Passage to Juneau - a Sea and its Meaning

Zusatztext "A work of great beauty and inexhaustible fervor." -- The Washington Post Book World "Endlessly suggestive. . . . Nobody now writing keeps a more provocative house than Jonathan Raban." -- The New York Times Book Review "A great book by the very best contempoary writer afloat." -- The Oregonian "Raban is a super-sensitive! all-seeing eye. He spots things we might otherwise miss; he calls up the apt metaphors that transform things into phenomena--. One of our most gifted observers."-- Newsday Informationen zum Autor JONATHAN RABAN is the author of the novels Surveillance and Waxwings; his nonfiction works include Passage to Juneau, Bad Land, and Driving Home . His honors include the National Book Critics Circle Award, the PEN/West Creative Nonfiction Award, the Pacific Northwest Booksellers’ Award, and the Governor’s Award of the State of Washington. He died in 2023. Klappentext With the same rigorous observation (natural and social), invigorating stylishness, and encyclopedic learning that he brought to his National Book Award-winning Bad Land , Jonathan Raban conducts readers along the Inside Passage from Seattle to Juneau. The physical distance is 1,000 miles of difficult-and often treacherous-water, which Raban navigates solo in a 35-foot sailboat. But Passage to Juneau also traverses a gulf of centuries and cultures: the immeasurable divide between the Northwest's Indians and its first European explorers-- between its embattled fishermen and loggers and its pampered new class. Along the way, Raban offers captivating discourses on art, philosophy, and navigation and an unsparing narrative of personal loss. Leseprobe He was walking the dock; a big lummox, yellow hair tied back in a ponytail with a red bandanna, bedroll strapped to his shoulders. His plaid jacket looked like a fruitful research area for some unfastidious entomologist. I took him for a displaced farm boy, a Scandinavian type from Wisconsin or Minnesota, adrift in the new world of the Pacific Northwest. He held a scrap of paper, folded into a wedge the size of a postage stamp to keep its message safe inside. For what was evidently the hundredth time, he fingered it carefully apart and stared at the two words inscribed there in wonky, ballpoint capitals. " Pacific Venturer ?" he asked. The late March sun (this was Seattle's first high-pressure, blue-sky day after weeks of low overcast) glittered in the pale stubble on his cheeks. "That's the boat I'm looking for. Pacific Venturer ." He spoke the name syllable by syllable, and I could see him in first grade -- a large, vacant, uncoordinated child, already far behind the rest of the class. "You seen that boat, man?" Three, maybe four hundred boats were moored hull to hull at Fishermen's Terminal. They formed a wintry thicket, over fifty acres of water, of masts, spars, trolling poles, whip-antennae, radar scanners, deck-hoists, and davits. Looking at the names around us, I read Vigorous, Tradition, Paragon, Sea Lassie, Peregrine, Resolute, Star of Heaven, Cheryl G., Cheerful, Immigrant (a green cloverleaf blazoned on its wheelhouse), Paramount, Memories . I saw a Pacific Breeze , but no Pacific Venturer . "What is it -- a purse-seiner?" He took it as a trick question, staring at me as if I were an unfriendly examiner. He had Barbie-doll blue eyes. "I dunno. Salmon boat." He consulted the piece of paper in his hand. "Yup. That's a salmon boat -- I heard." He stank of the road -- of hitchhiking on interstates, diving in Dumpsters, spending nights in cardboard boxes under highway bridges, gargling with Thunderbird. "I been here since seven." It was two in the afternoon. Purposeful men were pushing past us, dressed in the local uniform of hooded smocks and black peaked cap...

Dettagli sul prodotto

• Autori: Jonathan Raban
• Editore: Vintage USA
• Lingue: Inglese
• Formato: Tascabile
• Pubblicazione: 07.11.2000
• EAN: 9780679776147
• ISBN: 978-0-679-77614-7
• Pagine: 448
• Dimensioni: 135 mm x 205 mm x 25 mm
• Serie: Vintage Departures; Vintage Departures
• Categoria: Viaggi > Reportage di viaggio, racconti di viaggio > Mondo, Artide, Antartide