Wanderer

Rating:
Summary: A frustrated man relates
Review: This story is a bit of a autobiography. At times it jumps around in an attempt to describe several parallel thoughts but it gets a bit confusing. It serves well as a "period piece" of sorts revealing the social and cultural elements of the author's youth and early adulthood. The story has less to do with sailing and more to do with the author's search for himself. Interesting and fairly well developed story line. Sometimes I got the feeling that this book was some kind of catharsis for the author in order to make sense of his unorthadox life. He battles against a world with order and goals that values expensive houses and big retirement accounts at the expense of enriched experiences.

Rating:
Summary: Hayden speaks eloquently of woodenships and human hearts.
Review: Wanderer is a wonderful journey back in time for any lover of ships that has come of age since the end of the great age of sail. Hayden puts his reader in a dory on the Grand Banks, or at the masthead of the Gertrude L. Theabaud during the last of the great schooner races, or at the helm of the Yankee way off in the pacific somwhere between Pitcarin Island and Tahiti. Hayden led the last mutiny of the great age of sail. Against the better judgement of the superior court of the great State of California, he took his four young children, his old windjammer, and a crew of friends and dreamers on a voyage of dicovery. In the end, though this book is about the wind which drives his ship, and the spirt that drives his soul.

Rating:
Summary: Not just a sea story
Review: Wanderer is more than just another sea story. It is one of the finest books ever written about personal freedom.
Sterling Hayden had a substantial acting talent, but the great surprise here is that his writing far surpasses it. The first section, in particular, is one of the tightest, most lyrical long passages in mid-20th century prose, rivalling William Faulkner and Robert Penn Warren (it reminds me of the first 100 or so pages of "The Cave"). But, as is appropriate for a voyage that begins in the San Francisco Bay in 1963, it shows a style reminiscent of Jack Kerouac and Dylan Thomas.
Wanderer is a ripping good story, but read it at least once for the writing.