The Log from the Sea of Cortez

Adventure, science, philosophy, discovery, environmentalism, camaraderie, humor... this book hit high marks on so many levels for me. Steinbeck and his best friend Ed Ricketts meld into a composite character as they narrate the voyage of the Western Flyer in the Gulf of California, picking up tide pool specimens, interacting with the locals, and shooting the breeze. Powered by 90 cases of beer, their six-week expedition turned out to be fertile ground not only for exploring a fascinating part of the world, but also for plumbing the depths of thought. The writing is almost universally top-notch, and whether this is attributable to Steinbeck's mastery of his craft, or Ricketts' singular mind, or both, it is difficult to say, but in the end perhaps it doesn't matter. Following the log is an excellent character sketch of Ricketts by Steinbeck, written after the former died when his car was hit by a train. The characterizations in the main text are also excellent, including the captain and crew of the Western Flyer, the ship itself, and even the temperamental outboard motor they used on their skiff.

"And it is a strange thing that most of the feeling we call religious, most of the mystical outcrying which is one of the most prized and used and desired reactions of our species, is really the understanding and the attempt to say that man is related to the whole thing, related inextricably to all reality, known and unknowable. This is a simple thing to say, but the profound feeling of it made a Jesus, a St. Augustine, a St. Frances, a Roger Bacon, a Charles Darwin, and an Einstein. Each of them in his own tempo and with his own voice discovered and reaffirmed with astonishment the knowledge that all things are one thing and that one thing is all things—plankton, a shimmering phosphorescence on the sea and the spinning planets and an expanding universe, all bound together by the elastic string of time. It is advisable to look from the tide pool to the stars and then back to the tide pool again."

When I began reading this book I was reminded of [b:Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance|629|Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance An Inquiry Into Values|Robert M. Pirsig|http://images.gr-assets.com/books/1410136019s/629.jpg|175720]. It's the same genre -- travel with a lot of philosophical musing thrown in.

Most of the book is a description of a voyage to the Gulf of California. John Steinbeck's friend Ed Ricketts was a marine biologist, and they chartered a fishing boat to collect specimens of marine invertebrates. There is an appendix, Steinbeck's memoir of his friend Ed Rickett's.

I found it interesting because it's a part of the world I knew nothing about, and after reading the book I know a little more, at least about what it was like 70-odd years ago. And in the process I learnt something about marine biology; most of what I knew about that was from bed-time stories my father read me when I was 3 or 4 years old from his biology text books. Who needs extra-terrestrial monsters when you can have a sea urchin? That caused me problems in my later reading when I came across descriptions of children as urchins -- were they all spiny?

As for the philosophy, I'm not sure if I understood it all. I think Steinbeck was coming from a completely different place, with different assumptions. He seemed to be anti-teleology, and to think that there is too much teleology in the world, but he seemed to see it in a quite different context.

Some of his comments were interesting, but some seemed to make little sense.