The Log From The Sea of Cortez

John Steinbeck begins the book as a major American writer who had already famously explored class conflict, economic insecurity, and institutional failure in the interwar United States. That experience shapes how he frames the expedition on a human level and how he thinks about writing a scientific journal. For Steinbeck, the voyage is an escape from a world which seems to be “going to hell” (7). The prospect of another World War makes him crave the solitude and escapism of a voyage dedicated to science.

Once afloat, he documents a separate order of attention and time, which gives the book its dual status as literature and field log. The narrative is unembellished when it needs to be and generous with procedural detail because the work must be reusable by others. Steinbeck’s prior training in depicting social settings also carries into his ecological placement of people in their own systems of value and exchange, such as when he writes of Gulf communities and Indigenous peoples and their different understanding of time and value.

Across the voyage, Steinbeck takes on the role of a naturalist. He adopts the methods of a working collector and makes them visible on the page.