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Avg. Rating: 3.5
Sailor Song: Where Art & Life Meet in the End
Up front: I'm a long-time fan of Ken's -- including the videos, the CDs, and his classic periodical SPIT IN THE OCEAN. I liked SOMETIMES A GREAT NOTION a lot better as a book than a film. So that's where I'm coming from... SAILOR SONG is superb, remarkable and unmatched in contemporary literature. Ken's grasp of the human condition is extraordinary: man/woman, inter-family, small town, international, global, you name it and Ken's got it in SAILOR SONG. It's an easier read than NOTION, but not as clearcut as NEST. So many posts here question the ending; not me. I trust Ken ended this the way he saw fit, like the master he was. Life doesn't end cleanly, even though it begins with promise and evolves with careful plot. I don't think any other writer has addressed the scenario of the poles shifting, so while this isn't quite an "end of the world" tale, surely it's clear why Ken dubbed this his science fiction novel. The characters are unforgettable, and yes the novel reads like a screenplay because it is so extraordinarily vividly written. There are plot twists and curlicues galore -- that's the skill and scope of Kesey coming across. SAILOR SONG, like his other novels, is brimming with quotable phrases and passages that ache for outboarding and inclusion in BARTLETT'S BOOK OF QUOTATIONS. He's that good. The scenario overall is unforgettable, and the pace is so beguiling that despite the novel's length; when it was over my ONLY regret was that there wasn't more superb literature to keep me riveted. If you are anxious to be engaged, challenged and rewarded by a book time and again, savor SAILOR SONG to the last drop. There ain't no dregs here, just sweet wonderful language coming from a mind without equal. Ken's passing last November was a loss without measure, but we readers are blessed with these words. Enjoy!
The Deuce steps in... just like real life
Ken Kesey's recent passing made me look back at my favorite books of his and fellow trafficker in the anti-Divine Jack Kerouac and somehow I revisited SAILOR SONG first. The New York TIMES didn't like it when it was published in '93 but I recall thinking "They're just not on the bus... DUHHHH" and bought it anyway. The ride was stellar, and it still is. Kesey's tale of the last bunch of individualist crazies at the end of America (and the world too) has its flaws, and I agree with the other online reviews you will read here: the end has a deus ex machina look to it (not that one character, the bookish Billy the Squid, doesn't red-flag the reader with a warning mid-on; a spectacularly nervy aside), the romance subplot is a bit shaky, the air of the novel smacks of the NORTHERN EXPOSURE television show from a few years back, the end of Bad Guy Nick Levertov is not as well-described as it might be... but the central theme of a moneyed juggernaut sailing into an untamed, delightfully-chaotic-because-it's-meant-to-be backwater of America (whatever, as Jack K. said in his dedication in VISIONS OF CODY, that is) strikes a chord on my piano. In SAILOR SONG two halves of America (Babbitt versus Walt Whitman) collide, and thanks to the success of the Babbitt half over many years (the befouling of the natural world) the payback interrupts the flow of the novel. Another nervy trick from the old Prankster, but for me it works. Because as we can see from the disrupted weather patterns of the last 20 years, we are going to be in a similar situation very shortly. And Kesey's description of Mother Nature's payback to the human race is the best thing in the book. Well, not quite, but close. Ike Sallas is the tired hero, letting things swirl around him, stepping in at exactly the wrong moment to little effect, and his very ineffectuality is what makes him as real as he is here (most especially when he finds he has fans who take up his cudgel for him in the immediate vicinity). And the asides, some of them borrowed from Walt Kelly ("From here on down it's uphill all the way"), the Grateful Dead, Tom Pynchon, Rudyard Kipling, and Jack
Kerouac himself, all widen the scope into an 'American saga'
(yes, one of those) which may not be ON THE ROAD, but it isn't about finding oneslf by leaving. It's about finding oneself by living. A divine read. Thanks, Ken.
I need closure!
Even though Kesey still displays his personal talent for characterization and interest, this book wholly failed.Why? The ending. Yes, one can argue that it is the ride that makes the book, but a failed ending, no matter what, can ruin even the most intruiging story. It's not that I consider the ending of A Sailor Song to be horrible- it's the fact that there seems to be no ending in the first place. Like Seinfeld, I need closure! Even for the ultimate failing, this book still deserves a two-star rating, if only for the story of the Backatcha Bandit. The characters are wonderful, and certainly unique to Kesey. From the reluctant hero to the mutt/Jamaican ladies' man, the characters are certianly colorful enough to keep one's attention. If it's Kesey characters you want, I recommend this book- but don't expect an ending of the caliber of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's nest- or an ending at all, for that matter.
Sail On- Its OK that not all ends well
I read 8 other reviews of this book, and I am still buying it, for the second time. I was captivated by the issues, characters, and story line that was depressingly promissing. Hope. I do agree that all could have been wrapped up differently in the end. It was too quick and well empty. But it is not the joy of the top of the mountain that has us climb. It is the climb. Enjoy the ride! Enjoy Sailors Song.
The Kesey magic comes unravelled a bit.
While the themes K. deals with in this novel are interesting and important (the vanishing of wilderness; pollution; the morally corrupting impact of capitalism and American mainstream entertainment in particular; the possibility of catastrophic environmental change in our lifetimes), much of this novel reads like a screenplay. This distracts from K.'s ideas and from the creation of atmosphere....which K. can do so well. It's a shame to have Alaska's wilderness pushed so far to the background (and Australia, which Kesey has visited, dismissed rapidly and superficially early in the book). This is especially so as the human interactions are fairly predictable, as are even the most eccentric of the characters, and as the plot leans heavily on natural events and wild animals, especially near the somewhat frenzied ending. Compared to earlier works, including the shorter, better focused pieces in Demon Box, Sailor Song is frustrating: on the one hand too short (spookily powerful descriptions of wilderness are cut off, interesting ideas such as the psychic life of indigenous people are only hinted at) and too long (we're given a lot of detail that leads us absolutely nowhere). Has Kesey been let down by his editors?
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