[FRIAM] John Steinbeck in the 21st century

[Jochen Fromm]

The turtle chapter 3 is rather weak. I like for example the beginning for chapter 5 where Steinbeck describes the land owners in Oklahoma:"Some of the owner men were kind because they hated what they had to do, and some of them were angry because they hated to be cruel, and some of them were cold because they had long ago found that one could not be an owner unless one were cold. And all of them were caught in something larger than themselves."Or a bit later where he describes the banks that many of the land owners work for:"The bank is something else than men. It happens that every man in a bank hates what the bank does, and yet the bank does it. The bank is something more than men, I tell you. It’s the monster. Men made it, but they can’t control it."-J.
-------- Original message --------From: Nick Thompson <nickthompson at earthlink.net> Date: 10/26/19  17:54  (GMT+01:00) To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' <friam at redfish.com> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] John Steinbeck in the 21st century Steinbeckers – Does anybody else remember that one-page chapter about the tortoise on 66 in Grapes of Wrath?  It is such a metaphor for everything.  Nick  Nicholas S. ThompsonEmeritus Professor of Psychology and BiologyClark Universityhttp://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of Steven A SmithSent: Friday, October 25, 2019 7:00 PMTo: friam at redfish.comSubject: Re: [FRIAM] John Steinbeck in the 21st century  On 10/25/19 1:21 PM, Jochen Fromm wrote:I've read Cannery Row and liked it. I like the books from Steinbeck in general. What is the name of the biography from the Doc? "Beyond the Outer Shores" ? Is it recommendable? Very...     https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/401670.Beyond_the_Outer_Shores -Jochen   Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone. -------- Original message --------From: Steven A Smith <sasmyth at swcp.com> Date: 10/25/19 16:53 (GMT+01:00) To: friam at redfish.com Subject: Re: [FRIAM] John Steinbeck in the 21st century  ...On a recent pleasure/work trip I *re*visited Monterrey CA and Cannery Row which lead me to *re*read Steinbeck's Cannery Row which lead me to read something of a biography of the Doc character in his novel (and the movie) for whom the prototype was Ed Ricketts...Beyond the Outer Shores was written roughly 15 years ago, recounting Ricketts' life and career.  I knew that Steinbeck was a good friend of Ricketts but I was not aware of how much work they did together, including a summer of kayaking in the Sea of Cortez which yielded the data for the book they co-authored by the name "Sea of Cortez".   I was also unaware that Joseph Campbell spent his formative (adult) years in the company of both of these mens (and more to the point, Ricketts).   The author of this biography credits Ricketts as being highly influential in the work of both Steinbeck (beyond Cannery Row) and Campbell, and credits him with leading the transition from traditional biology focused on taxonomic approaches to identification of collected specimens.  Ricketts approached collecting and identifying (mostly marine) species as well as writing them up in his famous trilogy on the topic in the context of a newly emergent field of "ecology".   He was simultaneously under-appreciated due to his lack of formal education, his lack of academic affiliation whilst also being a highly prolific commercial collector/supplier of specimens to the same community while identifying a huge number of new species (perhaps only recognizing the subtle differences based on habitat and foodweb relations) within his purview (the range of the Pacific coast along the North American coast from Bering Sea to Panama).On 10/23/19 3:39 PM, Jochen Fromm wrote:I recently stumbled upon John Steinbeck's classic novel "The Grapes of Wrath" and wonder if it is similar to the situation today. You will all know it since it is often read in High Schools, right? (I had to read Goethe in School. And "Animal Farm" plus "To kill a Mocking Bird" in the English class). As you know Steinbeck describes how migrants from Oklahoma called Okies look for a better life in California. They travel along the Route 66, which Steinbeck helped to make popular, passed Albuquerque and Santa Fe, and drove to the West until they arrived in California where the locals disliked and rejected them.https://www.nationalgeographic.org/news/grapes-wrath Today we have migrants from Cuba and Mexico looking for a better life in the US and refugees from Syria and Afghanistan who cause a lot of trouble in the EU. Many of these refugees and migrants live in camps, just like the ones Steinbeck visited. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2002/feb/02/johnsteinbeck.socialsciences Steinbeck's novel takes place during the "Dust Bowl". Today the dry regions in the South suffer from droughts and wild fires caused by Climate Change worldwide. Everything sounds similar, as if history is repeating itself. https://www.history.com/news/10-things-you-may-not-know-about-the-dust-bowl -J.      ============================================================FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listservMeets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's Collegeto unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.comarchives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove============================================================FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listservMeets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's Collegeto unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.comarchives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
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