Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gvvz8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T13:51:45.758Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

22 - The Log from the Sea of Cortez (1951)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 May 2010

Joseph R. McElrath, Jr
Affiliation:
Florida State University
Jesse S. Crisler
Affiliation:
Brigham Young University, Hawaii
Susan Shillinglaw
Affiliation:
San José State University, California
Get access

Summary

Harry Gilroy.

“Steinbeck's Living Sea.”

New York Times Book Review, 100

(16 September 1951), 6.

At a time when readers are interested in authors who go down to the sea, and come up again with good tales, in sails John Steinbeck as scientist-deckhand on a collecting expedition in the Gulf of California. His journal of these activities will be new to many of his usual audience, but this Log appeared in 1941 as part of The Sea of Cortez, a joint effort of the novelist and Edward F. Ricketts, the biologist of the collecting trip. Then Steinbeck was sandwiched between hundreds of pages of notes about dreadful little marine animals, with the result that only 3,000 customers had the nerve to take the book from the store. Now the biology text has been dropped and Steinbeck has added an entertaining profile of Ricketts.

The best part of this newly unveiled work of the novelist presents sharply evocative descriptions of the sea and the approaches to shore, plus some interesting accounts of the scuttling, flopping, sucking, stabling, poisoning creatures that were taken on the beaches. To go from Monterey Bay to the hot, dangerous, seldom sailed waters of the Gulf, Steinbeck and Ricketts chartered a seventy-six-foot, Diesel-powered fish trawler. They visited numerous old settlements and timeless bays.

Steinbeck makes the reader feel the relief of coming from the rolling seas inside the sheltering capes and jetties. The local authorities troop aboard, all in their rarely worn uniforms and displaying their ceremonious.45 automatics.

Type
Chapter
Information
John Steinbeck
The Contemporary Reviews
, pp. 369 - 380
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1996

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×