Great demonstration of shifting baseline syndrome

Sometimes, this book gets a bit dull, with lists of small, squishy sea critters caught but little detail about them. Most of the time, it is wry, philosophical, and observant. It gently expounds on Steinbeck’s views of nature and life while remaining largely on the lighter side. It would be interesting to analyze, but it’s actually thoughtful and mostly entertaining to read just for fun.

I thank the streets of Brooklyn for my discarded copy of "The Log of the Sea of Cortez" which enthralled me with John Steinbeck's homespun wisdom, his deep love of humanity, and his trust in the balance of things, even as he sees so much of what's wrong with the world. Not quite memoir, not quite scientific journal, Steinbeck's recounting of an expedition to collect samples of sea life in Mexico is rich with philosophy while the appendix must be one of the most bromantic eulogies in American letters.

Late, late in the night we recalled that Horace says fried shrimps and African snails will cure a hangover. Neither was available.

I called a stop to this @ 63%. I skim read to the end to see if the log ever changes into something that has a structure - or a point.

It may be that I am not in the right mood for this book, but from everything I have read, I get the impression that to be in the right frame of mind to read this book I would have to be on that boat, with a beer (not the first of the day), and develop a sudden liking for pointless meandering, unsubstantiated general philosophising, and killing things just to collect them.

And I just can't.

This book was so boring. I was not going to sit and read how they collected sea specimens along the coast of baja, so i skipped over those parts, which were boring anyway. Also Ed's life at the beginning of the book was boring, but I also didn't like his collecting cats to kill. About all I got out of it was enjoying his speaking with the natives when on shore, but those tales were not enough to keep me interested. I wanted a sea adventure like Paddle to the Amazon, which I could not put down. And yet the books of John Steinbeck that I did love caused me to order all of his books in 4 volumes with my favorites being Grapes of Wrath, Cannery Row, and Tortilla Flats. Oh, tell me that he has other good books since I have them all.

This is an excellent book. While it does bear fat that might have been trimmed, the book is entertaining, and includes, arguably, Steinbeck’s most explicit engagement with the aesthetic and moral questions that drove his work.

Head back to 1940 and join John Steinbeck and Ed Ricketts. The two are on a journey to the beaches of the Gulf of California. The trip can be found in the book "Sea of Cortez" This is the log that tells the whole journey.

#13 from steinbeck for me.
15 mar 15, sunday evening.

there are some nice details, many nice scenes in this one, steinbeck and ship and crew here there everywhere down the coast and up the bay doing this that the other...and some many scenes that a repeat of collecting specimens and stuff. things like tomato cans empty precious to others, or matches also precious to others, other things...

that last bit at the quarter-back about ed, nice...character sketch remembrance. reading steinbeck now is like remembering reading him yay ago...helped that i'd been in california...further south...but also at sea...the captain stepping over my legs as i sat on the weatherdeck...like, what do you do, you're absorbed in a book and whoop here he comes, captain of the ship...do you leap to your feet snap to attention this that the other. heh! pretend he's not there? option 2. might have been carlos baker but memory. you know. onward upward.

It's been a couple of years since I read any Steinbeck. This was a great reminder of how much I like his writing. I think it would be so cool to be on a trip like that!

I am quickly becoming just as in love with Steinbeck as a creative nonfiction writer as I am with him as a fiction writer. The Sea of Cortez initially sounds like a boring book. After all, it consists mainly of Steinbeck and a small crew including Ed Ricketts (the basis for Doc from Cannery Row) wading through tide pools and collecting and documenting animal specimens. But that's not Steinbeck's style. He infuses the narrative with heart, humor, and philosophy, so much that I found the tide pools just as compelling as the pantheon of Salinas in his fiction. He finds a way of infusing the "boring" science with a sense of wonder and adventure that it often seems devoid of. If only all scientific works were written with this much passion. Some important notes about this work include detailed philosophical thoughts on Phalanx Theory and Non-Teleological Thinking, two core concepts in understanding Steinbeck (especially the Grapes of Wrath). The book ends with a heartwarming mini-biography / eulogy for Ricketts, Steinbeck's dear friend who was killed by a train in 1948. If you are a fan of Steinbeck, you will love this book.

Yes, it meanders some, and yes, I felt as if I was ODing on testosterone from time to time (he edited his wife out of the text, though she was supposedly actually there on the trip), but there is so much gorgeous writing, I didn't care.

We felt rather as God would feel when, after all the preparation of Paradise, all the plannings for eternities of joy, all the making and tuning of harps, the street-paving with gold, and the writing of hosannas, at last He let in the bleacher customers and they looked at the heavenly city and wished to be again in Brooklyn

And now the wind grew stronger and the windows of houses along the shore flashed in the declining sun. The forward guy-wire of our mast began to sing under the wind, a deep and yet penetrating tone like the lowest string of an incredible bull-fiddle

The moment...of leave-taking is one of the pleasantest times in human experience, for it has in it a warm sadness without loss. People who don't ordinarily like you very well are overcome with affection...It would be good to live in a perpetual state of leave-taking, never to go nor to stay, but to remain suspended in that golden emotion of love and longing....

It's all so vivid and smart and wry and lovely. It's humbling if you're any sort of writer to read this level of writing and yet you can't help but love it, and the love overwhelms your despair and shame and jealousy and it's all right in the end, because it's just so wonderful, and you'd rather live in a world that had Steinbeck than one that never did.

Probably a great book to listen to on audio.

"There is a strange duality in the human which makes for an ethical paradox. We have definitions of good qualities and of bad; not changing things, but generally considered good and bad throughout the ages and throughout the species. Of the good, we think always of wisdom, tolerance, kindliness, generosity, humility; and the qualities of cruelty, greed, self-interest, graspingness, and rapacity are universally considered undesirable. And yet in our structure of society, the so-called and considered good qualities are invariable concomitants of failure, while the bad ones are the cornerstones of success. A man --a viewing-point man-- while he will love the abstract good qualities and detest the abstract bad, will nevertheless envy and admire the person who through possessing the bad qualities has succeeded economically and socially, and will hold in contempt that person whose good qualities have caused failure."