DOWN IN BRISTOL BAY

A well-written tale of life on Alaskan fishing boats in pre-pipeline days. In 1963 Durr was a professor of English literature at Syracuse University, respectable, tenured, and moderately well paid, with lots of time off, and considered a good teacher and scholar, liked by my students and colleagues. For all that, he was not content: he longed for adventure in some place far away, and that remote adventure meant Alaska, where he signed on for a tour of duty on a fishing trawler staffed by fellow Lower 48 refugees and local Native Americans. To get by, he learned, it would not be enough to work hard and entrust that time would acculturate him; Durr also had to learn how to shed his academic self and become as his rough-edged fellows, a process aided by his untoward talent for carousing. He also became a shipboard philosopher, explaining to his fellow crewmen that they were lucky to be out getting tossed around on the cold Arctic seas rather than locked in to some unpleasant desk job, even at a well-respected institution of higher learning. Durr saw his share of adventures and misadventures, and he writes with good humor of his own failures to fit in, as when he recounts a spell at the fishing nets fitted out in Eddie Bauer clothes that were far from the regulation heavy-gauge wet-weather gear, the latter devoid of buckles, straps, and buttons that could catch on a line and send their wearer deep into the drink. Durr’s crew, he writes, was far from the best bunch of workers, and they treated their health with studied disregard. Still, they taught him a thing or two about life. And while Durr’s memoir is generally lacking in surprises, it makes for a pleasant enough exercise in armchair travel.