Tall tales woven together on the slender thread of the fantastic adventures of the sailor ashore who tells them as he goes. They get him in and out of trouble, in and out of jobs, in and out of love. There seems little to give credence to the adventures which pursue him (any more than to the tales he tells), but the book seems a busman's holiday for the creator of Juan -- and a far cry from his picaresque adventures in social philosophy. There's a bit of Thorne Smith, but less of bawdiness, though enough to disturb the sensibilities of the conventional and the thin-skinned. A book for lighter moments -- and for men chiefly.