Editing Ed Ricketts (section)

==Philosophy==
In addition to his writings on marine life, Ricketts wrote three philosophical essays; he continued to revise them over the years, integrating new ideas in response to feedback from Campbell, Miller, and other friends. The first essay lays out his idea of "nonteleological thinking" &ndash; a way of viewing things as they are, rather than seeking explanations for them. In his second essay, "The Spiritual Morphology of Poetry," he proposed four progressive classes of poetry, from naive to transcendent, and assigned famous poets from Keats to Whitman to these categories. The third essay, "The Philosophy of 'Breaking Through'," explores transcendence throughout the arts and describes his own moments of 'breaking through', such as his first hearing of ''[[Madame Butterfly]]''.<ref>Bayuk, Kevin (2002) [http://www.canneryrow.org/Research/Ricketts/breaking_through.html ''An Analysis of the Concept of Breaking Through''] Cannery Row Foundation.</ref>

According to his letters, conversations with composer [[John Cage]] helped Ricketts clarify some of his thoughts on poetry, and gave him new insight into the emphasis on form over content embraced by many modern artists.

Even though Steinbeck presented the essays to various publishers on behalf of Ricketts, only one was ever published in his lifetime: the first essay appears (without attribution) in a chapter titled "Non-Teleological Thinking" in ''[[The Log from the Sea of Cortez]].'' [https://web.archive.org/web/20070625165718/http://holisticbiology.stanford.edu/philosophy.html] All of his major essays, along with other shorter works were published in ''The Outer Shores, vols. 1 and 2'', edited by [[Joel Hedgpeth]], and with additional biographical commentary also by Hedgpeth. Much of this material appears in Katharine Rodger's book, ''Breaking Through: Essays, Journals, and Travelogues of Edward F. Ricketts'' (2006).

[[File:Joseph Campbell (cropped).png|thumb|120px|Joseph Campbell worked for a while as Ricketts' assistant]]

In the 1930s and 1940s, Ricketts strongly influenced many of Steinbeck's writings. The biologist inspired a number of notable characters in Steinbeck's novels, and ecological themes recur in them. Ricketts' biographer Eric Enno Tamm notes that, except for ''[[East of Eden (novel)|East of Eden]]'' (1952), Steinbeck's writing declined after Ricketts' death in 1948.<ref name="Bruce Robison 2004, p. 1"/>

Ricketts also influenced the mythologist [[Joseph Campbell]]. It was an important period in the development of Campbell's thinking about the epic journey of "[[The Hero with a Thousand Faces|the hero with a thousand faces]]." Campbell lived for a while next door to Ricketts, participated in professional and social activities at his neighbor's, and accompanied him, along with [[Xenia Cage|Xenia]] and Sasha Kashevaroff, on a 1932 journey to Juneau, Alaska on the ''Grampus''.<ref name=Straley>{{cite conference
  | first = John
  | last = Straley
  | author-link = John Straley
  | title = Sitka's ''Cannery Row'' Connection and the Birth of Ecological Thinking
  | book-title = 2011 Sitka WhaleFest Symposium: stories of our changing seas
  | publisher = Sitka WhaleFest
  | date = November 13, 2011
| location = Sitka, Alaska
  }}</ref> Like Steinbeck, Campbell played with a novel written round Ricketts as hero, but unlike Steinbeck, Campbell didn't complete the book.<ref>Tamm, Eric Enno (2005) [http://www.seaaroundus.org/OtherWebsites/2005/Of_myths_and_men_in_Monterey.pdf ''Of myths and men in Monterey: "Ed Heads" see Doc Ricketts as a cult figure'']</ref> Bruce Robison writes that "Campbell would refer to those days as a time when everything in his life was taking shape...Campbell, the great chronicler of the "hero's journey" in mythology, recognized patterns that paralleled his own thinking in one of Ricketts's unpublished philosophical essays. Echoes of [[Carl Jung]], [[Robinson Jeffers]] and [[James Joyce]] can be found in the work of Steinbeck and Ricketts as well as Campbell."<ref name="Bruce Robison 2004, p. 1" />

[[Henry Miller]] wrote about Ricketts in his book ''The Air-Conditioned Nightmare'': [Ed Ricketts is] "a most exceptional individual in character and temperament, a man radiating peace, joy and wisdom" and said that Ricketts was (apart from [[Lawrence Clark Powell|L.C. Powell]]) the only person whom Miller, during his journey across the U.S., found being "satisfied with his lot, adjusted to his environment, happy in his work, and representative of all that is best in the American tradition."<ref>Henry Miller, The Air-Conditioned Nightmare, New Directions, 1945, pp. 18 - 19</ref>

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