Customer Reviews

Far Tortuga

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Peter Mattiessen is one of my favorite writers. You know, if you pick one his many books and open them,whether fiction or non-fiction, that you will be entertained, and see something through fresh eyes, and behind the writing a man concerned deeply for the suvival of our planet. Far Tortuga is a strange, other-worldly book. Mattiessen creates a new style, with word paragraphs of beautiful descriptions of the natural world and the sea, then the emphasis on the dialect spoken in the Bahamas, so deeply felt and understood that it is poetry, the natural rythums of speech and nature captured. Matthiesen has risked much but has succeeded on every creative level. One keeps going back to relish a passage and say "How did he do it, so deeply understand the native speech and blend it into a thrilling adventure story?" He has done this and more, this adventure story about turtle fishing, the sea, human nature under the stress of the elements, and wonderful imagination for names like the name of the turtling ship, the "Lillias Eden," place names like Misteriosa Reefs, and the characters like Raib Evers, Byrum, Speedy, and my favorite: Will Parchment. It is a story of adventure and meditation, of a deceptive simpicity. I think of Joseph Conrad mixed with the wonderful Bahama watercolors of Winslow Homer and Mattiessen in his imagery is easily their equal. It is a zen meditation on the sea and deep regret of things lost and hope of things that may be there, a "Far Tortuga" that may not be on a map but lies out there, home of wide-winged seabirds, pirates, and adventure. "Far Totuga" is a one of a kind masterpiece that throws its readers headfirst into the vision and never lets go.When I read it,I hear the sea surge,feel the author's deep love of nature and of the blue watery planet,where most of our natural paradises and magical places are disappearing.

One can speak easily of Hemingway, Joyce, Orwell or Fitzgerald in terms of the greatest authors of the twentieth century. But what what of these others? What of a man like Peter Matthiessen who wrote a book like "Far Tortuga?"

"Far Tortuga" is unquestionably one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century. History will bear out this assertion. In "Far Tortuga" we are presented with reality painted in dreamlike intensity. All of the the minor aches, pains and idiosyncracies of day to day life are there, yet they are drawn against a backdrop of unforgiving, almost monumental, natural power.

In the final analysis, though the details are subject to change, is this not the world that each of us faces on a day to day basis?

In his stark and almost poetry-like portrayal of life aboard a small turtle vessel, Matthiessen is able to address everything that is meaningful in all of our lives. There is jealousy, there is random hatred, there is competition for its own sake, there is hunger and there is solitude. There is anger, there is pride, there is shame and there is repentance. What doesn't Matthiessen touch upon in this great novel? There is sorrow, there is fear, there is unreasoning hatred and greed. There are moments of selflessness, there are moments of joy, there are moments of doubt and there are moments of ambition.

It is a rare novel that is able to pack the sum of human experience into one tale. Matthiessen does it in "Far Tortuga."

The novel has not recieved the glory it deserves, yet. One day it will.

One day it will be known for the work of genius that it is.

Let's begin low-brow: "Far Tortuga" is the ultimate beach read. Read this while the sun strikes the sand and the waves crash and you'll practically hallucinate yourself into a full blown virtual reality. But even if you're landlocked, Matthiessen does a masterful job of evoking the sights, smells, and sounds of the Carribean. His success is due largely to the pungent, poetic, shorthand style of writing, unique to Matthiessen's ouevre, and perhaps American literature. I'd guess it'd be more obvioulsy an "experimental" style if the author didn't pull it off so adroitly. Visually, there's lot of white space on the pages of this book. Near the end, there are pages that might contain as little as a phrase, a name, or less--all for reasons that seem more organic than experimental. Much dialog between the crew of the Lillius Eden is unattributed, and not set off by quotation marks. Any initial confusion this creates is short-lived, as it is through the character's talk that we learn to distinguish them (it's also how Matthiessen reveals their seperate dreams, ambitions, sins, etc.). I can't over-emphasize that these stylistic oddities are more then mere quirks, but truly seem to be the best, most organic (and maybe only) way to tell the tale.

And what a tale. Though what exactly is so gripping about it is hard to say. The turtle-hunting voyage of the "Lillias Eden" seems ill-fated from the start: the turtles have already been over-hunted into scarcity and it's mighty late in the season to cast off. But that doesn't stop the ragged, largely reprobate crew of from embarking--for most, it's the best chance they have in a working-class third world life of dwindling returns. There's likely to be a lot of cultural distance between these guys and the people reading about them, so it's all the more remarkable how Matthiessen manages to make these characters unique individuals whislt also making them universally identifiable Everymen. This is no mean feat.

Lo, there are still some turtle left in the sea--but there are also pirates (the unromantic modern ones), reefs, wrecks of ships and wrecks of men. To say much more would be to tresspass on too many potential delights.

This is a multi-faceted, multi-leveled work. Thomas Pynchon's blurb (strange but true) on the original hardcover suggests while "Far Tortuga" is a "masterfully spun yarn" it's also a "deep declaration of love for the planet." But this is the ecological concern of a lifelong naturalist, really only witnessed by the book's always-evocative poetic descriptions of nature. And for "poetic," don't dare read "mushy." This is a supple, muscular poetry (indeed a masculine poetry, as befitting it's subjects), a whole lot closer to Homer than Rod McKuen. It's a book Conrad would have embraced, maybe even championed. Maybe Robert W. Service, too. It's a book of unique delights, one of my all-time faves, and I really envy anyone their first reading.

The poetry of his writing is amazing - no one has written this well about the ocean since Conrad and Melville. He succesfully creates the feeling of being at sea, the loneliness, the exhilaration, with subtlety and economy.

Every one of the characters is vividly drawn - this is truly a book where you can immerse yourself in another world - every detail is convincingly rendered. You can tell that this is man who understands the lives of his characters, down to the rhythms of their speech.

With a style this original, it is amazing that there is not a single trace of fakery or affectation. Matthiessen writes the book this way because that is the way the material needs to present itself - honestly, one never feels the intrusion of the author; it is as if the world - a world that one feels a deep appreciation for - is writing itself.

Far Tortuga is one of the finest works of fiction I have ever read. Had this book been written a hundred years ago, we wouldn't be comparing Matthiessen to Conrad today (as happens often), because Matthiessen's writing is so much better. This book's prose is mytho-poetical, gorgeous, and shorn of everything that is not necessary (unlike Conrad's heavy-handedness). Even though we (ironically) live in an age of some fine writing, the frenzy of life and the vulgarity of taste of most people is such that a book like Far Tortuga comes along, gains some readers, gets some good reviews, and is forgotten. It's not Matthiessen's fault; it's just that anything today of real quality is noticed by fewer and fewer people. Far Tortuga is a dream. Please read it, you won't be disappointed.

One glance at the pages of "Far Tortuga" will be enough to convince any reader that the novel is unique. The narration of the story is unconventional, to say the least: snippets of dialogue (in faithfully-rendered Caribbean dialect) are interspersed with brief but beautiful descriptions of the ocean and its inhabitants. The story is simple but timeless: nine sailors/turtlers/outcasts onboard the "Lillias Eden" go on a late-season green turtle-hunt in the waters between Cayman and Cuba. We learn about the characters mostly through the dialogue; we learn also about shipwrecks and mutinies and black magic--all of which play key roles in the resolution of the plot.

But plot truly takes a back seat in this novel; "Far Tortuga" is, first and foremost, a set-piece. It's remarkable how the style of the novel mimics movement and change, how the characters' dialogue calls to mind a particular time and place, and how the descriptive passages can transport a reader instantly to a place he or she has never been. Matthiessen's fiction is particularly adept at showing the delicate (and not always positive) interplay between man and nature (read "At Play in the Fields of the Lord" or "Killing Mister Watson" for other great examples); "Far Tortuga" is no exception. If there is any drawback to this novel, it's that, in longer conversations, it's not always easy to discern which character is doing the talking. But I gather that's Matthiessen's idea: to get the reader out of the "novel" mindset and into the actual story, where voices collide and commotion ensues and what's important is not always who's doing the talking, but what's being said.

This novel, like the age of seamanship is describes, seems to be vanishing. This is a shame. Despite its unusual style and literary ambitions, "Far Tortuga" is a great read that deserves a wide audience. (The same could be said for all of Matthiessen's work.) If you're willing to hunt it down, though, you won't be disappointed.

I finished this book and was initially unimpressed. However, as does all great writing, certain passages and scenes have stuck with me for several weeks, causing me to go back and review certain scenes. As time passes, I begin to see the truly outstanding nature of this book. It is one that requires maturation in your mind before you can appreciate what Matthiesen has done. The characters are richly drawn with very little description. They slowly reveal their multi-faceted natures through conversation alone. I am still pondering some of the author's symbolism and will be for some time to come.

Graceful, beautiful, haunting tale of a turtle-hunting expedition in the Carribean. I loved it, but it is not for everyone. A book to ponder, to reread and ponder again.

An engrossing sea tale with full-blooded, often comic, characters, eternal themes, and heart-breaking writing.

All this, and told mostly without a narrator, told solely through the voices of the men aboard the Lillias Eden, told across pages so sparsely decorated with words that each looks like a Japanese print.

A beautiful work of literature and art.

This book is truly a masterpiece. There is nothing else like it: where are "Heart of Darkness" or "The Old Man and the Sea" in comparison to it? I've been reading it for 15 or 20 years, and I find it intensely moving and fresh every time I pick it up. I consider it one of the best 6 or 8 novels (in English, certainly) of the passing century. READ THIS BOOK!!!!!

Matthiessen is a poet, even in didactic nonfiction like "Wildife in America". Tell me, is there a better or more beautiful image anywhere than the sinking turtle which Speedy releases at the end of "Far Tortuga"?

For too many years Matthiessen has been an international treasure, a writer of enormous breadth and incomparable depth, without the recognition he deserves for a lifetime of work. Isn't it time he received a Nobel Prize?????