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Title	:	Far Tortuga
Author	:	Peter Matthiessen
Book Format	:	Hardcover
Book Edition	:	Special Edition
Pages	:	Pages: 449 pages
Published	:	May 1st 2000 by Europäische Verlagsanstalt (eva) (first published 1975)
Categories	:	Fiction. Novels. Literature. Literary Fiction. Travel. American

Far Tortuga

Peter Matthiessen

Hardcover | Pages: 449 pages

Rating: 3.93 | 1008 Users | 104 Reviews

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Far Tortuga is one of my favorite novels. I've read it many times and will continue to read it. It's a simple story in which little happens except that men, without really understanding it as such, confront nature and existence and the unwavering progress of time. It's April of a year in the mid-1960s. It's the time of turtle fishing in the banks and reefs of the Caribbean along the coast of Central America. The run-down schooner Lillias Eden leaves Grand Cayman with a mongrel crew of 9 representing every shade of black and white Caribbean. The novel is about that voyage. It's remarkable for its narrative simplicity which manages to incorporate these men in the basic simplicity (if we choose to think of it in that way) of existence itself.

It's equally remarkable for its spare text which so vividly conveys the natural world around these men and what they say in it. Most of the novel is dialogue, and is interestingly rendered by Matthiessen in the island patois actually spoken. There isn't much for the crew to do on the voyage to the turtle grounds and between stations within the scattering of reefs where they fish. So they talk. There is constant chatter about the intricacies of turtle fishing, of lives spent on the sea handling ships and boats, of the petty rivalries of men and families. This is the random, aimless talk of men dependent on the knowledge contained in such idle chatter, gossip, superstition, legend and stories, and accepted wisdom. Change is a theme--they're aware of modern times seen against days now gone when the fishing and their lives were seen to be better.

Threaded through the dialogue Matthiessen has given us on almost every page sketches which indicate such things as time of day, weather conditions, the chop of the sea, the shine of stars. Matthiessen makes the reader aware of the crew's immersion in nature. On a page might simply be a man's name. Another page might carry a smudge of ink and the name of a star. Page 386 contains a line and the single word "horizon." On page 327 the pattern of descriptive words forms the figure of a man, and a poem.

These men pit their experience and their collective histories against the indifference of nature. They have a limited array of weapons with which to fight the hopelessness they feel. They use their individual strengths, they sing songs, and they rely on companionship or stark competition. But they're no better than the turtles they trap. They're born, they live, they work, eat, reproduce, have their separate sensibilities, and they die. If they discern any meaning in their existence, it's only a glimpse and hardly encouraging. They have only the world they inhabit, and it's killing them. This is a novel about men engaged in doing what they must because it's all they know to do. It's about human destiny and existential despair on the despairing sea.

One can imagine the crew of the Lillias Eden looking up at the uncounted numbers of stars in the Caribbean night sky. The vast display would, in my opinion, represent Far Tortuga's true value better than the Goodreads system. This is one of the most beautiful novels in the English language.

I love this novel. I 1st read it about 1975 and have frequently returned to it. And here I am rereading it again for the umpteenth time in 2019. I felt my high regard for this novel was kind of authenticated and my spirit made glad a few years ago when I read somewhere that Matthiessen considered this book--and think about the many he wrote, including the powerful and popular At Play in the Fields of the Lord or The Snow Leopard or Shadow Country--to be his favorite. I'm enjoying it again.

Finished again 8 Feb 19. What a beautiful novel.

Be Specific About Books Conducive To Far Tortuga

Original Title:	Far Tortuga
ISBN:	3434530088 (ISBN13: 9783434530084)

Rating Regarding Books Far Tortuga

Ratings: 3.93 From 1008 Users | 104 Reviews

Rate Regarding Books Far Tortuga

Rather than read a review by me, read Peter Matthiessen's thoughts on it:http://www.theparisreview.org/viewmed...

This book scores high for technical merit and artistic ambition. It just wasn't my kind of book. Written in the vernacular of sailors (yes, and a few pirates) of the Caribbean, it took some adjustments at first. Very much in the strain of Twain's Jim in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.What disappointed me was the huge amount of dialogue. Some of Matthiessen's descriptive flourishes waxed poetic, and I would've enjoyed indulging in more of THAT, but no. This is a talky book, character-driven.

Metthiessen uses words like no one else in the world. They are beautiful - utterly beautifdul. It takes a little while to get used to the rhythm of the language, but once you find it, the lyrical cadence is unforgettable.

I often have trouble getting into novels of voices. (For example, William Gaddis JR, which Ive never been able to finish, or even the more popular and comic Fletch ). I must admit to being put-off initially by the Ya mon! dialect, which made me cringe and reminded me of Kiplings cheesy attempt at sailor-talk in Captains Courageous, but eventually Matthiessen was able to win me over with his unique narrative style, in which the voices derive from and complement the minimalist environmental



A fascinating book. At times I wasn't sure I liked it. At other times I found it amazingly compelling. I've decided at last that I liked it quite a bit. This one is fiction.

I have by now read this book twice. Its simplicity keeps me coming back to it, always hungry to revisit certain scenes and dialogues in it. Like other reviewers have mentioned, at heart it's an exceedingly simple story of a failed turtling voyage, but Matthiessen is striving here for a narrative that does not need complexity of plot to be meaningful. The complexity resides instead in what isn't said, but always implied: the unending march of "progress" and modernity, and the extremely fragile