Hal Roth (1927–2008)

Chapter 12 on Bali. "We Followed Odysseus is the story of two legendary sailors--one from the ancient world, the other from today. Set against the backdrop of Homer's great tale, Hal Roth tells the fascinating story of sailing a small boat in the wake of Odysseus. Crossing oceans and seas in pursuit of his goal, Roth, with the help of his wife, Margaret, retraces the voyages of Odysseus along the Turkish coast and the storybook isles of Greece. Then he sails to a desert island in Tunisia, visits Sicily and Corsica, and finally goes to Italy and Malta before returning to Greece. While writing this book back in the U.S., Roth talked to hundreds of people and discovered that though most have heard about Odysseus and the Trojan horse, they have never read The Iliad or The Odyssey."… (más)

Hal and Margaret Roth had an epic mission to sail around the world. Good thing they had the kind of relationship that could withstand being trapped together on a boat for nearly two years (46 months)! Their boat, Whisper, was a 10.7 meters long, black hulled fiberglass vessel that weighed 7.2 tons.
Their journey took them from the coast of Maine to Bermuda and the Virgin Islands, though the Panama Canal, across the South Pacific, winding through Tahiti and Fiji, crossing the Coral Sea and Australia, Bali, Africa, the Red Sea, the Mediterranean, and finally back through the Atlantic and the Caribbean, ending in Somes Sound, Maine. The amazing thing is, Roth did not come from a sailing background. Luckily, he was a gifted writer and this is his account of that epic journey (with excerpts from Margaret's journal thrown in). Weather, fishing, the mechanics of boats and sailing, the culture and customs of each community and port, getting to know and establishing relationships with other sailors, even being shipwrecked on coral reef and observing drug runners. Everything Roth writes about is fascinating. He loves the word "squally."… (más)

Mr. Roth has collected stories told on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, a country place where blacks and whites have lived and farmed alongside each other for a very long time.

Mr. Roth's collection of stories is broad and interesting but the way he has presented them detracts from their value.

Mr. Roth says clearly at the outset that he has deliberately obscured the origins of the stories and rightly so because there is no way now for storytellers to consent to their tales being included in this collection.

But I think Mr. Roth takes hiding his sources too far. Some of the stories clearly originate in the 1920s while others are more modern. Some take place at the top of the Eastern Shore, some farther south. Some take place on the riverbank and seashore. Mr. Roth does nothing to help us place these stories in either time or place. Each vignette is written as a paragraph or two that is completely divorced from its neighbors. There is nothing here of Mr. Roth or of the storytellers or their communities. I am reminded of a book of limericks.

I received a review copy of "Conversations in a Country Store" by Hal Roth (Secant Publishing) through LibraryThing.com.… (más)