This portrait of one of John Steinbeck's closest friends
illuminates the life and work of a figure central to the
development of scientific and literary thought in the 20th
century.
Marine biologist Edward F. Ricketts is perhaps best known as the
inspiration for John Steinbeck's most empathic literary characters
Doc in "Cannery Row," Slim in "Of Mice and Men," Jim Casy in "The
Grapes of Wrath," and Lee in "East of Eden." The correspondence of
this accomplished scientist, writer, and philosopher reveals the
influential exchange of ideas he shared with such prominent
thinkers and artists as Henry Miller, Joseph Campbell, Ellwood
Graham, and James Fitzgerald, in addition to Steinbeck, all of whom
were drawn to Ricketts's Monterey Bay laboratory, a haven of
intellectual discourse and Bohemian culture in the 1930s and
1940s.
The 125 previously unpublished letters of this collection,
housed at the Stanford University Library, document the broad range
of Ricketts's interests and accomplishments during the last 12 and
most productive years of his life. His handbook on Pacific marine
life, "Between Pacific Tides," is still in print, now in its fifth
edition. The biologist's devotion to ecological conservation and
his evolving philosophy of science as a cross-disciplinary,
holistic pursuit led to the publication of "The Sea of Cortez."
Many of Ricketts's letters discuss his studies of the Pacific
littoral and his theories of "phalanx" and transcendence. Epistles
to family members, often tender and humorous, add dimension and
depth to Steinbeck's mythologized depictions of Ricketts. Katharine
A. Rodger has enriched the correspondence with an introductory
biographical essay and a list of works cited.
General
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