Author: Junger, Sebastian. |
Title: The Perfect Storm: A True Story of Men Against the Sea; and Fire |
Fiction? Anthology? (Fire is a series of separate episodes) |
Publisher: Simon & Schuster; W.W. Norton |
Date: 1997/8; 2001 |
ISBN ISBN 006101351X ; ISBN 0-393-01046 |
Series Name: |
Physical description: hardbound and softcover; hardbound |
Relevance to doaskdotell: Male roles in defending others how society depends upon dangerous occupations |
Review: This best-seller by Sebastian Junger is a
harrowing account of the fate of a (swordfish) fishing boat, the Andrea
Gail, in one of this century's most violent eastcoast
storms, at the end of October 1991, when a hurricane and noreaster
combined. The resulting storm (rivaled perhaps by the East Coast Blizzard of
March, 1993) produced pressures so low and a circulation so huge that, a
thousand miles away in the upper midwest it
produced the notorious Halloween Blizzard as it sucked moisture off the
Hudson Bay. With slightly different circumstances, the surge from a storm
like this could, as it got trapped, flood lower Junger's attention to detail was fascinating,
even if "morbid" at times (as when he provides a scientific
explanation of drowning). More important, however, is the social point he is
suggesting. Even at the end of the millennium, many men still make their
living, providing for families, paid only for “libertarian style” piece-work,
in dangerous occupations, work which forces them to bond together in
military-style fashion (sometimes requiring living in close quarters with no
privacy). Other examples of this in "civilian" life would include
oil rigs (the movie Armageddon) and mining, especially during the era
of company towns in Much of Junger’s writing describes the technical details of seamanship and manages to present the characters in an engaging manner. Indeed, he will have to “presume” what must have happened to them in the “perfect storm” based on his own science. But Junger may be showing a certain distance from them when he writes (on p. 91 of the Harper Paperback) : “By the end of a
long trip they may be picking fights with one another, hoarding food,
ostracizing the new members—acting, in short, like men in prison, which in
some ways they are. There are stories of sword boats coming into port with
crew members manacled to their bunks or tied to the headstay
with monofilament line. It’s a kind of Darwinism that keeps the boats stocked
with rough, belligerent men who have already established themselves in the
hierarchy.” Indeed, this sounds to me like a characterization of grunts, 11 Bravo’s, the kind of somewhat disadvantaged and uncultured young men that society depends upon to do its dirty, dangerous work, and to do its fighting and dying for the rest of us. Remember student deferments? It's unusual for good non-fiction to make the best-seller list quickly;
but Junger, for all of his social consciousness and
technical virtuosity in sciences, still makes this journey a good exercise in
story-telling, the kind we learned in grade school. Junger
has created an surprisingly effective story-telling
vehicle in which to explore many important social issues regarding an
"average" man's precarious place in society; few non-fiction books
today offer and balance this combination so successfully. Let's hope that Junger takes up the novel as his next art-form. I
understand that A Perfect Storm will be a movie, and I look forward to
it. (Warner Brothers [fresh with its corporate musical trademark based on Notes on the film, released This film release surely made a red-letter day for the author. It has been a tremendous success at the box office (as has the book itself sold over 4 million copies). So Junger’s “concept,” to explore a social and political issue in a relatively obscure subset of “other people” surely works, as he made these people interesting. The film is bifurcated, between soap-opera in the first 45 minutes to introduce the “buddies” on the Andrea Gail (and the sociology of the Crow’s Nest bar, which comes across as a heterosexual Julius’s), followed by men’s magazine style adventure, as the “perfect storm” grows like a monster in a horror film. The characters are a bit routine for me, but not the situation. The men, paid by libertarian piece-work for their swordfish catch, hurry back through the storm when the ice-maker fails. They just can’t live without the money, so they behave like sailors at the Battle of Midway. Well, that’s the skipper’s idea. The penultimate scene, with Wahlberg floating in the water and alive for the moment but doomed to die of exposure and hypothermia, comes across as more chilling than DiCaprio-character’s death in Titanic. The manipulative virtuosity of Junger’s writing about what it is like to die this way comes true. *** There was a bruhaha over a similar review that I wrote on America OnLine’s I have just picked up a copy of Junger’s new book, Fire, published by W. W. Norton, ISBN 0-393-01046-5. I’ll mention a comment by Junger after he “paid his dues” with his tree-climbing accident: “The accident was sloppy and unfortunate, but it made me realize that I didn’t want to be a climber abd struggling writer forever. I was thirty years old; I should either tackle a book project or get out of the writing business altogether.” There follow a number of true “men’s adventure” stories, including pieces
about Kosovo and There is an interesting story (by Adam Langer) about this author in the Sept/Oct 2001 issue of Book. Apparently he is a pretty avid chess player, too. Don’t know whether he would play the Benko Gambit. On I recommend checking out a National Geographic Explorer film, shown
several times on MSNBC during the terrorism crisis of 2001, Under Fire, with considerable
commentary by Junger. There are battle scenes between the Checkout also a film on Also, CNN is showing two stunning documentary films, Beyond the Veil and Unholy Wars, about the Taliban in Afghanistan, by Saira Shah, who had to travel into Afghanistan on foot, crossing high mountain passes while wet and hypothermic, to make her films. French journalists very recently had a film shown on MSNBC of life deep
within Taliban-controlled The MSNBC film “Norman Schwarzkopf’s Diary” of the 1990-1991 Persian Gulf
War should also be noted. Colin Powell and former President Bush and explain
why the |
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