Artist in Wonderland

SEA OF CORTEZ--John Steinbeck & Edward F. Ricketts--Viking ($5).

Novelist John Steinbeck and his biologist friend. Director Edward F. Ricketts of the Pacific Biological Laboratories, decided to make an expedition to the Gulf of California, Mexico's long Pacific arm which used to be called the Sea of Cortez. They wanted to find out all they could about the sea creatures, especially the teeming invertebrates along the shores--how they changed in numbers, size, form from place to place, how they lived, loved, ate, fought, fled, hid, died.

Their itinerary lay down a thousand miles of Lower California coast, around Cape San Lucas and up into the gulf of treacherous repute. They collected fish, snails, crabs, sea worms, sea cucumbers, sea cradles, sea urchins, sea hares, starfish, octopi, mussels, anemones, shrimps, limpets, conches, sponges, hundreds of other creatures with fancy Latin names. Although they were not looking for rarities, about 10% of their 550 species proved to be new. They were stung by urchins, morays, anemones, stingrays and stinging worms. Their hands, cut by barnacles, became first a welter of sores and then horny-callused. They caught and ate tuna, skipjack and sierra, tried unsuccessfully to eat a turtle; they drank beer and whiskey; they bathed by jumping over the side; they had a wonderful time.

Steinbeck bathed, too, in a heady stream of life-force. At Cape San Lucas he observed that the rocks were "ferocious with life....Perhaps the force of the great surf which beats on this shore has much to do with the tenacity of the animals here. It is noteworthy that the animals, rather than deserting such beaten shores for the safe cove and protected pools, simply increase their toughness and fight back at the sea with a kind of joyful survival. This ferocious survival quotient excites us and makes us feel good, and from the crawling, fighting, resisting qualities of the animals, it almost seems that they are excited too."

The leaping tuna and the frolicking dolphins were beautiful, but to Steinbeck all the animals, even the repulsive ones, were beautiful with life. As he traces the interaction of men and animals there is never the slightest hint that men might be "superior."

Everywhere Steinbeck finds atavistic hints and murmurs which carry men far back into their brute heritage. When he uses such phrases as "the deep black water of the human spirit" he sounds like D.H. Lawrence, as he does in his subhuman enchantments. Yet Lawrence's animal-love was a negation, a retreat from human modes of thinking and acting; Steinbeck's is an inclusion. Steinbeck also enjoys the syllogisms of philosophers and the constructions of theoretical physicists--it is all right, all part of life.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.