[.ca] Passage to Juneau: A Sea and Its Meanings (ISBN 0679776141)

From Amazon.com:
British-born Jonathan Raban sets out on a passage from Seattle to Juneau in a small boat that is more a waterborne writing den, and as usual with the brilliant Raban, this journey becomes a vehicle for history and heart-stopping descriptions that will make readers want to hail him as one of the finest talents who's picked up a pen in the 20th century. The voyage through the Inside Passage from Washington's Puget Sound to Alaska churns up memories and stirs up hidden emotions and Raban dwells on many, including the death of his father and his own role of Daddy to his young daughter, Julia, left behind in Seattle. More than just a personal travelogue, however, Passage to Juneau deftly weaves in the stories of others before him--from Indians whom white men formerly greeted with baubles set afloat on logs, to Captain Vancouver, who risked mutiny on his ship when he banned visits with prostitutes, some of whom offered their services for bits of scrap metal. Pressed into every page are intimate descriptions of life at sea--the fog-shrouded coasts, the crackly radio that keeps him linked to the mainland, the salty marine air, and the fellow sailors who are likewise drawn by a life of tossing on water. While Raban successfully steers his boat to the desired port, readers ultimately discover that this insightful, talented sage is in fact emotionally in deep water and may not fully be captain of his own life. --Melissa Rossi

blah blah blah:
pedantic and self-serving, Raban blathers on and on in a way impressively formulaic and dull.

Passages:
I initially picked up this book hoping for a sentimental journey in the area where I grew up. The inside passage holds a special mystique among Pacific Northwesterners and is generally accepted as the most scenic, challenging, and historic way of getting from Seattle to Alaska. But this book is much more than a travelogue. We get to join Raban on a much more personal journey. Raban is obviously an experienced seaman, who sets out to explore the inside passage. As we accompany him, it becomes apparent this will be much more than a mere trip to Alaska. He intertwines history, beautiful scenery, and his own personal reflections into a fascinating trip of self discovery. Raban is a gifted writer who can draw you into the journey and the closer you get to Juneau, the more involved you've become. His descriptive prose takes you out of your lounge room and onto the boat with him. If you're looking for action-adventure, this is not it. But for a beautifully written book that parallels the stories of the sea with real life, this is a great read. Highly recommended.

fact or fiction:
I've just finished reading 'Passage to Janeau' and was left wanting more but unsettled by the possibility that the part of the book that purports to be the personal story of the author might be fictionalised. The blurring of fact and fiction is a powerful tool but one that can leave the reader feeling in shifting sands, or even deceived. It bothers me not knowing whether the two major personal events in the author's life described in the book happened at all or happened in the way and the sequence described. Apart from that I greatly enjoyed the mixture of history, anthropology, explortation, travel and observation.

The Literary Locker of Davey Jones:
Here's a writer 'sailing' on his 'boat', with way too time to think himself onto the reefs of nihilism- yet he does so with a good flair for trolling you along behind in his wake, never drowning you entirely in gloomy depths. This is because the dog can write- in this case in a formulaic yet pleasing prose that weaves predictably between history (Captain Vancouver's early voyage and the death of his father) and myth, literature, etc. He's great with image and description- even as he stares mournfully at his own reflection in the salted sea. Worth the trip by the skin of a salmon. Don't read it if you're depressed tho- he really seems to sum up the whole of our existence as flotsam spinning around and around in an eddy- or even just the eddy itself- with little creative friction from any other view. A bag of psylocibin seaweed and some face time with a dolphin might be just what the man needs. Bon Voyage!

Book as Revenge:
This is a great book for about the first third of its passage. I get the impression that like a musician with a few good tunes but not an entire CD worth of them, the idea of a cohesive theme is abandoned for the sake of size. A book of the parallel trips of Mr.Raban and Cap'n Vancouver was enough for me had it been researched more deeply. I got the impression that he was bored with his own topic after firing off some initial brilliant ideas. The hard right turn into the extensive description of the death of his father belonged in another book as did the wind up which feels essentially like he's using the merits of the rest of the book and his status as a writer as a weapon to dump on his wife and her decision to separate. If that's his way of dealing with the situation then it's not surprizing that the separation happened. We all have these bizarre fragmentations in our lives; the public humiliation of his wife just makes me feel worse than when I started the book and I was left with the impression that I was \opulled\c into a cheap shot.