The Last Marlin : The Story of a Family at Sea [Hardcover]

Fred Waitzkin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 3, 2000

The mystique and adventure of deep-sea fishing color a family memoir reminiscent of A River Runs Through It

Fred Waitzkin's moving account of fatherhood is still imprinted on the minds of those who read the book or watched the film Searching for Bobby Fischer. Now he reaches back to his own childhood to write a sweeping family saga of love and betrayal.

Fred's father Abe is a brilliantly talented salesman, a sickly man whose relentless will drives him to succeed. He marries an eccentric abstract artist and thereby forges an alliance with her wealthy father. The marriage founders, and Fred's world is threatened by his mother's need to realize herself as an artist, by his father's declining health, by duplicity, and by revenge. In order to keep head above water while family and fortune threaten to go down around him, Fred fishes. In scenes that range from Great Neck, Long Island, to the boats of drug smugglers on Bimini to the marlin-rich waters of the Gulf Stream, he sinks boats and battles thousand-pounders, believing that fishing is the answer to almost all problems.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

His father, Abe, was a superb salesman who parlayed personal charm and client loyalty into success despite a series of debilitating ailments. His mother, Stella, was a painter who numbered among her friends Jackson Pollock and Louise Nevelson; she despised the affluent lifestyle her husband cultivated and viewed his taking a job with her father's lighting-fixture company as a betrayal. Before and after their divorce, writes Fred Waitzkin, "Mother and Dad warred within me." His unsparing memoir depicts a larger war within the family waged by grandparents, aunts and uncles, and his own brother, who fled from their parents' troubles into a bohemian, self-destructive life. Young Fred embraced orthodox Judaism and "cultivated [his] conventional side" to emulate Abe, yet he also dreamed of being a writer. Through it all, fishing--beloved by Abe, despised by Stella--remained his escape and his comfort. Waitzkin, who proved with Searching for Bobby Fischer that he could use the particulars of an avocation to illuminate the emotional needs it assuaged, does the same here with wonderfully evocative details about fishing. A closing scene chronicling a 1998 hunt for tuna with his wife and two children tentatively suggests that this generation of Waitzkins has found some measure of the happiness that eluded Abe and Stella. --Wendy Smith

From Publishers Weekly

Near the end of this intricate family history, Waitzkin (Searching for Bobby Fischer) sits with his aged mother in a restaurant enjoying a rendition of Horace Silver's "Song for My Father." It's a salient scene considering that the book is largely an homage to Waitzkin's dad, a commercial lighting salesman, and that music was one of the sole points of common ground that the author shared with his aesthete mother. Abe Waitzkin is portrayed as a spindly, ailing man who nonetheless possesses an extraordinary talent for sales, a talent he brings to one of the country's most powerful lighting manufacturers when he marries the owner's daughter, Stella. An aspiring abstract artist, Stella has no enthusiasm for Abe's skills or clients, preferring more bohemian ideals and the company of such peers as Willem de Kooning. There is no doubt as to where the author stands in regard to this tense family divide; even as a boy, Waitzkin is titillated by his father's elan and considerable business connections. In fact, the book is really more about landing big deals than it is about sport fishing. Waitzkin describes his father as brilliant but ruthless. The latter may explain why we read so much about Abe muscling through monumental deals without ever hearing of the machinations behind them, details that might interest those less inclined to be awestruck by fluorescent lighting contracts. Though there are hints of betrayal and revenge, the book's climactic business tension ends predictably. As Waitzkin ponders the eulogy for his father's funeral, he writes, "It seemed as though no one, even the salesmen attending, would understand why I idealized his selling"; readers may appreciate Waitzkin's clear, resonant writing, but they will likely find themselves too often wondering the same thing. (Apr.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 246 pages
• Publisher: Viking Adult (April 3, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0670882615
• ISBN-13: 978-0670882618
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,020,218 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Fred Waitzkin, novelist and writer, is the author of The Last Marlin and Searching for Bobby Fischer and has written for The New York Times Magazine, New York, Esquire, Sports Illustrated, and Motorboating and Sailing. He lives in New York City and Martha's Vineyard, and still fishes regularly in the Bahamas.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fishing for Love, April 3, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Last Marlin : The Story of a Family at Sea (Hardcover)

A beautifully-written book that is alternately sad, funny and wise,Fred Waitzkin recounts his experiences of growing up in a bizarrely dysfunctional family in the America of the fifties. Stella Rosenblatt is the New York-born daughter of an immigrant industrialist who has built Globe Lighting into the leading company in its field. Abe Waitzkin is a high-powered lighting salesman from Boston. Stella, a radical artist with a strong aversion to the business world and all its trappings,finds herself irresistibly drawn to the wily, dynamic and ambitious young Abe. Their marriage eventually degenerates into a clash of two enormously powerful wills, with their two sons, the author and his younger brother Bill, caught in the middle. To Stella's horror, Abe joins her father's company and through his relentless drive steers it to ever greater successes. While Abe takes advanatge of the greatest construction boom in American history by lavishly entertaining sleazy politicians, union bosses and construction magnates, Stella becomes an active member of a Long Island colony of artists that includes such luminaries as Willem de Kooning, Frank Stella and Jackson Pollack. Thus, while Abe is at the forefront of a new wave in American business, his wife is spending her days with the most important aritists in 20th century America. The ironies of being brought up in two such disparate worlds are rendered with humor and insight by the author. For Fred and his brother Bill, the only respite from the constanmtly clashing temperaments of their equally strong-willed parents comes through deep-sea fishing. In dozens of thrillingly-rendered scenes, Waitzkin lets the reader share the joys of the sea (especially around the idyllic Bahama island of Bimini)and the excitement of deep-sea sport fishing (for Marlin, sailfish, tuna, giant sharks, etc.). In Waitzkin's capable hands, the dissolution and frightening aftermath of his parents' ill-starred marriage and the concurrent ruin of Bimini's pristine beauty are made to mirror each other. Through it all, the author keeps on fishing, using that activity as a superb metaphor for unfulfilled longing and pereptually renewed hope. A very different and affecting personal memoir featuring larger-than-life characters and glorious, sun-filled locales. If you're "fishing" for a good read, search no further.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautifully written - reads like a novel, April 14, 2000

By 

Fan of Newman (Ft. Lauderdale) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Last Marlin : The Story of a Family at Sea (Hardcover)

I started the book on Friday and finished reading it on Saturday evening. I couldn't put it down. I loved it. I think it is a great book, in the genre of Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes and Tis, but with more depth. It read well, read easy. And yet, it wasn't just about another fictional disfunctional family. It wasn't formulaic. It didn't manifest a protagonist hero overcoming of a difficult history. There wasn't even a clear hero or antihero. It showed a family, a history, that, to some extent or another is a common family, a common history, especially for Jews in America. It's a generational story, a fishing adventure, a history of sportfishing and Bimini and life in the 50s and 60s in New York Jewish society. It's a history of art and jazz and poetry. There is a lot of stuff going on in The Last Marlin. It's an interesting book, not easily put into a classification. It reads like a novel, though it brings to light the oft-quoted phrase that "truth is stranger than fiction." Because it's not fiction, because it's real, the reader will be able to identify with the characters either within us or within our families. Character development, especially of the four leading characters is terrific. Abe, Stella, Bill and Fred are unique characters and all of them, Fred included, are portrayed as seriously neurotic. Each has attractive qualities but each is, to various degrees, self-centered and awful. There is a lot of rage in this book, just like in most families. But most novels don't deal with rage like this, like most people in real life deal with rage. In a novel there would be a murder or rape. In the book, people cope or don't cope as best as they can. They survive, or maybe not, like Bill. I think that is how life is. I would have like to seen Bonnie's character developed more fully. Most readers are going to wonder what the hell she is doing putting up with Fred and the eccentric lifestyle he imposes. A MUST READ!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A memior unlike no other., April 9, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Last Marlin : The Story of a Family at Sea (Hardcover)

The Last Marlin by Fred Waitzkin is a wonderfully written memior which allows you to enter his world of big game fishing and a very unconventional childhood. Waitzkin's complete openess and honesty about his parents, Stella and Abe, will allow to feel the joy, anger and confusion he and his brother Billy had through adolescents. As if this side of his life isn't enough, Waitzkin continues to tell you about his incredible trips fishing for marlin, shark and tuna,with his family, as well as, some of the best fisherman in the world. Whether your a parent, angler, businessman or artist The Last Marlin is a sheer joy to read.