Check nearby libraries
Buy this book
After twenty years as a national correspondent, a foreign correspondent, and a columnist for Time, Life, and The New York Times, Gregory Jaynes is burned out. He is worried that the creak he hears underfoot is not necessarily the stair. He has certain "snarly things" in his head that he is afraid portend analysis. Faced with these mounting concerns, Jaynes asks himself: "Pay ten grand to a shrink or haul ass to Tahiti?".
He soon sets sail out of Liverpool on a cargo ship bound for the South Pacific. Unknowingly, he has booked passage on a Russian icebreaker, crewed by a surly bunch, and his fellow passengers turn out to be "a furlong closer to heaven" than his own generation.
There is Toxic June, an English gerontocrat who terrifies ship's officers half her age; Ernie from Tennessee, stuck in a time of war when the sky rained kamikazes; Agatha of the Lakes, retired nurse, new bride, French-kissing flirt; Leicester of Devon, arch-foe of Toxic June; Tuber the Root Crop Tsar, the Russian cook incapable of preparing anything that ever grew above-ground; and a shark who - like the specter of death - seems to shadow the vessel. Finally, there is the author himself, irascible but sociable, tormented and laughable, a man whose tough, cranky exterior conceals a warm heart and a capacity for compassion that set him on this blunderous search for answers in the first place.
Many's the time the illumination of his intellect is all that saves him from very dark exploration of purpose, that and the promise of comedy he carries everywhere.
Not many men fall apart os hilariously as Jaynes, or as lyrically. He manages to pull himself together by Singapore, and by journey's end we are the richer for the grace of his pen and the strength of his high good humor - to say nothing of the ten grand he has saved every man who has ever had the fantasy of sailing away. The story of a man simultaneously circumnavigating the globe and chasing his own tail, Come Hell on High Water proves Sartre's dictum that hell really is other people.
Check nearby libraries
Buy this book
Previews available in: English
Subjects
Voyages around the world, Ocean travel, Cargo shipsPeople
Gregory JaynesShowing 1 featured edition. View all 1 editions?
Edition | Availability |
---|---|
1
Come hell on high water: a really sullen memoir
1997, North Point
in English
- 1st ed.
0865475229 9780865475229
|
aaaa
Libraries near you:
WorldCat
|
Book Details
Edition Notes
Classifications
The Physical Object
ID Numbers
Community Reviews (0)
Feedback?July 12, 2024 | Edited by MARC Bot | import existing book |
April 17, 2024 | Edited by ImportBot | import existing book |
February 13, 2020 | Edited by MARC Bot | remove fake subjects |
July 22, 2017 | Edited by Mek | adding subject: In library |
December 10, 2009 | Created by WorkBot | add works page |