of Cortez is interesting and chiefly involves the issue of joint authorship. Before the book was first published by Viking in December 1941, Steinbeck’s editor, Pascal Covici, suggested that the title page read as follows:

  The Sea of Cortez

  By John Steinbeck

  With a scientific appendix comprising materials for a source-book

  on the marine animals of the Panamic Faunal Province

  By Edward F. Ricketts

  Steinbeck objected vigorously, telling Covici that “this book is the product of the work and thinking of both of us and the setting down of the words is of no importance.... I not only disapprove of your plan—but forbid it.”

  The book was originally published as Sea of Cortez: A Leisurely Journal of Travel and Research by John Steinbeck and Edward F. Ricketts, with copyright in both authors’ names. In 1951, the narrative portion of the book was published separately by Viking as The Log from the Sea of Cortez, with Steinbeck’s preface “About Ed Ricketts.” This Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics edition is based on the text of the 1951 publication; Steinbeck’s “About Ed Ricketts” has been moved to the back matter as an appendix to the main text.

  INTRODUCTION

  The design of a book is the pattern of a reality controlled and shaped by the mind of the writer. This is completely understood about poetry or fiction, but it is too seldom realized about books of fact. And yet the impulse which drives a man to poetry will send another man into the tide pools and force him to try to report what he finds there. Why is an expedition to Tibet undertaken, or a sea bottom dredged? Why do men, sitting at the microscope, examine the calcareous plates of a sea-cucumber, and, finding a new arrangement and number, feel an exaltation and give the new species a name, and write about it possessively? It would be good to know the impulse truly, not to be confused by the “services to science” platitudes or the other little mazes into which we entice our minds so that they will not know what we are doing.

  We have a book to write about the Gulf of California. We could do one of several things about its design. But we have decided to let it form itself: its boundaries a boat and a sea; its duration a six weeks’ charter time; its subject everything we could see and think and even imagine; its limits—our own without reservation.

  We made a trip into the Gulf; sometimes we dignified it by calling it an expedition. Once it was called the Sea of Cortez, and that is a better-sounding and a more exciting name. We stopped in many little harbors and near barren coasts to collect and preserve the marine invertebrates of the littoral. One of the reasons we gave ourselves for this trip—and when we used this reason, we called the trip an expedition—was to observe the distribution of invertebrates, to see and to record their kinds and numbers, how they lived together, what they ate, and how they reproduced. That plan was simple, straight-forward, and only a part of the truth. But we did tell the truth to ourselves. We were curious. Our curiosity was not limited, but was as wide and horizonless as that of Darwin or Agassiz or Linnaeus or Pliny. We wanted to see everything our eyes would accommodate, to think what we could, and, out of our seeing and thinking, to build some kind of structure in modeled imitation of the observed reality. We knew that what we would see and record and construct would be warped, as all knowledge patterns are warped, first, by the collective pressure and stream of our time and race, second by the thrust of our individual personalities. But knowing this, we might not fall into too many holes—we might maintain some balance between our warp and the separate thing, the external reality. The oneness of these two might take its contribution from both. For example: the Mexican sierra has “XVII-15-IX” spines in the dorsal fin. These can easily be counted. But if the sierra strikes hard on the line so that our hands are burned, if the fish sounds and nearly escapes and finally comes in over the rail, his colors pulsing and his tail beating the air, a whole new relational externality has come into being—an entity which is more than the sum of the fish plus the fisherman. The only way to count the spines of the sierra unaffected by this second relational reality is to sit in a laboratory, open an evil-smelling jar, remove a stiff colorless fish from formalin solution, count the spines, and write the truth “D. XVII-15-IX.” There you have recorded a reality which cannot be assailed—probably the least important reality concerning either the fish or yourself.

  It is good to know what you are doing. The man with his pickled fish has set down one truth and has recorded in his experience many lies. The fish is not that color, that texture, that dead, nor does he smell that way.

  Such things we had considered in the months of planning our expedition and we were determined not to let a passion for unassailable little truths draw in the horizons and crowd the sky down on us. We knew that what seemed to us true could be only relatively true anyway. There is no other kind of observation. The man with his pickled fish has sacrificed a great observation about himself, the fish, and the focal point, which is his thought on both the sierra and himself,

  We suppose this was the mental provisioning of our expedition. We said, “Let’s go wide open. Let’s see what we see, record what we find, and not fool ourselves with conventional scientific strictures. We could not observe a completely objective Sea of Cortez anyway, for in that lonely and uninhabited Gulf our boat and ourselves would change it the moment we entered. By going there, we would bring a new factor to the Gulf. Let us consider that factor and not be betrayed by this myth of permanent objective reality. If it exists at all, it is only available in pickled tatters or in distorted flashes. Let us go,” we said, “into the Sea of Cortez, realizing that we become forever a part of it; that our rubber boots slogging through a flat of eel-grass, that the rocks we turn over in a tide pool, make us truly and permanently a factor in the ecology of the region. We shall take something away from it, but we shall leave something too.” And if we seem a small factor in a huge pattern, nevertheless it is of relative importance. We take a tiny colony of soft corals from a rock in a little water world. And that isn’t terribly important to the tide pool. Fifty miles away the Japanese shrimp boats are dredging with overlapping scoops, bringing up tons of shrimps, rapidly destroying the species so that it may never come back, and with the species destroying the ecological balance of the whole region. That isn’t very important in the world. And thousands of miles away the great bombs are falling and the stars are not moved thereby. None of it is important or all of it is.

  We determined to go doubly open so that in the end we could, if we wished, describe the sierra thus: “D. XVII-15-IX; A. II-15-IX,” but also we could see the fish alive and swimming, feel it plunge against the lines, drag it threshing over the rail, and even finally eat it. And there is no reason why either approach should be inaccurate. Spine-count description need not suffer because another approach is also used. Perhaps out of the two approaches, we thought, there might emerge a picture more complete and even more accurate than either alone could produce. And so we went.

  1

  How does one organize an expedition: what equipment is taken, what sources read; what are the little dangers and the large ones? No one has ever written this. The information is not available. The design is simple
, as simple as the design of a well-written book. Your expedition will be enclosed in the physical framework of start, direction, ports of call, and return. These you can forecast with some accuracy; and in the better-known parts of the world it is possible to a degree to know what the weather will be in a given season, how high and low the tides, and the hours of their occurrence. One can know within reason what kind of boat to take, how much food will be necessary for a given crew for a given time, what medicines are usually needed—all this subject to accident, of course.

  We had read what books were available about the Gulf and they were few and in many cases confused. The Coast Pilot had not been adequately corrected for some years. A few naturalists with specialties had gone into the Gulf and, in the way of specialists, had seen nothing they hadn’t wanted to. Clavigero, a Jesuit of the eighteenth century, had seen more than most and reported what he saw with more accuracy than most. There were some romantic accounts by young people who had gone into the Gulf looking for adventure and, of course, had found it. The same romantic drive aimed at the stockyards would not be disappointed. From the information available, a few facts did emerge. The Sea of Cortez, or the Gulf of California, is a long, narrow, highly dangerous body of water. It is subject to sudden and vicious storms of great intensity. The months of March and April are usually quite calm and dependable and the March-April tides of 1940 were particularly good for collecting in the littoral.