Far Tortuga

Far Tortuga is a stunning book that not only warrants but rewards many re-readings. It rates with those seminal works like Hemmingway's "The Old Man and the Sea". that express the crux of the human condition. It is not ethnography, or oceanography or technology or ecology but from close observation it creates all those perspectives with sparse, almost poetic writing that cuts with the precision of salt spray. An old boat in the Caribbean and a motley crew of hardened experienced seafarers and local reprobates with their own patois. The book runs the gamut of emotion with insight as penetrating as the splinters of old timber. Make of it what you will, it puts you there. On the boat, among the crew, the islands, the cays and the seascape.

Matthiesssen was a fisherman for awhile.

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