12 - Sea of Cortez (1941)

Summary

Charles Poore.

“Books of the Times.“

New York Times,

5 December 1941, p. 21.

There is an elusive analogy between the work of Steinbeck and the work of Hemingway that continues this morning with the publication of Sea of Cortez.

It is a matter of linked opposites as much as it is a matter of similarities. The impact of The Grapes of Wrath and For Whom the Bell Tolls may have been similar; the contents were different enough. Yet both men like to fight for people who need help in their battles.

Both turn naturally to Hispanic themes: the one in Mexico, the other in Spain. Both have tried their hands at making what are rather sententiously called “documentary” films: The Spanish Earth and Forgotten Village. When the Pulitzer laurelers give a prize to one of them, it causes almost as much excitement as when they withhold it from the other.

Both like to go on safaris: the one for pure science, the other for pure pleasure. Though there are elements of the opposite, again, in each case. (Compare Steinbeck on trying to harpoon a giant manta ray with Hemingway on the picador's technique.)

And both have written books about their expeditions (made “patterns” of them as both specifically say): The Green Hills of Africa and Sea of Cortez. Which brings us back to the main subject of today's column.

I shouldn't have said that Mr. Steinbeck had written Sea of Cortez because he didn't write it alone. He wrote it in collaboration with Edward F. Ricketts, who is director of the Pacific Biological Laboratories.