...
Show More
In 1940, Steinbeck travels from the Bay Area of California to Cabo San Lucas on the Baja, up to the northern part of the Sea of Cortez and then back to California. He’s on a fishing vessel with a crew and a friend, Ed Ricketts, collecting marine specimens. Steinbeck weaves his observations about life into his time on the vessel and marine collection activities. There is more of this in this long book than commentary about the Sea of Cortez and his interactions with the locals.
Steinbeck’s profile of Ricketts ("About Ed Ricketts," Penguin Edition, 1976) is almost a separate book and is wordy. But there are some gems. For example, Steinbeck’s observations of Ricketts “when the strong winds of love shook him” was as good as they come when describing the role of a sexual archetype in which inner need creates ideal object: “The object of his affection herself contributed very little to his picture of her. She was only the physical frame on which he draped a woman. She was like those large faceless dolls on which clothes are made. He built his own woman on this form, created her from the ground up, invented her appearance and built her mind, furnished her with talents and sensitiveness which were not only astonishing but downright untrue.”
Steinbeck’s profile of Ricketts ("About Ed Ricketts," Penguin Edition, 1976) is almost a separate book and is wordy. But there are some gems. For example, Steinbeck’s observations of Ricketts “when the strong winds of love shook him” was as good as they come when describing the role of a sexual archetype in which inner need creates ideal object: “The object of his affection herself contributed very little to his picture of her. She was only the physical frame on which he draped a woman. She was like those large faceless dolls on which clothes are made. He built his own woman on this form, created her from the ground up, invented her appearance and built her mind, furnished her with talents and sensitiveness which were not only astonishing but downright untrue.”
