Commentary/review

The Bookworm God of the Audiophile is smiling upon me, I found another wonderful production. This abridged but still erudite audiobook sounds much like Cormac McCarthy to me but is less concerned with violence and the root of evil, more with valiance of the explorer. Possibly the biggest strength of this account is not the language (which is intensely brilliant, if not over-engineered) but the book narrator’s obsession with “coincidence or destiny”, as well as friendship and the appreciation of the character of others. It is around these themes that the beauty of nature wraps around. The landscape speaks to the people on the journey, not into the ether. There is a lot of humor and poetry in the dialogues, even when internal. I enjoy that kind of human presence in novels. The book has been written and rewritten and rewritten but always, it seems, from the heart.

Obviously, I am always on the lookout for more information about Native American culture and there has been some of it there.

The book reminds me of another sailing account – The Curve of Time – similarly exhilarating and inspiring.

I usually avoid abridged audio but this time, again, the production is first class. It was published in 1999 and most probably produced for the radio. The voice acting is incredibly interesting, not only conveying what is in the writing but, somehow, a little more than that. I highly recommend it. I will probably read it at least twice.

A sample for those who care (I never learned the proper interpunction of an English novel, sorry about that):

“I called to announce the departure to my Great Friend who took the usual, cautious Pilotes position.

-‘Did you know I joined the Church of Procrastination?’

-‘What’s the doctrine?’

-‘Procrastianity.’

-‘Meaning what?’

-‘I don’t know. I will figure it out later.’”

An almost multidimensional image on the cover seems to me another work of art. There is not much detail but great depth. On the second picture is the Nikawa during the last hours of its journey to the Pacific, borrowed from ItAmerica.org.

Cover from New York Public Library on Unsplash