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Summary: A novel as a terrifying dream
Review: 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.
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Summary: Exquisite book
Review: 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.
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Summary: A wonderful work. One of my fifteen favorites of all time.
Review: 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.
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Summary: A must
Review: I reread favorite books, and I find myself going back to this one the most often. I first read it in the mid-eighties, and for whatever lame reason, had trouble getting through it. Now I've taken it off the shelf and just keep it by the bed.
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Summary: How the other 90% lives
Review: Matthiessen masterfully weaves an intricate tale of third world survival using the sparse, vast Carribean sea as his setting. The personality of each of the turtlers aboard the HMS Eden have a depth and credibility that lead the reader to believe that Matthiessen must have spent years in the midst of turtle fisherman in order to paint their lives so believably. He also captures a longing for simpler times and the ignorance, freedom and savagery of the poor. Matthiessen is also able to portray the decline of the natural world through man's greed, ignorance and indifference. Although told mostly through simplistic dialogue, this story hits the reader on many levels simultaneously. This story is truely a zen masterpiece.
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Summary: The Sea, Matthiessen and Far Tortuga
Review: 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.
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Summary: The Sea, Matthiessen and Far Tortuga
Review: 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.
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Summary: Far Tortuga: A Materfully Told Sea Tale
Review: 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.
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Summary: Absolutely brilliant, a book to treasure
Review: 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.
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Summary: Why hasn't this man won a Nobel Prize?
Review: 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?????
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