Williwaw

I hadn't read anything by Gore Vidal since MYRA BRECKENRIDGE back in the sixties. It was only when I read his recent obituary that I learned of his obscure first novel, WILLIWAW, written when he was just twenty years old. When I found out it was somewhat autobiographical, about his wartime

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experiences aboard a US Army Transport Service ship in the Aleutians, I was immediately interested. The copy I read was a well-worn paperback Signet reprint edition from 1968. The book was first published in 1946, perhaps one of the earliest novels by a serviceman to come out of WWII. A slim volume, not even 150 pages, not a whole lot really happens in it. There is a jealous competition between two shipmates for the affections of a Dutch Harbor whore. There is a death, yet whether it is in fact a murder, remains questionable. Vidal's omniscient point-of-view gives the reader a fairly in-depth look inside the thoughts of several of the book's characters - Evans, the skipper; Duval, the chief engineer; Martin, a mate; Bervick and others. And there are the three passengers too: Major Barkison, a rank-hungry career officer who dreams of unlikely glory; a Catholic chaplain, a former Maryland Monk; and a green young Lieutenant, the Major's assistant. All of the characters are finely wrought and fully developed. The writing style is extremely Hemingway-esque with its terse clipped declarative sentences and tight-lipped macho dialogue. In the author's note to the Signet edition Vidal acknowledges this, and more -

"But young novelists are imitative; they must be for they have not lived long enough to know who they are or - perhaps more to the point - who those others in the world are. I was certainly influenced by Hemingway, as many critics noted. But I was even more influenced by Stephen Crane, which only one critic noticed."

If there are flaws in WILLIWAW, I would have to say one is its redundancy. I mean you can get pretty tired of characters mulling over weather possibilities for pages and pages, even knowing that weather in the Bering Sea can be pretty dangerous, which is, of course the crux of the story. A "williwaw" is a native term for a violent storm in that region. The other flaw would be the lack of any real action. It takes nearly a hundred pages for the storm to arrive. There is a passage on page 96 that kind of echoed my own impatience with this -

"Martin yawned. The monotony of waiting was beginning to get on his nerves."

Mine too. I nearly gave up on the book a few times. But the description of the storm and its aftermath and the toll it took on ship, crew and passengers was, I suppose, worth waiting for. And when I consider, as I did continuously while reading the book, that its author was only twenty years old, well, it's really a considerable accomplishment. Vidal himself says, at the end of his author's note: "With the finishing of this book, my life as a writer began." And what a writer's life it was.

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St. Barts 2013 #5 - Loved this book. Clear human characters, distinct Aleutian war setting with all the chills accompanying, an ecxiting sea journey with horrible unexpected weather with disaster looming, all told in a very believable style that was hard to put down. A quick read as welI. I highly

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recommend if these features in a book sound appealing!

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A novel about a killing, set on a ship in the Aleutians campaign is a good evening's entertainment. Some fine writing.

To think that this was Vidal's first book, and at such a young age... just amazing. I was hooked from the get-go and thoroughly enjoyed every moment. This was one of the earliest WWII stories published, and it was definitely deserving. The narration style feels very "run of the mill," as in, this

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is just what the life of a sailor entails nothing noteworthy here, sort of thing. The fact that it's about a massive freak storm that could easily have wound up in the sinking of the ship, among other things, only makes the style that much more interesting. It works impeccably well, and only serves to confirm that Vidal was always destined to be the master writer he became!

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A story of a trip on a small ship during WWII on the the Bering sea from an island to another. There are three reluctant passengers on board. Weather reports are decent but the planes are not flying. It is storm season, so the forecasts are not to be trusted fully, and of course the storm - locally

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williwaw - comes. The skipper does his thing, with a little luck, and the ship survives. Only one man is lost. But is it an accident or a killing? Or something in between.

Straightforward writing and narration. Short sentences, all said, nothing much left unsaid, but still in a way, this is somehow a fascinating account of something otherwise unknown to me.

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