細節
STEINBECK, JOHN. Autograph manuscript of his profile and tribute "About Ed Ricketts," [Rockland County, N.Y., Summer 1950]. 97 pages, virtually all folio, in blue ink on rectos of lined yellow legal-pad sheets (of two different paper stocks), a working draft with numerous (though light) corrections/revisions by Steinbeck, with his name written in the text (at top of page 10), with many pencilled interlinear words in hand of his typist correcting the author's spelling, a few edges slightly frayed on first page and last couple of pages, paper of inferior quality used for pages 57-97 with result that some edges in this section are a little brittle and margins are a bit darkened.
"HE WILL NOT DIE. HE HAUNTS THE PEOPLE WHO KNEW HIM"
It was as a way of putting the ghost of his great friend Ed Ricketts to rest that Steinbeck wrote this biographical homage, which first appeared as the Preface in The Log from the Sea of Cortez, 1951. Ricketts had been killed in a car accident in April 1948; it was while summering in the country in New York in 1950 that Steinbeck penned this manuscript. He writes (near the beginning): "We have all tried to define Ed Ricketts with little success...The essence lies somewhere. There must be some way of finding it. Finally there is another reason to put Ed Ricketts down on paper. He will not die. He haunts the people who knew him. He is always present even in the moments when we feel his loss the most...Maybe if I write down everything I can remember about him, that will pay the ghost. It is worth trying anyway. It will have to be true or it can't work..." At the end of his attempt to capture the essence of Ricketts, Steinbeck concludes: "There it is. That's all I can set down...I don't know whether any clear picture has emerged. Thinking back and remembering him has not done what I hoped it might. It has not laid the ghost. The picture that remains is a haunting one. It is the time just before dusk. I can see Ed finishing his work in the laboratory. He covers his instruments and puts his papers away. He rolls down the sleeves of his wool shirt and puts on his old brown coat. I see him go out and get in the beat-up old car and slowly drive away in the evening. I guess I'll have that with me all my life."
This famous friendship began when Steinbeck first met the marine biologist, philosopher, and ecologist Edward F. Ricketts in 1930 and began to spend endless hours in his Pacific Biological Laboratory in Cannery Row in Monterey. This laboratory, which collected and distributed biological specimens throughout the country, was to become the background for several of Steinbeck's writings -- notably the novel Cannery Row (1945) itself, where Ricketts appears as the central character "Doc," around whom the story revolves. (The dedication copy of Cannery Row, inscribed from Steinbeck to Ricketts, was sold at Christie's East, 21 February 1996, lot 233.) Other works resulting from this vital personal and intellectual relationship in Steinbeck's life include The Sea of Cortez (1941, a collaboration based on their Gulf of California expedition), The Log from the Sea of Cortez (1951), and Sweet Thursday (1954, a sequel to Cannery Row); characters based on Ricketts also figure in In Dubious Battle (1936), The Grapes of Wrath (1939), and Burning Bright (1950). As Steinbeck writes in his "About Ed Ricketts": "Knowing Ed Ricketts was instant. After the first moment I knew him, and for the next eighteen years I knew him better than I knew anyone, and perhaps I did not know him at all...He was different from anyone and yet so like that everyone found himself in Ed, and that might be one of the reasons his death had such an impact. It wasn't Ed who had died but a large and important part of oneself..." For an excellent consideration of the Steinbeck-Ricketts relationship see Richard Astro's Introduction in The Log from the Sea of Cortez (New York: Penguin Books, 1995); in this edition Steinbeck's homage is printed as a 50-page appendix. STEINBECK MANUSCRIPT MATERIAL OF THIS IMPORTANCE IS VERY RARE ON THE MARKET.
"HE WILL NOT DIE. HE HAUNTS THE PEOPLE WHO KNEW HIM"
It was as a way of putting the ghost of his great friend Ed Ricketts to rest that Steinbeck wrote this biographical homage, which first appeared as the Preface in The Log from the Sea of Cortez, 1951. Ricketts had been killed in a car accident in April 1948; it was while summering in the country in New York in 1950 that Steinbeck penned this manuscript. He writes (near the beginning): "We have all tried to define Ed Ricketts with little success...The essence lies somewhere. There must be some way of finding it. Finally there is another reason to put Ed Ricketts down on paper. He will not die. He haunts the people who knew him. He is always present even in the moments when we feel his loss the most...Maybe if I write down everything I can remember about him, that will pay the ghost. It is worth trying anyway. It will have to be true or it can't work..." At the end of his attempt to capture the essence of Ricketts, Steinbeck concludes: "There it is. That's all I can set down...I don't know whether any clear picture has emerged. Thinking back and remembering him has not done what I hoped it might. It has not laid the ghost. The picture that remains is a haunting one. It is the time just before dusk. I can see Ed finishing his work in the laboratory. He covers his instruments and puts his papers away. He rolls down the sleeves of his wool shirt and puts on his old brown coat. I see him go out and get in the beat-up old car and slowly drive away in the evening. I guess I'll have that with me all my life."
This famous friendship began when Steinbeck first met the marine biologist, philosopher, and ecologist Edward F. Ricketts in 1930 and began to spend endless hours in his Pacific Biological Laboratory in Cannery Row in Monterey. This laboratory, which collected and distributed biological specimens throughout the country, was to become the background for several of Steinbeck's writings -- notably the novel Cannery Row (1945) itself, where Ricketts appears as the central character "Doc," around whom the story revolves. (The dedication copy of Cannery Row, inscribed from Steinbeck to Ricketts, was sold at Christie's East, 21 February 1996, lot 233.) Other works resulting from this vital personal and intellectual relationship in Steinbeck's life include The Sea of Cortez (1941, a collaboration based on their Gulf of California expedition), The Log from the Sea of Cortez (1951), and Sweet Thursday (1954, a sequel to Cannery Row); characters based on Ricketts also figure in In Dubious Battle (1936), The Grapes of Wrath (1939), and Burning Bright (1950). As Steinbeck writes in his "About Ed Ricketts": "Knowing Ed Ricketts was instant. After the first moment I knew him, and for the next eighteen years I knew him better than I knew anyone, and perhaps I did not know him at all...He was different from anyone and yet so like that everyone found himself in Ed, and that might be one of the reasons his death had such an impact. It wasn't Ed who had died but a large and important part of oneself..." For an excellent consideration of the Steinbeck-Ricketts relationship see Richard Astro's Introduction in The Log from the Sea of Cortez (New York: Penguin Books, 1995); in this edition Steinbeck's homage is printed as a 50-page appendix. STEINBECK MANUSCRIPT MATERIAL OF THIS IMPORTANCE IS VERY RARE ON THE MARKET.