Word: juneau
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According to the romantic lore of many cultures, the sea is a big, mysterious place to which we have to bow deferentially. According to its whim, the sea can either gently rock sway or disastrously capsize any vessel. Passage to Juneau: A Sea and Its Meanings is another installment in the sea and nature genre by Jonathan Raban. What could he hope to achieve in the treacherous territory of Neptune, Moby-Dick and even Jaws? Raban finds that a great deal of meaning and internal insight remains to be discovered...
...moral rebirth through a watery baptism. Raban brings along the outdoor experience found in his successful Bad Lands as he embarks on a solitary journey along the Inside Passage, a route that starts from the yuppie lakefront properties of Puget Sound and winds through an archipelago up to Juneau, Alaska. Raban, a British chap from Seattle, desires to "meditate on the sea, at the sea." Rather than dealing with dangerous sharks and storms, Raban spends more time drinking champagne and maintaining his classic book collection aboard his cozy, quite luxurious vessel. Nothing particularly shocking or dramatic happens...
...historical stories and personal musings effectively fascinate us, but do not evoke any deeper kind of thought. As a travel journal, Passage to Juneau attempts to reflect on the adventures of past explorers of the same passage. Unfortunately, many of the historical accounts that accompany the author's itinerary are essentially some variation of, "Wow! That is an interesting fact. Imagine that!" For example, he introduces us to George Vancouver and his crew on the Discovery, as they attempt to map out the lands of the Inside Passage in 1792. What Raban tells us is interesting food for conversation...
...smell the skim latte and discover that nothing has really changed other than the start of a new tax year and that meanwhile we're stuck with 500 cans of Bumble Bee chunk white and enough batteries to power that annoying bunny from New York City to Juneau and back, there are bound to be existential consequences...
...example, the Juneau, Alaska, of Limbo. It seems to have a limitless supply of his kind of people--aging slackers muddling inconclusively along. Chief among them are Joe Gastineau (Sayles regular David Strathairn) and Donna De Angelo (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio). He's a handyman, an omnicompetent fixer-upper, who has abandoned the life he loves, as a fishing-boat captain, because he feels responsible for the death of two men on a long-ago voyage. She's a wandering bar singer--a very good one--encumbered by a sulky, judgmental adolescent daughter (Vanessa Martinez) but blessed by good nature. Like...