Come Hell On High Water: A Really Sullen Memoir - Hardcover

Jaynes, Gregory

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0865475229 ISBN 13: 9780865475229

Publisher: North Point Pr, 1997

Synopsis

Faced with a mid-life crisis, a longtime reporter for The New York Times sets sail on a Russian icebreaker for the South Pacific and finds himself surrounded by a surly, aged crew aboard a dilapidated freighter

About this title

Reviews

A message in a bottle, in diary format, from the author's journey to the South Seas on a British-operated cargo ship with a Russian crew, a sling of senior citizens, and a growing sense of ennui. In the summer of 1995 Jaynes, a writer for Esquire and other magazines, turned 47, feeling ``devalued, like a peso.'' Maybe it was a midlife crisis that set Jaynes in motion, or his feeling that becoming a grandfather, as he soon would, was ``a little premature." In either event, suspecting a long sail might be the answer to what ailed him, he signed up for passage on a Russian icebreaker refitted for the tropics with a bulbous nose across her pointed bow. Venturing out of his vibrating cabin en route through the Caribbean and the Panama Canal to the Pacific, Jaynes sees ``a ship full of comedy'' at his disposal, but soon finds his shipmates for the most part humorless, the food ``unremarkable to terrible.'' His favorite companions seem to be the officers, especially the captain, who is confessor and friend through Jaynes's eventual ``mini nervous breakdown'' in Papua New Guinea. The real trouble begins when Jaynes falls off the wagon between Christmas and New Year's--from Samoa, where his he-goat alter ego enjoys the favors of a prostitute, to Fiji, after which he retreats again into sobriety. Departing the ship for the day in the busy and dangerous port of New Caledonia, Jaynes realizes he's running from the very transport he ran away on. When his breakdown comes, it is mild, mercifully brief, really little more than an extended crying jag- -leaving Jaynes and the reader to wonder whether it even happened. Arch, cynical, sullen indeed, Jaynes's salty conversation with himself is a comic, cautionary tale of the pitfalls of midlife sailing adventures. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Jaynes has been a national correspondent, a foreign correspondent, and a columnist for Time, Life, and the New York Times. When he reached the age of 47, he took off a year from work to travel around the globe on a cargo ship. After weeks of indecision, he finally plunked down his money ($100/day) to book passage on a refurbished Russian icebreaker called Tiksi. He joined the British-officered ship with its Russian crew in England and soon discovered that his fellow passengers were senior citizens with compelling personalities. His journal of the day-to-day life aboard ship is humorous and highly introspective. The company is bad, the Russian staff surly and silent, and, to top it off, the food, cooked by "Tuber the Root Crop Tsar," inedible. Jaynes is a brilliant writer and storyteller whose memoir captures the reader's attention, but overall his tone is one of brooding and dark soul-searching. It's not always a happy book, but it surely makes for good reading. Recommended for public libraries.?John Kenny, San Francisco P.L.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: North Point Pr
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0865475229
• ISBN 13: 9780865475229
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 268