ADRIFT

by Tristan Jones ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 3, 1980

A sweet-and-sad introduction to Jones' humors for newcomers, who can then go on to more exciting doings in The Incredible Voyage and Ice! Adrift is not really about the sea but about being down-and-out and stranded in New York and London and Rio. Jones has just finished his 60,000-mile voyage from the world's lowest body of water, the Dead Sea, to its highest, Lake Titicaca in the Andes; and now he must get his little ship the Sea Dart back to sea level. When he does, the boat needs repairs, and meanwhile Jones is up against the fascists in Chile. He helps an Irish political prisoner escape sure death, winds up penniless in Montevideo, and ships the Sea Dart to London to be paid for at the other end. To scrape up a flight ticket home, he sells some of his best gear--and then finds that London's Customs people have levied a 750-pound import tax on the boat! Jones is outraged that a British citizen should be taxed to ship a British boat to a British port; but he's stymied--forced to take menial jobs and act as a Caribbean charter skipper while forwarding dribs and drabs to the Customs people. Meanwhile, his literary career begins as he flails about writing articles trying to free himself from poverty. The agent for his first book dies and the manuscript is never recovered. Then, his luck turns: an American publisher is so taken with the opening of The Incredible Voyage that he gives Jones a three-book contract. In the ripest pages here he holes un in a Bowery flophouse and a Greenwich Village basement apartment and soaks up the Bowery flophouse and out Voyage for nine months. And at the delightful climax, he goes on one page from poverty to addressing the prestigious Explorers Club in a tuxedo at the Waldorf while the Sea Dart is exhibited on the stage behind him. The Welshman is mellowing, but still a charmer.

Pub Date: Sept. 3, 1980

ISBN: 0924486309

Page Count: -

Publisher: Macmillan

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1980

Categories: NONFICTION