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"His real name was Arthur Jones. He was born in Liverpool in 1929, the illegitimate son of a working-class Lancashire girl, and he grew up in orphanages with little education. Too young to see action in the World War II naval battles he would later write about so movingly, he joined the Royal Navy in 1946 and served fourteen unremarkable years." "Arthur Jones then bought an old sailboat and tried his hand at smuggling whiskey cross-Channel. In his early thirties he sailed into a Mediterranean limbo, scraping a living from charters by day and haunting the bars of Ibiza by night. When he was drunk, which was often, he could be loud and obnoxious and had the scars to prove it. He had no family, no attachments, no accomplishments." "Then came a midlife sea change. Arthur Jones looked into his future, imagined greatness, and began to claw his way to it. Having taught himself to sail, he taught himself to write. He was a natural at both. As Tristan Jones, in his midforties, he sailed out of Brazil's Mato Grosso and into a Greenwich Village apartment to write six books in three years and reinvent his past." "The Tristan Jones of his books was born in a storm at sea in 1924 on his father's tramp steamer; was torpedoed three times in epic World War II engagements; completed the first circumnavigation of Iceland; traveled farther north and farther up the Amazon River than any sailor before him; and sailed more than 400,000 miles, 180,000 of them solo. Readers loved his books and crowded his lectures and signings. He had a bard's voice and a street performer's delivery. He had more reknown than he could have dreamed." "Having invented a life, Tristan Jones tried to live it. After the amputation of his left leg in 1982 he sailed more than halfway around the world. He lost his right leg in 1991 yet still returned briefly to sea. But as his body failed him, so too did his spirits. It was as if the life from which he'd bodily lifted himself were pulling him down again. He died a bitter man."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved… (más)
John_Vaughan: Tristan told marvellous stories and some of them turn out to be rather tall ones - what old sailors call 'shipping 'em green'. Saga is the story Tristan told that this book, Wayward Sailor, corrects.
Much as happened with Dean King's biography of Patrick O'Brian, Dalton started out with the aim of writing this book as a tribute to a writer he admired, but discovered along the way that his subject wasn't at all who he claimed to be. As he works through Jones's career, Dalton finds himself regretfully demolishing, one by one, the statements Jones makes about himself in his various "autobiographical" works, until very little is left except for Jones's undoubted skill as a storyteller and a seaman, and the bloody-minded, combative spirit that kept him going despite an unpromising start in life and serious health problems later on.
Given his background (lower-class child brought up in Liverpool orphanages; stoker in the peacetime navy; Ibiza boat bum on the fringes of the law), it's perhaps not all that surprising that Jones should have turned out to be such a fantasist. He was obviously a rather lonely person until a lucky chance brought him into the heady world of ocean yachting rather late in life. Once there, the temptation to tell stories match or exceed the achievements of his contemporaries must have been strong, particularly for someone who seems to have done a lot of drinking when not at sea. Dalton is rather nervous about discussing Jones's sexuality, but I'm sure that enters into the picture as well: as a gay man in pre-Wolfenden Britain, he would have had plenty of need for inventing stories about himself.
As Dalton, and many other fans, say, it doesn't detract significantly from the entertainment value of Jones's books to know that they are fiction. It does detract seriously from their technical and geographical interest as records of travel, though, particularly as Jones was often rather slapdash with his research (see Dalton's detailed demolition of Ice!, for example). Many of Jones's readers over the years will have filed away little nuggets of information about the places and incidents he describes in his books without realising that they are totally misleading. Just the other day someone confidently assured me that it used to be common for barges to go up the Rhine under sail, against wind and current, based purely on what he had read in Jones.
Dalton's book provides quite a gripping story, better-written than I expected, although it does repeat itself a bit. It does leave quite a few areas of Jones's life unexplored, though: it's a shame that Dalton didn't manage to track down anyone who had known him in the navy, but hardly surprising given the time elapsed and the number of naval ratings called "Arthur Jones" there must have been in the forties and fifties. And he's a bit evasive about Jones's final years in Thailand and the mysterious death of Jones's long-time crewman/secretary/assistant, Thomas Ettenhuber, probably because there are other people involved. ( )
"His real name was Arthur Jones. He was born in Liverpool in 1929, the illegitimate son of a working-class Lancashire girl, and he grew up in orphanages with little education. Too young to see action in the World War II naval battles he would later write about so movingly, he joined the Royal Navy in 1946 and served fourteen unremarkable years." "Arthur Jones then bought an old sailboat and tried his hand at smuggling whiskey cross-Channel. In his early thirties he sailed into a Mediterranean limbo, scraping a living from charters by day and haunting the bars of Ibiza by night. When he was drunk, which was often, he could be loud and obnoxious and had the scars to prove it. He had no family, no attachments, no accomplishments." "Then came a midlife sea change. Arthur Jones looked into his future, imagined greatness, and began to claw his way to it. Having taught himself to sail, he taught himself to write. He was a natural at both. As Tristan Jones, in his midforties, he sailed out of Brazil's Mato Grosso and into a Greenwich Village apartment to write six books in three years and reinvent his past." "The Tristan Jones of his books was born in a storm at sea in 1924 on his father's tramp steamer; was torpedoed three times in epic World War II engagements; completed the first circumnavigation of Iceland; traveled farther north and farther up the Amazon River than any sailor before him; and sailed more than 400,000 miles, 180,000 of them solo. Readers loved his books and crowded his lectures and signings. He had a bard's voice and a street performer's delivery. He had more reknown than he could have dreamed." "Having invented a life, Tristan Jones tried to live it. After the amputation of his left leg in 1982 he sailed more than halfway around the world. He lost his right leg in 1991 yet still returned briefly to sea. But as his body failed him, so too did his spirits. It was as if the life from which he'd bodily lifted himself were pulling him down again. He died a bitter man."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
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Given his background (lower-class child brought up in Liverpool orphanages; stoker in the peacetime navy; Ibiza boat bum on the fringes of the law), it's perhaps not all that surprising that Jones should have turned out to be such a fantasist. He was obviously a rather lonely person until a lucky chance brought him into the heady world of ocean yachting rather late in life. Once there, the temptation to tell stories match or exceed the achievements of his contemporaries must have been strong, particularly for someone who seems to have done a lot of drinking when not at sea. Dalton is rather nervous about discussing Jones's sexuality, but I'm sure that enters into the picture as well: as a gay man in pre-Wolfenden Britain, he would have had plenty of need for inventing stories about himself.
As Dalton, and many other fans, say, it doesn't detract significantly from the entertainment value of Jones's books to know that they are fiction. It does detract seriously from their technical and geographical interest as records of travel, though, particularly as Jones was often rather slapdash with his research (see Dalton's detailed demolition of Ice!, for example). Many of Jones's readers over the years will have filed away little nuggets of information about the places and incidents he describes in his books without realising that they are totally misleading. Just the other day someone confidently assured me that it used to be common for barges to go up the Rhine under sail, against wind and current, based purely on what he had read in Jones.
Dalton's book provides quite a gripping story, better-written than I expected, although it does repeat itself a bit. It does leave quite a few areas of Jones's life unexplored, though: it's a shame that Dalton didn't manage to track down anyone who had known him in the navy, but hardly surprising given the time elapsed and the number of naval ratings called "Arthur Jones" there must have been in the forties and fifties. And he's a bit evasive about Jones's final years in Thailand and the mysterious death of Jones's long-time crewman/secretary/assistant, Thomas Ettenhuber, probably because there are other people involved. (