Personal Adventures At Sea and On Land: Coda

A side effect of reading the sailing books (and to an extent Cruising Speed and Overdrive as well) was wanting to know a bit more about the other passengers. I picked up the below pursuant to this and wanted to leave a few notes on what I call “the peripherals”, although this should not be taken as a statement of their quality or secondary importance.

In the order I read them:

~

(1983)

“I visited Central Casting and after an agonizing wait of several days, was finally accepted and enrolled as “Anglo Saxon Type Number 2008. Such is the efficiency of Central Casting that the first call I got to work as a professional actor was as a Mexican.”

One of David’s two memoirs – the other one is inexplicably pricey. (Note: in the month or two since I wrote that, the price has become more reasonable.) As you might imagine it’s wonderful. I don’t think he had a co-author, here, either, so doubly impressive. The arc of Niven’s life from WW1 orphan to British officer to Hollywood dilettante back to Britain for the war (and getting fleeced by Her Majesty's Government on his way back to the States) through all the Hollywood and Switzerland adventures is singular, charmingly told, and full of unexpected (by me) pathos and insights. 

Some bulletpoints:

-  POSH – Did you know this stood for ‘port out starboard home?’ I’ve been reading books on the sea for decades (and lived through the Spice Girls) and never came across this before. Niven recounts the snobbery of his shipmates whose supreme status symbol was a cabin on the shady side of the ship.

-  When starting out as an actor in Hollywood, he had a bit part in Mutiny on the Bounty, filming off the coast of California near Catalina. The night before he got wrecked with some old friends aboard the HMS Norfolk and ended up missing the ferry back to the shore. They were kind enough to drop him off on "set" the next day, so David Niven got to make a hell of an entrance climbing down the side of a county-class heavy cruiser before hopping onto the set of the Bounty.

-  When heading back to Britain to re-enlist for WW2, he took the Queen Mary to America with the 101st. So next time you watch that first episode of Band of Brothers, see if you can find him in the background.

“Live television, during its reign, proved one thing – that many actors are masochists. Without exception, the most ghastly torture ever invented for people in my profession, it incorporated all the worst features of films, radio and the legitimate theater. Before an unseen audience of millions, over-dressed and under-rehearsed actors struggled with badly written scripts in front of cameras which collided with sickening regularity and scenery that wobbled and often collapsed while the whole mess was directed by egomaniac directors, drunk with power in front of consoles studded with switches and buttons.”

I know Niven primarily – almost exclusively – as Dick Charleston in Murder By Death and James Bond in Casino Royale. (Not his finest work, the latter, although I’ve been using the “We’ve reached the time of the day reserved for Chopin” line for years. Like most lines I use for years, I'm probably getting it wrong.) And The Pink Panther, of course, although I’m not as much of a fan of the 60s PPs – really, the only two I need are TPPSB and in distant but respectable second TROTPP, neither of which star Niven. Anyway, I watched Wuthering Heights (a role he had to be tricked into taking by director William Wyler) as a result of reading this; I liked it – had never seen it before and had only ever heard a radio adaptation. (Although Niven was right when he wrote it's a thankless role.)

~

(2005)

As a result of the "How To Navigate" chapter in Airborne (and similar instruction in yachting magazines) Bennett Maritime commissioned Bill to do a home video version.

I couldn’t really follow it – I hate to say it, but Bill’s voice can drive me nuts sometimes, I’d much rather read him - but I’m glad I have it. It’s like sitting in a colorful class conducted in another language. What could they be talking about, you wonder, as numbers and graphics drift by like shoreline seen from a boat cruising along at twenty knots.

~

(1993)

Bill mentions reading the first draft of this in Racing Through Paradise and it not being very good, but a later draft is much improved. I wondered a few times while reading this if I somehow ended up with the first draft.

I grew to like Van a lot through the other books - I suspect there's more than a little of Van in and was really looking forward to this one. But it just doesn’t flow very well. A sort of “typical month in the life of the French ambassador” is cobbled together, but it just doesn’t flow very well. A more straightforward memoir – perhaps one where he leaned on Bill or Christo or any of the Buckleys for some editorializing – might’ve been better. The ending reproduces, randomly, some other press. It feels like what it likely was intended as: a placeholder/ prelude to a political career that (due to illness and other circumstance) never materialized.

 

~

As Watergate and the Church Committee fade from memory, folks might need a refresher on Howard Hunt (once, like Oliver North, a household name.) Once upon a time, he was Bill’s boss at the CIA (in Mexico in the 1950s). A lifelong friendship ensued, with Bill named as executor of Hunt’s estate and godfather to his children. Bill stood by his friend through his well-publicized travails but was privately admonishing of his old friend’s “moral flexibility.”

Hunt was also a prolific author of spy novels and thrillers. I’ve read House Dick and the one up there. (A quick bitch about Blogger/ Microsoft Edge - so, if you use Edge, and Duck-Duck-Go, you don't download jpegs, apparently, you download something like 'jfifs.' You don't see these as 'jfif' in Windows Explorer; they look exactly like their jpeg equivalents. You only discover this when you go to upload the picture into Blogger, thus necessitating several extra steps. All of which is to say: I had some pics from House Dick for you but screw you, Authors of The Avoidable Miseries Aforementioned.) 

Definitely credible entries in the genre: sleazy, dangerous twists, breezy read. I imagine thriller-paperback audiences of the future will puzzle over the other aspects of author biography if they ever get there.

~

(2019)

Christopher Little was, if you recall, the sailing-books’ official photographer, hired in Atlantic High and having befriended all the principals, signed on for each subsequent journey. When looking up whatever happened to the other crewmembers, I was surprised to discover he’d written a murder mystery – and only published in 2019, to boot. 

I was ever-so-pleasantly more surprised to discover hey, this really is an excellent police procedural, steeped in the sort of details, characters, psychology, and twists that make the genre so enduring. It loses a step at the very end, maybe, but it holds together remarkably. It’s depressing to think a book of this quality can exist out there and then ask you in the ending (as the author does) to help him promote it. Sign of the times, but sheesh: the publishing industry is such a nightmare right now. Here’s a guy who hobnobbed with a lot of worldly and famous people over his career, so I imagine he has (or has access to) all those folks already. It deserves more eloquent acclaim and attention, not to mention a TV adaptation.

I hope that’s what happens. If there’s an agent out there that wants to make a lot of money, write him care of www.honeysucklepublishing.com or www.christopherlittle.com. He encourages such in the author's afterward. 

~ 

(1990)

By the mid- and late 1980s, after historic libel suits, with the press knocking off presidential candidates and Supreme Court nominees, unraveling the Reagan presidency, and in a position to overwhelm any individual or institution, a new era in press-public tension had arisen from the depths of America's civic religion: fair play. Why is the press accused of being so negative, so biased, so left-wing, so anti-establishment? Whenever people read or see something they know about, why is it so often wrong, naive, unfair, or all of the above? Why do the media arrogantly try to tell people what to think? Is there no line between privacy and the people's "right to know"? How can the public and government answer back after the media have spoken? 

Using the Westmoreland v. CBS and the Sharon v. Time trials as emblematic of how things go wrong, the author draws graphic lessons for improved press conduct and wiser public perception. This is an insider's look at what is right and what is wrong with the media's attitudes toward their work played against public and government expectations.

So says the publisher's description. Are these two cases still the last word on these topics? I suspect they are not and that there’s need for an updated edition with commentary from a (hopefully libertarian-minded) legal expert.  

This is an excellent work, and Dick – like Van – is someone you grow to love over the course of the sailing books. The revolutionary corporate shake-ups of the last decades of the twentieth century re-shaped the world as much as the end of WW2 did - the downstream effect of this on things like the fair play/ mission statements of independent news organizations was not popularly understood at the time. Maybe not even now.

It's funny to think of the exasperation of Dick in 1990 or of audience in the mid-70s (Rollerball, Network) and think of how exponentially worse things have gotten. By my reckoning, things accelerated from where Dick is warning us about to a new hyperspeed lane in 2008, then doubled in 2016 and proliferated unto infinity in 2020. The alarm bells rung in works like Beyond Malice can scarcely be heard over the canned applause, chryons, and other alarms ringing in unison. But worth tuning in to.

~

(1981)

I can see why someone like Bill got a lot more out of it than I did. I felt more politely interested than driven to finish it and skimmed a bit here and there. I should’ve just gone with those excerpts in Racing Through Paradise, which I greatly enjoyed – not so much the whole thing. Not that it’s not worth it, just a bit too much for me. 

~

The last time I lived in RI I had ambitions to charter a boat and have someone take me all around the inner harbor, maybe just to camp out on one of those islands out there. I think it might even be legal to do so and hell, I’ve got a tent. It never came to pass, but I can see the appeal of gunkholing, both around a harbor like Narragansett or up the New England and Canadian coast.

This is a pretty cool comprehensive guide that I picked up to see if any of Bill’s adventures (particularly the one with the angel of Craig’s Point relayed last time) made the rounds, but I think I got the wrong edition for that. The one I purchased looks like it spent some time at sea, from the water damage to the binding. Not that it’s falling apart – I mean, it will, but such is the fate of all things. I like that this edition was used for the purpose it was designed. I only wish the previous owner had left a list of places visited on the inside cover, or a treasure map or otherwise-cryptic note.

A few fascinating sidenotes on Gardiner’s Island, which reminded me of South County (RI) parties of yesteryear, partying out on the rocks amidst the lobster traps and looking out across the Sound. Block Island, Point Judith, Galilee, Jerusalem Harbor – all my old stomping grounds. A seascape sorely missed. Apponaug Cove even gets name-checked, Pawtuxet Cove as well - the stories I could tell you!

Apologies for the personal reverie. If you ever get a chance to cruise up and down the coast of anywhere, I say, take it; if it’s New England, all the better.

 

~

Liz Wheeler is the chef on a few of the sailing adventures. I was always intrigued by this. I wish she’d kept a journal, too, to be included in Bill’s books. 

What a great job this sounds like, though. Provided you don't get seasick or claustrophobic. You can get your own part of the ship with your own facilities and all you have to do is make dinner, and someone else washes the dishes? And you get to go around the world on fancy yachts? Holy moley. Of course, you have to have culinary flair adapted to maritime conditions: a unique combination. Plenty of people with one or the other - even more with neither – hello! Welcome to my world. I’d probably have made a good chef's assistant back in the scurvy days. 

On land or at sea, all of these dishes sound delicious - and none look too difficult to boot.  

And finally:

~

(2009)

This is Christopher Buckley’s very moving memoir - never iconoclastic, never hagiographic, always sincere and relatable, despite the rather remarkable family circumstances - of the year he lost both his parents. Filled to the brim with too many wonderful anecdotes, details and well-chosen references to count. 

The first part is the death of Patricia Buckley, including the awkward multi-state taxi ride back to Connecticut upon hearing the news and sharing fast food with the cabbie along the way. His memories of his mother include many well-chosen examples of her fiery personality (especially after the "supernumerary martini") and the chip on her shoulder for not graduating from Vassar. I never matriculated there, but I spent a lot of time there in the nineties. A lot of the caste-based issues we are taught to ignore are felt most keenly by folks who spend a lot of time at Ivy League schools without graduating from there, I’ve found. Not that it's a condemnation of any kind, merely sketching a portrait of his mother as he knew and loved her. And we can by extension. R.I.P.

From there it moves into Bill’s unfortunate deterioration. Like a lot of sons who have lost their fathers, what starts as bad quickly moves to worse then falls off a cliff. Bill called the slow march to death “point of diminishing returns” and suffered much. Emphysema (progressive and incurable), diabetes, sleep apnea, skin cancer, heart disease, prostate afflictions, etc. Suicide comes up more than once, which “if it wasn’t for the religious thing…” his voice trailing off. 

In many of Christopher’s books, emphysema plays an conspicuous role. It was (and is, I suppose) a Buckley family affliction, no doubt accelerated by all the cigars and secondhand smoke. A very smelly and hard-to-breathe place, the past was. In this book, that “cold, sweaty panic of reaching for a lungful of air that isn’t there” is felt almost to the point of readerly discomfort. Especially this reader - I haven't breathed right for years and have panic attacks about this kind of stuff.

The sailing books chart some of the ebbs and flows of father/son relationship, and in this last year of Bill’s life all facades fell to one side. “Watching him suffer had made my lingering resentments seem trivial and beside the point.” I got a chill reading one passage where Van comes by along with old friend and neighbor Jimmy Edgerton, for Bill’s eighty-second (and last) birthday:

“When (we) arrived he greeted us in the garage and said, sadly, that he was too ill to make (their yearly trip to the family estate in Sharon, CT.) So we had Thanksgiving in Stamford, along with his best friend Van Galbraith. Van, once bulldog-athletic, had undergone thirty radiation treatments for cancer in the previous month. He could barely walk. Pup, Van, and Jimmy, handsome Yalies all. Within six months, they would all be dead.”

I had about a half-dozen passages I meant to reproduce here, but it’s all much better read there. I’ll finish with just a couple:

-  “'I miss your urine reports,' he said in his rumbly Teutonic baritone.” He being Henry Kissinger. That’s a hell of a phone call, right there. Reading the Buckleys has rehabbed Henry Kissinger, the CFR, and Bohemian Grove for me. If ever approached by younger versions of myself, the first three words out of my mouth will be ‘I Can Explain.’

-  After a lifetime of typewriters, Bill reluctantly installed WordStar in the 80s and kept re-installing it on subsequent computers despite the program no longer being made. Christopher describes the agony of this amusingly and that floor-dropping feeling when (after many travails) you go to hit save on something (the manuscript he was helping his father transcribe Flying High, about Barry Goldwater) and realize you’ve lost it all. To Christopher’s amazement, Bill patiently recreated – from memory – the entire text. “His mind was still a brightly burning fire deep within the wreckage of his body (…) Hardly any self-corrections, the words came out punctuated and in paragraphs.”

And finally:

“He taught me how to navigate by the sun and stars with a sextant. It’s a skill that today in the age of satellite navigation, fewer fathers impart to their songs. As I look back, it seems to me one of the most fundamental skills a father can teach a son: finding out where you are, using the tools of your ancestors.

“Since then I’ve taught my own son to sail. I remember the first time I placed his small hands, along with mine, on the tiller and taught him the feel of the boat and the wind and the sea. I thought back to when my father had first taken my small hand in his and taught me the rudiments of the same art. Now I was imparting to my son what my father had passed along to me: something elemental, thrilling, and joyous.”

I've loved a lot of Christopher's writing over the years, particularly his first novel Steaming to Bamboola, all the excerpts in the sailing books, and several of his nonfiction pieces, like this. The majority of his novels are satire, and some of that ages better than others. Not covering it here, though, is not a statement of any kind. 

 ~

So ends this readthrough of the above plus:

I collected a couple more memorials to Bill that I couldn't find a way to wedge into the above, but you can read a nice eulogy here and a piece from Bill reflecting on the end within sight (when he gave up Patito, I suspect this is shortly after the section recounted in Losing Mum and Pup). There'll be one more WFBJR post coming down the pike. 

As I write this it is December 23rd – I hope you’re all having a Merry Christmas out there if you celebrate, and a warm and gratifying week either way. Hug your loved ones and raise a toast to those loved ones gone; let us remember the lessons of Scrooge, McClane, and the manger not just this season but in all the ones to come. Happy Birthday, Jesus.