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“Robert Stone: Jonah in the Whale”

Leonard’s review of Stone’s novel Outerbridge Reach, the story of a yacht salesman, Owen Browne, who sails around the world alone as a company publicity stunt because, in Stone’s words, “On the other side of darkness, he imagines freedom. It was a bright expanse, an effort, a victory.” Sounds cheery. Leonard goes on the write “Like Melville, Stone hounds God – and discovers His absence.” He spends much of the essay showing us where this novel covers the same themes of all previous Stone novels. Here’s a quote from the book, “Stories like false dawns. But ice, darkness, boisterous winds, and false dawns were all things that had to be lived out…”

Why would I read this book on purpose? Most of the long excerpts from the book that Leonard includes are tedious. Almost like Stone is trying too hard to write a great novel or, as Leonard suggests, be the next Melville.

This line did peek my interest. Leonard tells us that Browne’s wife Anne reads “Brideshead Revisited for a second time while listening to National Public Radio” and here’s a great line, Leonard’s summing up of the Browne family, “She drinks, he mopes and their daughter listens to Megadeath.” Stone could benefit from some of that economy of language.

New word: palimpsests = a page from a scroll or book where the text has been scraped or washed off and can be used again.

New learning: Owen’s boat is named Parsifal…after the three act Wagner Opera about a knight’s quest for the Holy Grail.

Plug for Brideshead, read that instead: