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

by Eric Enno Tamm

Book Overview

In the 1930s, while the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression sent most of America into the doldrums, a lively intellectual and artistic community formed in the West, revolving around three legendary... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1568582986
• ISBN13: 9781568582986
• Release Date: May 2004
• Publisher: Four Walls Eight Windows
• Length: 365 Pages
• Weight: 1.44 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.4" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

My favourite read of 2007

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.

A Fitting Biography of a Pioneer in Ecology

Many years ago I was asked to clean out a storage shed in Yuma, Arizona. I was not paid, but was told I could keep whatever I found that interested me. The shed mostly contained little of interest, but I cleaned it out anyway. However I did retain three items at the time - two World War I helmets (one German and one American) and a hardbound first edition of Steinbeck and Ricketts "The Sea of Cortez." I poured over the latter book eagerly. It was a battered copy, but I read through it until the end, including Ed Ricketts' annotated list of specimens collected on the trip, made at the start of World War II, to the Gulf of California. I later read the account of Ed Ricketts in "Between Pacific Tides'" but wanted more. I have now found that much needed book in Eric Enno Tamm's "Beyond the Outer Shores." This is a fascinating book (this is why I gave it five stars), if one occasionally flawed by such lapses as "Chief Seattle's speech" or the pontifications or digressions of the author. It chronicles the life of Ed Ricketts and in parallel, those of John Steinbeck and Joseph Campbell. All of these people were flawed (as are all human beings), but what a great wealth of ideas they left to us! I cannot judge how much Ed Ricketts influenced the other two, but there was certainly some cross-fertilization going on between the friends. As Steinbeck noted in "The Sea of Cortez," it was hard sometimes to remember just which idea was whose. In any case, this is by far the most complete account of the life of Ed Ricketts, his family, and of the ideas that he and his associates had while drinking beer and haunting the tide pools of the Pacific and Gulf of California. Most of these ideas, I think, were worthwhile, if not always totally original. I, for one, pretty much agree with their conclusions. Tamm covers much of the blanks left by Steinbeck's rather short account. From Tamm's account we learn much more about Ed's complicated private life, his difficulties in publication, his methodical collecting and his views on ecology and nature. We thus glimpse the multifaceted personality that was Ed Ricketts. His accidental death was indeed tragic, as he had much work to do and was an important part of a number of other peoples' lives. Read this book if you want to understand the life of Ed Ricketts and his close association with the complex biota in the intertidal zone!

On Living at the Right Time

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.

This Doc Rocks

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.