Wanderer - Softcover

Hayden, Sterling

Softcover

ISBN 10: 039333628X ISBN 13: 9780393336283

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 1977

Synopsis

Fourteen years ago, when it was first published, Wanderer startled the reading world. Here was no simple narrative of a sea voyage, and here was the antithesis of a self-serving Hollywood memoir.

Sterling Hayden was at the peak of his earning power as a star when he suddenly quit. He walked out on Hollywood, walked out of a shattered marriage, defied the courts, and, broke and an outlaw, set sail with his four children in the schooner Wanderer--bound for the South Seas.

Long before he was an actor, Hayden was a seaman. He had sailed before the mast and as mate and captain in sailing ships. He had been a Grand Banks fisherman. Then Hollywood offered him a screen test. Pushed to stardom, he became the leading man to one of the screen's most beautiful women, and the money began to flow. With money and fame, however, came a gnawing dissatisfaction with his life.

His attempt to escape launches this autobiography. It is the candid, sometimes painfully revealing confession of a man who scrutinizes his every self-defeat and self-betrayal in the unblinking light of conscience. It is also the triumph of a complex and contradictory man, still a rebel and a seeker, undefeated by his failure to find himself in love, adventure, drink, or escape to the South Seas.

It is, as Eugene Burdick said of it, "utterly fascinating, written by a man who has been able to achieve an honesty about himself which is almost unique."

About this title

From the Publisher

Review: It's mighty nice of Sheridan House to reprint Wanderer for a new generation. Many may have missed this treasure its first time around in 1963, and its second printing in '77. The author, Hayden, was a hero to many sailors worldwide, as well as to workaday malcontents "living lives of quiet desperation." His searching autobiography reads like a novel; indeed, in today's vanilla world, with horizons shrinking for Everyman, Hayden's story seems a fantasy. Rest assured, it's not... He thumbed his nose at the movie industry, his ex-wife, and a judge's order forbidding him to take his children to sea in the ex-pilot schooner Wanderer. He sailed off to Tahiti anyway, deeply in debt, taking his children and a crew of friends. His defiance made big news. It made Hayden a public hero again, for lots of men longed to tell their bosses to shove it. Hayden did it, and it made perfect sense to a lot of us. When his book came out, we rushed to buy it. Our reward was an exceptional tale, especially for sailors.

From the Back Cover

"An impressive writer. Like Fitzgerald, Hayden is a romantic. His writing about the sea evokes echoes of Conrad and McFee, of London and Galsworthy... Beautifully done." --Robert Kirsch, Los Angeles Times

"A superb piece of writing... Echoes from Poe and Melville to Steinbeck and Mailer. A work of fascination on every level." --New York Post

Edition details

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 1977
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 039333628X
• ISBN 13: 9780393336283
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 480