Publication
Boston Little and Brown 1991
ISBN
0316082511 / 9780316082518
Language
Collections
Description
This is the story of Simon William Behler, a popular New Journalist whose career has peaked. In 1980 he is lost overboard off the coast of Sri Lanka while attempting to retrace, with his lover, the legendary voyages of Sinbad the Sailor.
Subjects
User reviews
LibraryThing member gendeg
“The high ground of traditional realism, brothers, is where I stand! Give me familiar, substantial stuff: rocs and rhinoceri, ifrits and genies and flying carpets, such as we all drank in our mother’s milk and shall drink—Inshallah!—till our final swallow. Let no outlander imagine that such
Sums it up.
The Last Voyage is filled with layers of irony and clever, tongue-in-cheek jokes. It’s definitely a showcase of narrative experimentation. I admired this book for its dizzying technical turns, but it never made the leap for me into anything more than a literary exercise, so I didn’t really relish it as much as others have.
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crazed fabrications as machines that mark the hour or roll themselves down the road will ever take the place of our homely Islamic realism, the very capital of narrative—from which, if I may say so, all interest is generated. … And may not the same be said for a story’s action? Speak to us from our everyday experience: shipwreck and sole survivorhood, the retrieval of diamonds by means of mutton-sides and giant eagles, the artful deployment of turbans for aerial transport, buzzard dispersal, shore-to-ship signaling, and suicide as necessary. Above all, sing the loss of fortunes and their fortuitous re-doubling: the very stuff of story!”Sums it up.
The Last Voyage is filled with layers of irony and clever, tongue-in-cheek jokes. It’s definitely a showcase of narrative experimentation. I admired this book for its dizzying technical turns, but it never made the leap for me into anything more than a literary exercise, so I didn’t really relish it as much as others have.
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LibraryThing member joeydag
I read this sometime in the 90's I think. I had seen him do a reading from it at Kepler's Books in Menlo Park. He is exactly what you imagine from his writing - a literary professor with a slightly raffish aspect.
LibraryThing member gendeg
“The high ground of traditional realism, brothers, is where I stand! Give me familiar, substantial stuff: rocs and rhinoceri, ifrits and genies and flying carpets, such as we all drank in our mother’s milk and shall drink—Inshallah!—till our final swallow. Let no outlander imagine that such
Sums it up.
The Last Voyage is filled with layers of irony and clever, tongue-in-cheek jokes. It’s definitely a showcase of narrative experimentation. I admired this book for its dizzying technical turns, but it never made the leap for me into anything more than a literary exercise, so I didn’t really relish it as much as others have.
Show More
crazed fabrications as machines that mark the hour or roll themselves down the road will ever take the place of our homely Islamic realism, the very capital of narrative—from which, if I may say so, all interest is generated. … And may not the same be said for a story’s action? Speak to us from our everyday experience: shipwreck and sole survivorhood, the retrieval of diamonds by means of mutton-sides and giant eagles, the artful deployment of turbans for aerial transport, buzzard dispersal, shore-to-ship signaling, and suicide as necessary. Above all, sing the loss of fortunes and their fortuitous re-doubling: the very stuff of story!”Sums it up.
The Last Voyage is filled with layers of irony and clever, tongue-in-cheek jokes. It’s definitely a showcase of narrative experimentation. I admired this book for its dizzying technical turns, but it never made the leap for me into anything more than a literary exercise, so I didn’t really relish it as much as others have.
Show Less
LibraryThing member mrgan
At least twice as long as it needed to be, this is a book with a great premise and some masterful writing, diluted by tedious and often off-putting genre conventions.
The genres in question are folktale and aging-intellectual-has-one-last-youthful-lay. The latter isn't my favorite, even when well
It's a book I want to steal ideas from, but it wasn't a ton of fun to read, and it's not easy to recommend.
The genres in question are folktale and aging-intellectual-has-one-last-youthful-lay. The latter isn't my favorite, even when well
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written, as it often is here. The over-the-top outdated folk style brings with it unsavory obsession with women's virginity, rape, and virility—none of this was as enjoyably silly to me as it is in Barth's excellent 'The Sot-Weed Factor'. It's a book I want to steal ideas from, but it wasn't a ton of fun to read, and it's not easy to recommend.
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Original publication date
1991