Sail Away: Stories of Escaping to Sea - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1569245843 ISBN 13: 9781569245842

Publisher: Da Capo Press, 2001

Synopsis

Something happens when men and women put a plank between themselves and the water and set out on a voyage, whether for a day or a lifetime. Now Sail Away brings together the very finest writing about travel on water by a stellar crew of writers. Among those to be included are Joseph Conrad, Jacques Cousteau, Roald Dahl, Lawrence Durrell, F. Scott Fitzgerald, E.M. Forster, Ernest Hemingway, Thor Heyerdahl, Jonathan Raban, Paul Theroux, Mark Twain, Jules Verne, David Foster Wallace, and Evelyn Waugh. Packaged as the perfect companion to Beach, with atmospheric photos by Beach photographer Mittie Hellmich, Sail Away will be an important addition to the tradition of best-selling books about ships and the sea.

About this title

From Library Journal:

Despite the security of terra firma, people have long romanticized the idea of being on the water. In this collection of short stories, novel excerpts, and narrative nonfiction, editors Lencek and Bosker (Beach: Stories by the Sand and Sea) have compiled selections from an impressive list of authors, including Jules Verne and Paul Theroux, to reflect on the diversity of nautical endeavors. In the introduction, they write, "We've heard it said that 'on a ship, there is fate in every plank'...no two voyages are ever alike." And no two stories are alike, from Ann Davidson's account of her solo transatlantic voyage in "My Ship Is So Small" to Daniel Duane's reflections on perfecting the art of surfing in Caught Inside. Most impressive are Nobel laureate Ivan Bunin's "The Gentleman from San Francisco" and Langston Hughes's The Big Sea, both stories that epitomize the transforming power of the ocean. This is a book for sea-gazing landlubbers. Recommended for all public libraries. Stephanie Maher, Warwick, RI
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist:

Lencek and Bosker posit in their introduction that "it was in the spirit of the great escape" that they selected the 21 stories--fiction and nonfiction--in this collection that illuminate the range of navigational experiences. They have arranged the stories to progress by degrees from a tight focus on the material circumstances of being at sea to an increasingly abstract exploration of its psychological, social, developmental, spiritual, and finally, utopian dimensions. Some of the authors are well known, including Jules Verne (from Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea), Thor Heyerdahl, Roald Dahl, Paul Theroux, John Rolfe Gardiner, Langston Hughes (from his autobiography), Virginia Woolf (from To the Lighthouse), and W. S. Merwin. The other writers are lesser known; but this is a first-rate anthology of sea stories. George Cohen
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About this edition

• Publisher: Da Capo Press
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 1569245843
• ISBN 13: 9781569245842
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 352
• Editor: Lencek Lena, Bosker Gideon