Book review: 'The Log from the Sea of Cortez'
John Steinbeck’s rare venture into non-fiction presents an insightful blend of scientific exploration, philosophical musings and the nature of friendship.
There is a fish that lives in the anus of a sea cucumber. It flips in and out, possibly feeding on the faeces of the host, but more likely hiding from possible enemies.
Who knew? Well now you do too. It’s just one of the countless factoids and anecdotes that litter John Steinbeck’s, The Log from the Sea of Cortez1. But this is no light-hearted romp through a coastal rockpool. Rather, that rockpool becomes a metaphor on the intricacies and dependencies within nature and humanity, and the sophisticated web of life that connects all living things, including us.
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_720,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F21b7b395-174d-4ed1-84a6-657cd3c1a5be_341x500.jpeg)
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_720,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F3da33bde-767c-41ba-811a-0fd85de95a50_435x500.jpeg)
On the backstory
It was 1940. Steinbeck was 38 years old. The world was at war. The author had published 'The Grapes of Wrath' a year earlier. 'Of Mice and Men' came two years before that. Flushed with critical and commercial acclaim, and a bit of time on his hands, Steinbeck had set about fulfilling a long-held ambition: To accompany his good friend Ed Ricketts on some sort of extended scientific adventure.
Ricketts was a marine biologist who lived and worked in Monterey, the same coastal community where Steinbeck lived and wrote for much of the 1930s. Over this period, the two men developed a long and intense friendship.
They would often undertake small intertidal excursions along the California coast to collect marine specimens. These occasional outings achieved two ends for Steinbeck: they gave him a break from his writing, as well as the opportunity to debate great philosophical questions with Ricketts. In time, the author developed a substantial appreciation of the scientific method, thanks to Ricketts, as well as a deep understanding of ecological theory.
These intersecting interests combined with an opportune gap in both men's professional careers that allowed them to undertake a much larger expedition to collect marine specimens; one they'd been promising each other for years to do.
An earlier attempt in 1939 to co-author a general handbook about sea life in San Francisco Bay failed to gain traction. But in 1940, the planets aligned for a much grander venture.
On their way
The two friends chartered a boat (the Western Flyer, which included four crew members, all paid for by Steinbeck), and along with Steinbeck’s wife, Carol, set a course for the Sea of Cortez (now referred to as the Gulf of California): That “long, narrow, highly dangerous body of water… subject to sudden and vicious storms of great intensity.”
The intent, according to Ricketts, was to amass “the greatest lot of specimens ever to have been collected in the Gulf by any single expedition.”
Documenting that 6-week trip as co-authors produced the Sea of Cortez, a voluminous record of 600-plus pages that was jointly published in 1941. It was part travelogue and part natural history. It did not sell well. The nation’s attention was diverted elsewhere as the U.S. entered World War II.
But a decade later, Steinbeck resurrected the narrative portion of the book, leaving out the bulk of the scientific material and phyletic catalogue contributed by Ricketts, and re-published a much slimmer volume under his byline in 1951 as ‘The Log from the Sea of Cortez’.
The Marginalian rightly suggests that what emerges in this edited version is no less than “a meditation on the nature of knowledge itself, disguised as an expedition journal”, composed two decades before Steinbeck received the Nobel Prize for his fiction. It remains in print to this day.
Interestingly in the revised edition — now with a singular author — Steinbeck never corrected the prose to the first person. In fact, the authors are never identified by name or individually in either edition: it was the first person plural ‘we’ who narrated the Log.
What also marks the Log as very different from its much larger predecessor is that it includes an extended appendix by Steinbeck titled: About Ed Ricketts. The biologist had died in a car accident in 1948. It reads like a eulogy.
In it, Steinbeck explains the game the two protagonists played, not just on board the Western Flyer, but in life more generally:
“It was a sport of lopping off a piece of observed reality and letting it move up through the speculative process like a tree growing tall and bushy. We observed with pleasure how the branches of thought grew away from the trunk of external reality.”
In this way, the resulting Log from the Sea Cortez can be read as a blend of speculative metaphysics rooted in the actual events of the journey. It’s a travelogue for sure, but also brimming with biological records and species nomenclature.
More poignantly, you could argue the Log is Steinbeck’s ardent rejection of the Western habit of explaining things by their purpose (or teleological thinking). Instead, he embraces the Eastern notion that everything simply exists without needing a reason, and that each thing just is what it is.
This ‘antidote to teleological thinking’ often underpins the two men’s discussions, particularly as it relates to the human condition, and its place in the natural world. And how that relationship sits within the belief system that all living things are connected regardless of their perceived utility or complexity. Steinbeck notes in the Log:
“ …there are colonies of pelagic tunicates which have a shape like the finger of a glove [where] each member of the colony is an individual, but the colony is another individual animal, not at all like the sum of its individuals. Some of the colonists, girdling the open end, have developed the ability, one against the other, of making a pulsing movement very like muscular action. Others of the colonists collect the food and distribute it, and the outside of the glove is hardened and protected against contact. Here are two animals, and yet the same thing.”
The author then turns the focus on himself:
“I am much more than the sum of my cells, and, for all I know, they are much more than the division of me … there is no quietism in such acceptance, but rather the basis for a far deeper understanding of us and our world.”
On environmental degradation
The Log is also prescient in a way I was not expecting. Steinbeck aired a range of ecological concerns long before they entered popular culture. For example, he laments the destruction caused by human activities, notably the overfishing of marine species and wanton pollution; both clearly evident during their voyage.
To wit, soon after weighing anchor just outside Guaymas, on the eastern shore of the Gulf, the Western Flyer came upon a Japanese fishing fleet of deep sea dredges, comprising 12 boats, including the mother ship:
“ … and they were doing a very systematic job, not only of taking every shrimp from the bottom, but every other thing as well … literally scraping the bottom clean. Any animal which escaped must have been very fast indeed, for not even the sharks got away.”
Steinbeck knew this because he and Ricketts managed to secure an invite to board one of the dredge boats. The author had taken the prescient step before departing Monterey of securing an all-purpose letter from the Ministry of Marine explaining their scientific mission.
After pulling alongside one of the dredges using the Flyer’s tender, and having the letter transferred to the captain, they were eventually invited on board. It was here, on the deck where the nets were emptied, that the full and devastating effect of these massive dredge loads became evident. The Japanese were only interested in shrimp: everything else was thrown back. As Steinbeck noted:
“The sea was littered with dead fish, and the gulls swarmed about eating them. Nearly all the fish were in a dying condition, and only a few recovered. The waste of this good food supply was appalling.”
It was also galling. A few days before this Japanese encounter, the Western Flyer’s crew had spent time with local fishermen whose main livelihood depended on a steady supply of shrimp. Steinbeck and Ricketts were able to inspect some of the “poor small boats [which] had not much of a catch of shrimps. Everyone in this neighborhood had complained of the Japanese shrimpers who were destroying the shrimp fisheries.”
On respect
While his condemnation of man’s indifference towards ecological preservation echoes throughout the Log, Steinbeck also celebrated the inherent dignity and worth of every individual, regardless of social status or circumstances.
This he noted on the many interactions with local Indians or settlers when the crew came ashore, either to conduct their research or to replenish supplies:
"The Seri Indians live in a harsh environment, and their bodies are conditioned to that environment. They are tall, thin, and muscular, adapted to the rough, hot desert and the sea … [they] worked with great skill and patience, their movements economical and deliberate, shaped by generations of survival in a challenging land.
Describing other local encounters, the author’s prose is vivid, direct and respectful:
"Their faces were inscrutable, giving away nothing, and their eyes were sharp and intelligent, always watching, always aware of their surroundings … [while elsewhere, they] go about their tasks with a quiet efficiency, whether they are fishing, hunting, or gathering. There is a rhythm to their actions, a connection to the land and sea that is almost poetic in its simplicity and necessity."
On cannibalism (and other subjects)
Apart from the myriad scientific observations that can sometimes clog or slow down the narrative, Steinbeck often took the opportunity to riff on a range of different subjects. These ranged from cannibalism to Conrad (Joseph, that is); from alcohol to photography; with several tangents referencing philosopher John Elof Boodin’s systematic interpretation of nature.
On its journey, the Western Flyer cruised by the island of Tiburón, on the eastern shore of the Gulf and part of Sonora, Mexico. The island’s seasonal inhabitants had a reputation for cannibalism. While it’s known they have killed many strangers, there is no documentary evidence of them eating these strangers, according to Steinbeck. In his mind:
“Cannibalism is a fascinating subject to most people, and in some way a sin. Possibly the deep feeling is that if people learn to eat one another, the food supply would be so generous and so available that no one would be either safe or hungry.”
On board the Western Flyer
There is a hint of William Golding (a la Lord of the Flies) in referencing conditions on board, when Steinbeck, midway through the 6-week expedition, confesses that their:
“... costume had degenerated completely. Shirts were no longer worn … on board we went barefoot, clad only in trunks and hats. Our clothes never got dry; the salt deposited in the fibers made them hygroscopic, always drawing the humidity.”
Dishes were washed in hot salty water, which left crystals of salt stuck to the plates. “It seemed to us that the little salt adhering to the coffee pot made the coffee delicious.”
Then one of the party (the identity never revealed) made some lemon pies. That’s when the quarrelling grew bitter:
“... the thievery, the suspicion of favoritism, the vulgar traits of selfishness and perfidy those pies brought out saddened us all. And when one of us … took to hiding pie in his bed and munching it secretly when the lights were out, we decided there must be no more lemon pie. Character was crumbling, and the law of the fang was too close to us.”
On balance
By any measure or classification, The Log from the Sea of Cortez is a classic piece of reportage and travel literature. It is also very topical, noting the author’s environmental awareness and his candid observations around the fragile state of various ecosystems threatened by the voracious appetite of an increasingly industrialised and consumerist society.
With their exploratory work done, the Western Flyer headed back out into the Pacific and set a course north, bound for Monterey Bay via Cedros Island, where “the sea grew more stern [and] we plunged like a nervous horse … the blunt nose of the boat fought into the waves as the grey-green water struck us in the face”.
Before signing off his Log, Steinbeck admitted on reflection that during the voyage, “some creative thing had happened”, that a real tempest had been unleashed “in our small teapot minds.” He went on:
“The shape of the trip was an integrated nucleus from which weak strings of thought stretched into every reachable reality, and a reality which reached into us through our perspective nerve trunks. The laws of thoughts seemed really one with the laws of things. There was some quality of music here, perhaps not to be communicated, but sounding clear and huge in our minds.”
All quotes and excerpts from Penguin Classics edition, 1995