Passage to Juneau : A Sea and Its Meanings

Rating:
Summary: An enjoyable read
Review: Living in Seattle, and having traveled the Inside Passage I really enjoyed the familiarity and memories this book stirred up. I did find myself skipping portions of texts dedicated to the mechanics of boating, as well as much of the reflections on his late father, but I enjoyed the comparative narrative of Captain Vancouver's exploration. Each time we sailed into a new place I felt I was there. I took the trip with him and really enjoyed the scenery. A wonderful read if you have ever dreamed of taking a trip through the Inside Passage.

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Summary: Raban's story is a first rate, sailor/history/personal one.
Review: Mr. Raban causes me to re-think my attitudes towards Native American anthropological 'truths'. Any book that makes me pause to 're-think', has done the job I bought it for; learning. Fresh minds = fresh ideas. Personally, I would have run Cap'n Van through, were I aboard the 'Discovery'. Thank you Mr. Raban...

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Summary: Good words about the sea - inadequate words for people
Review: Passage to Juneau has some wonderful, intimate descriptions of the sea in the inside passage. The reader can see and feel the flow of the tide between the islands. Weaving the history of Captain Vancouver into the story brought some new facts into view. When the story dealt with the primary woman in the writer's life, the turn was so abrupt and offhand that I found myself discounting much of the story to that point. This factor is for me a fatal flaw in a potentially effective bit of creative writing.

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Summary: A personal journey within Alaska both past and present
Review: Passage to Juneau is as much a journey of self-discovery as it is a travelogue. In typical Raban style, the author's keen eye and magnificent use of language immurses you in a voyage both past and present, both inward and outward. If you are a Raban fan you will not be disappointed.

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Summary: Powerful, beautiful and touching
Review: Passage to Juneau is travel writing at its very best. Lyrical and soaring at one moment, darkly introspective at another, moods tracing the contours and texture of land and sea along the fantastic inner passage, this book hooks and engages the reader at every level. Raban highlights the interplay and clash of culture from the eighteenth century to the late twentienth, with an utterly unsentimental hand and eye. His rich and polished writing is a joy, and his personal involvement with his material reaches the reader's soul. Highly entertaining, richly informative, adventurous and deeply moving, this is one of the most affecting books I've read in years.

Rating:
Summary: blah blah blah
Review: pedantic and self-serving, Raban blathers on and on in a way impressively formulaic and dull.

Rating:
Summary: Beautifully written, best I've read in years
Review: Raban does a first-class job interweaving multiple themes into this wonderful story, including fascinating accounts of early navigation methods, unforgettable descriptions of the people along the way, reflections of the sea in native art, Captain Vancouver's amazing voyage and the harsh conflicts among his crew, and lastly, Raban's own personal discoveries, heartfelt and heartbreaking. As an eight year Alaska resident I can say it's the rare book that gives a honest, unromanticized account of Alaska portraying all its beauty, harshness, and the tragedies as well as triumphs of its people. This is the best book I've read in years, reminiscent of Bruce Chatwin and the lost art of combining travel writing with impeccable historical research.

Rating:
Summary: At his best when writing about others
Review: The autobiographical genre is a difficult one: it tends to be the case that one has either a life worth writing about or the skills to write well. Raban most definitely has the skills, but whether his readers find him as interesting as he finds himself is questionable. That said, any book needs a structure, and a voyage is ripe with metaphor and symbolism: his own trip to Alaska makes a decent skeleton for the stories and musings he passes on to us. A veneer of fictionalization might have made his self-centeredness, and the harshness with which he deals with his separation from his wife, a little more palatable.

Granted, he does make a big, implicit self-criticism, in setting himself parallel to George Vancouver, the petty and self-aggrandizing, thorough and plodding explorer. And it is whenhe gets outside himself that the writing really sings: retelling and exploring myths of the Pacific Northwest, in particular, or trying to figure out what exactly his father (an Anglican minister) believed.

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Summary: The Sea, The Sea
Review: The travel book, while being a favourite haunt of writers, has often been ridiculed as 'an establishment in literature's red-light district '. Graham Greene, Bruce Chatwin, Paul Theroux, Peter Mattheissen and Jonathan Raban have imbued this genre with respectability. The sea is to Jonathan Raban what the railroads are to his friend Theroux and the songlines were to Chatwin. This lapsed Englishman has meandered down the muddy Mississippi, coasted around Britain and traversed the Atlantic ocean on a freighter. In going to the sea " for the going's sake " he sets sail from Seattle on a solo voyage north in a 35-foot ketch through the Inner Passage -- the water betweenVancouver Island and mainland Canada, then through the Queen Charlotte Sound to the " scribble of islands " at the southern tip of Alaska. There are three voyages here -- the physical, the intellectual and an "Inner Passage" ,of Raban's own the journey within. Replete with sumptious descriptions of the antonym of land, this part autobiography, part exploration and part essay on Kwatkuitl mythology, Raban discovers that the " rougher sea " to quote the 18th century poet William Cowper, is the one that lies within.

Rating:
Summary: Enjoyed the first half more than the second
Review: This book starts off wonderfully. The author clearly has insight into the cultural and historical aspects of the Inside Passage. About midway through the book, it takes on a distinctly dissonant tone and shifts to being less about the place, it's history and culture, and more about the author and his own life's struggles. It is not particularly captivating to have anchored your boat in an isolated, almost mystical setting, only to fly out by float plane, back to ol' England for father's funeral-an admittedly important life event-and scamper back to the mystical setting to take up where you left off. I started this book feeling inspired by the cultural traditions of it's human inhabitants and the history of human exploration (eg following Vancouver's voyage), but ended up feeling simply saddened by this author's circumstance. I got the sense he was trying to finish the book quickly in order to close a difficult chapter in his life and yet still have written a book. I think, given the first half of the book, he could have done much, much better.