Light rain today. Low clouds, and it would be easy to be sad if I did not keep busy.
In thinking about memory and stories, particularly fiction, I thought of one of my favorite books that I read in Junior high school, then several times since.
Cannery Row, influenced me as much or more than any other novel. It’s romantic tone, the characters, the setting seemed somehow familiar because I had been in beach towns and my parents were intellectuals and also drinkers. The kind of boozy chaos that Steinbeck evokes in the book, the sunny kind of drunkeness where things go wrong, but not so wrong they couldn’t be put back to right with a day of clean up and a really good apology, was somehow parallel to the emotional climate of my growing up. I think my parents aspired to be the kind of intellectual bohemians that “Doc” Ricketts engendered. So, even though I wasn’t of his generation, he became an inspiration to me and to thousands of others.
There are many “Ed Heads” around the world. People who venerate the character and the man. I’ve written in other places about Ed and Jack Calvin, John Steinbeck and Joseph Campbell and the women who shared and in many cases helped shape their intellectual lives. I’ve mentioned that Jan is working on a second edition of Ed Ricketts: From Cannery Row to Sitka, Alaska, and that book should be available by summer, if we catch a break with the virus.
But today I wanted to talk about memory a bit more and talk a little about Cannery Row and think about what it tells us about memory.
I recorded a reading and a talk below. I hope you find something in there that strikes a cord. I think this book sent many people in search of the nexus between science, spirit and the imagination. I know it did me. But just now I want to start with the questions: How much if it is real? And, does it even matter?
Of course I don’t really know the answer, but if asked today I would say this: I suspect Cannery Row is a dream John Steinbeck had in order to hold on to his love of a time, a place and a man, that made him happy. It is a beautiful, funny and enduring dream…(even if it is dated now in some aspects of Steinbeck’s genuine respect for “the boys” of the story, Sorry but I feel compelled to add that) All of the details he selected helped him create what seemed a specific and actual world for himself and his readers. The book remains a little jewel of sensual and sympathetic writing. This is a great achievement for any writer to accomplish and I suppose that’s all you can expect when you invite a novelist to your drinking party in a lovely beach town full of genius. But you also can’t blame a daughter for feeling that there were liberties taken with the father. Her father she was separated from too soon and who she loved dearly, The man that none of the grown ups really knew… but thought they did.
I hope you get something out of the reading and the talk, of course the topic is so broad there is no resolution or conclusion to the question of “How much is real?” but if you know that, that is what you get with me. There is always more to talk about. Particularly when it comes to the real.
Take good care.
Ed Rickett’s books at Hopkins Marine Lab
Ed Ricketts photograph at the Hopkins Station Library in Monterey .
One of Ed Ricketts Books inscribed by the author, a Mexican Marine Biologist and colleague.
No cherry blossoms.
I know you were angry,
but not why?
jhs
