Customer Reviews

Beyond the Outer Shores: The Untold Odyssey of Ed Ricketts, the Pioneering Ecologist Who Inspired John Steinbeck and Joseph Campbell

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I got to know "Doc" Ricketts when I was about 15. In 10th-grade English, we had read "The Grapes of Wrath" and "Of Mice and Men," and I greatly enjoyed both. My English teacher knew not only of my enthusiasm for Steinbeck, but also my penchant for standing knee-deep in ponds collecting invertebrate animals. She suggested I might like to read "Cannery Row" on my own. I did, and became a convicted Steinbeck fan.

I could not have known then, of course, that one day I'd not only get a doctorate in zoology but also have a daughter who'd earn a degree in marine science. Nor could I have imagined that she and I would make a pilgrimage to Monterey and Cannery Row together, and perform together in a college production of "The Grapes of Wrath."

"Doc" was never far from my mind in the years since 1965. But aside from what little we learned on our brief visit to Monterey, I still knew Ed Ricketts as little more than Doc: a collector, proprietor of a biological supply company, and wanna-be scientist. (Remember Doc's futile effort to write a scientific treatise on an octopus.)

Until now. I read a review of "Beyond the Outer Shores" in "Nature," promptly booted up Amazon.com, and ordered it to give to my daughter this Christmas -- along with Steinbeck and Ricketts' "Sea of Cortez" and Ricketts' "Between Pacific Tides." I couldn't resist dipping into "Outer Shores" the moment it arrived, and once I did, I couldn't stop until I reached the back cover. Now I've ordered another set of this Ricketts-Steinbeck-Tamm trilogy for my own library.

Tamm elevates Ed Ricketts far beyond the Steinbeck caricature. It's an enlightening look at how close the Ricketts-Steinbeck friendship and mutual admiration was, and a surprising revelation of Ricketts' friendship with another admired scholar, Joseph Campbell. But most importantly, it fleshes out my image of Ricketts as a serious scholar, philosophical thinker, and pioneering marine ecologist. I regret only that I didn't have this book a few months earlier, when my wife and I visited Vancouver Island this summer. We did not get to the outer coast, but only the stretch between Nanaimo and Victoria. Having "Beyond the Outer Shores" in hand would have changed my itinerary and made another pilgrimage of it.

On many levels from ecology and conservation to mythology and Tao, I will be proud to give this to my daughter this Christmas. It's so much more than a biography; it's an inspiration, an intellectual feast, and an invitation to so many other domains of human thought and feeling. I really appreciate both the effort and story-telling skill that Eric Tamm put into this terrific intellectual biography.

A couple of years ago, I posted a review of the Ricketts letters collected by Katharine Rodger. In that review, I wished for a more comprehensive biography of Ricketts. I guess this is the book. It is well written, well researched and well documented by references to sources. I think its main benefit is that it separates Ed Ricketts from the characters in John Steinbeck's novels and The Log from the Sea of Cortez. Evidently, Steinbeck was first and foremost a novelist, even when writing "nonfiction."

Tamm helps explain Ricketts's relationship with Toni Jackson and presents some new (to me, anyway) information on his trips to Vancouver Island. There is quite a lot of material here about Joseph Campbell's influence on Ricketts (and vice-versa) that isn't in Steinbeck's various writings on Ricketts. There isn't much new about Ricketts's life before his lab (including notes and correspondence) burned down in 1936.

Tamm has a tendency to use Ricketts's, Steinbeck's, and Joseph Campbell's writing as jumping-off points to his own ethical and environmental perspective and even to preach a little. I largely agree with his views, but I don't think this biography is the place for them.

Tamm emphasizes Ricketts's philosphy, as Steinbeck and others have. Ricketts took this work seriously, but only one of his three large essays was ever published. His "Non-Telological Thinking" appears as the Easter Sunday entry in the narrative half of The Log from the Sea of Cortez, which Ricketts coauthored with Steinbeck.

On Ricketts's philosophy, Tamm writes: "He was pioneering a new mode of thinking that contained all the elements of what would become 'deep ecology' in the 1970s." (p. 239).

"Deep ecology" is a viwpoint that recognizes an inherent value in all species (value beyond their use to humans) and holds to mostly conventional liberal politics (Wikipedia, 11 April 2006). These ideas seem commonplace today, though they rarely go by that hoity-toity title. I doubt they were exceptional in the 1930s and 1940s (e.g., John Muir advocated nature for its own sake decades earlier). If Ricketts's ideas were unique, Tamm should have explained then-prevailing environmentalism to put them into context. Further, I would have liked a discussion of the "deep ecology" view as it progressed into the 1970s. What other authors (especially biologists) were influential in its development? Had they read Ricketts's work? (aside: David Ehrenfeld has a nice essay on inherent value, called The Conservation Dilemna, in his book, The Arrogance of Humanism).

The discussions of Rickett's scientific work would have been better if Tamm had comparared it more thoroughly with other biologists of the time, and discussed its long-term influence in biology. The book doesn't clarify to me whether Ricketts's documentation of the collapsing Monterey sardine fishery was a new approach to population ecology and resource management, or if he used existing analytical techniques. Ricketts is very well known among California marine biologists. Has his work stood up over time, and is it still relevant to modern researchers?

Finally, I was bothered by Tamm's inclusion of the false (but widely believed) "Chief Seattle" speech. The text Tamm quotes on page 242 (quoted from Joseph Campbell's 1990 book, Transformation of Myth Through Time) was actually written by Ted Perry in 1972 for a film script. Campbell's flawed research isn't Tamm's fault, but I wish Tamm had checked the source before propagating this myth still further. Much more on the Chief Seattle story is available at the Snopes Urban Legends Reference Pages and links posted there.

Within five years of the death of Ed Ricketts marine biology changed forever. The first was the widespread use of wet suits and self contained underwater breathing devices. The observer no longer was tethered to the shore and could hang motionless in the water at almost any depth observing what was actually happening in the submerged cosmos. Underwater photography allowed dynamic and objective views. Gone were the days of waders and buckets and dry heads.

John Steinbeck in the introduction to between Pacific Tides of 1948 also sensed a different change, an Enlightenment, "The world is being broken down to be built up again, and eventually the sense of the new worlds will come out of the laboratory and penetrate into the smallest living techniques and habits of the whole people". And of course in 1953 Watson and Crick announced the functional structure of DNA.

Ricketts, one the greatest naturalists of all time, was astounded at the array of creatures, mostly animals he found along the shore. He wrote of what he saw and was ostracized by the "legitimate" academic Poo Bahs of his day. But he was clean and pure and loved true things. How would he feel if he could see all of his sea animals displayed in comparative genomics arrays and consider the genes that make them holy?

But about the book. Tamm has captured the light hidden behind the towering figure of Steinbeck and "Doc". He shows Ricketts, complex, gifted and maybe all mixed up as an existensional figure laboring under the stigma of never having taken a degree. Thank God! If Ricketts had become the academic soft science ecologist like David Phillips who revised the fifth edition of Tides, my life would have been far poorer.

This is a wonderful book, but don't stop there. Review Sweet Thursday and the Row. Go once again the the Sea of Cortez. Try to find a 1939 edition of Tides and then the 5th edition so you can properly despise Stanford University Press. We can never know Ed Ricketts but his sweet spirt is everywhere in the sea and the nature around us.

I was very much disappointed in this book. The writing seems borderline hyperbolic and lightweight, almost like it's in a travel magazine, or weekly news magazine. The material is largely a rehash of published information, and does not capture the feeling of that time. The work seems padded and lacking in substance as a result. I kept wondering how it could possibly drag on after the first couple chapters. For anyone who has read Steinbeck's books, or Ricketts's books, or the Hedgepeth book on Ed this is unnecessary, but maybe a newbie will be encouraged to go for sterner, more genuine stuff as a result of reading this.

This book is a result of considerable research by the author and is very well written. I believe that it is an essential text for anyone interested in the Steinbeck Cannery Row era.

The weakness of the book lies in the author's presentation of Ricketts as the primary contributing influence over Steinbeck and even Joseph Campbell. While there is no doubt about Ricketts' contributing influence, Steinbeck and Campbell were contributing and teaching influences on Ricketts and if alive, I believe he would agree.

Like Ricketts argument regarding individual creature influence on the tide pool, the primary influence on Steinbeck and Ricketts was the "Row" as the meeting place, a considerably more complex human tide pool. Steinbeck (and Campbell) brought as much to Ricketts as he did with them. More importantly the individual elements of the row such as Carol Steinbeck, the bums, market owner Wing Chong, and the whores consciously and unconsciously influenced the row and as a result, each other. This Ricketts-like, more holistic perspective seems to have escaped the author. The book is fascinating reading in any case.

Tamm does an excellent job of separating the fictionalized Doc of "Cannery Row" fame from the flesh and blood self-made scientist/adventurer that was Ed Ricketts. "Beyond the Outer Shores" combines rip-snorting travelogue, narrative biography and gossip into the lives of Ricketts, John Steinbeck and Joseph Campbell. Easily the best Ricketts book out there. Highly recommended for all aficionados of real-life adventure tales, and indespensible for Steinbeck and Campbell fans.

Although I enjoyed the first part of the book and scattered sections throughout, Tamm did not succeed in capturing Rickett's ecological worldview by a kind of non-lineal, disorganized presentation of information. It is also unbalanced by his love 'em/hate 'em view of Steinbeck, and his love 'em like crazy view of Campbell, which in most cases obfuscates the story (except in telling of actual facts, such as Steinbeck's poor judgment in taking Rickett's name off the Viking edition of Sea of Cortez).
Tamm's inordinate fixation on personality conflicts affected the development of the book most particularly in his not exploring the trip to Baha. It is oddly and disappointingly skipped, and at this point the book becomes centered on Rickett's journeys to the Vancouver Is. area, which, lo and behold, is where Tamm is from.
There are a lot of interesting spots in this book, but it would have been better served by good editorial direction (much as Rickett's writings were served by Steinbeck's pen).

Few folks know the name of Ed Ricketts, but he was a pioneering ecologist who inspired notables John Steinbeck and Joseph Campbell alike, and has long deserved his own biography. Eric Enno Tamm has solved this gap in detail with Beyond The Outer Shores, a biography of the man who served as the 'renaissance man of Cannery Row', fostering a friendship which led Steinbeck to integrate an ecological perspective into his early works - and to reject the notion of a human-centered universe. Ricketts was no insider in his industry: he was an academic outcast who was at once a beach bum, a philanderer, and an ecologist whose early warnings about over-fishing in California and Alaska fell on deaf ears in the 1930s. A pioneering biographial work covers his long-unsung achievements.

I was drawn to this book by my curiosity regarding the "Doc" character from the Steinbeck novels. I had expected a short biography that would cover most of the facts of his life and perhaps stress some of the more sensational moments that may have been inspirational to Steinbeck. What I found instead was a very finely crafted piece of non-fiction writing.

What sets this book apart from a mere biography is how the author develops many secondary themes that relate to Ed Ricketts and then weaves them together in a rich tapestry of ideas. There are the secondary characters of Steinbeck and Campbell, but there are also other significant themes such as ecology. There are wonderful descriptions of the Pacific Coast, particularly Vancouver Island, which I am sure Ricketts himself would have been very enthusiastic about.

Beyond the Outer Shores is also attractively illustrated and features many interesting photographs. Whether you are a Biologist or a fan of Steinbeck you will find this non-fictional account of a life lived with passion more compelling than any fictional character ever created.

My favorite read for 2007 was Beyond The Outer Shores, Eric Enno Tamm's insightful and illuminating biography of ecological pioneer and polymath Ed Ricketts. The book's tagline mentioned Ricketts as an inspiration for John Steinbeck and Joseph Campbell, and this is what initially caught my attention (being a fan of Campbell). Tamm tells the story of how Rickett's personal philosophy and humanist outlook inspired them both. In particular, the "Doc" character of Cannery Row was directly modeled on Ricketts.

A biologist with the outlook of a philosopher and heart of a poet, Ricketts lived a fascinating yet shortened life, never receiving his due recognition as a scientist and thinker until well after his death. His environmental philosophy permeated the works of Steinbeck in the late 1930s. In this way, Tamm shows The Grapes of Wrath can be read as a warning against anthropogenic environmental degradation, and Cannery Row read as a human reflection of the diversity of tidepools. Likewise, his revolutionary work on the western American and Canadian shores remains influential to this day. Tamm's book is a fantastic read that brings to light the life and spirit of a true Renaissance Man.