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Passage to Juneau: A Sea and Its Meanings | 
 enlarge | Author: Jonathan Raban
Publisher: Vintage
Category: Book
List Price: $15.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  50 reviews
Sales Rank: 340558
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 448
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.1 x 1
ISBN: 0679776141
Dewey Decimal Number: 917.982
EAN: 9780679776147
ASIN: 0679776141
Publication Date: November 7, 2000
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Amazon.com Review
British-born Jonathan Raban sets out on a passage from Seattle to Juneau in a small boat that is more a waterborne writing den, and as usual with the brilliant Raban, this journey becomes a vehicle for history and heart-stopping descriptions that will make readers want to hail him as one of the finest talents who's picked up a pen in the 20th century. The voyage through the Inside Passage from Washington's Puget Sound to Alaska churns up memories and stirs up hidden emotions and Raban dwells on many, including the death of his father and his own role of Daddy to his young daughter, Julia, left behind in Seattle. More than just a personal travelogue, however, Passage to Juneau deftly weaves in the stories of others before him--from Indians whom white men formerly greeted with baubles set afloat on logs, to Captain Vancouver, who risked mutiny on his ship when he banned visits with prostitutes, some of whom offered their services for bits of scrap metal. Pressed into every page are intimate descriptions of life at sea--the fog-shrouded coasts, the crackly radio that keeps him linked to the mainland, the salty marine air, and the fellow sailors who are likewise drawn by a life of tossing on water. While Raban successfully steers his boat to the desired port, readers ultimately discover that this insightful, talented sage is in fact emotionally in deep water and may not fully be captain of his own life. --Melissa Rossi
Product Description
With the same rigorous observation (natural and social), invigorating stylishness, and encyclopedic learning that he brought to his National Book Award-winning Bad Land, Jonathan Raban conducts readers along the Inside Passage from Seattle to Juneau. The physical distance is 1,000 miles of difficult-and often treacherous-water, which Raban navigates solo in a 35-foot sailboat.
But Passage to Juneau also traverses a gulf of centuries and cultures: the immeasurable divide between the Northwest's Indians and its first European explorers-- between its embattled fishermen and loggers and its pampered new class. Along the way, Raban offers captivating discourses on art, philosophy, and navigation and an unsparing narrative of personal loss.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 45 more reviews...
 A little too much Raban November 17, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
The best thing about this book is that it tells you what _else_ to read if you really want to learn about the history and culture of the Inside Passage. The worst thing about the book is that Raban's ego, maybe buoyed by the success of Bad Land, is out of control. Bad Land is a great book about a place. Passage to Juneau is half about the place, half about Raban and what an untamable nomad (but somehow a devoted father) he is, and neither is particularly satisfactory.
 My book of the year August 29, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Raban deftly weaves George Vancouver's expedition with his own journey up North America's West Coast two centuries later.
Introspective and heartfelt, the book is in parts auto-biography, travel-guide and biography. As a Passage to Juneau unwinds, Raban describes situations and others with great perception, yet is never afraid to expose his own frailties.
Passage to Juneau is beautifully written and explores Raban's thoughts every bit as much as the miles of water he covers. A tremendous book and fully deserving of the great praise it has received.
Much Better Than Earlier Raban Book May 7, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I tend to ignore author Raban's political diatribes (most of his writing, unfortunately) and revel in the beauty of his books about his personal boat journeys. I had earlier read "Old Glory: A Voyage Down The Mississippi" and felt that it lost focus about halfway through the narrative. That book seemed to reflect the desperate lack of focus and national malaise that the Carter administration brought on in the late 70's, and "Old Glory" would not be a Raban book I'd recommend.
However, Passage to Juneau is different. His solo journey by sailboat from Seattle to Juneau in the late 1990s is beautifully written with haunting scenes of his personal life interspersed with his musings on the sea. During the journey, his father dies and his wife demands a separation, the first personal tragedy giving Raban insight into his personal feelings about life and the sea, the second (at the midpoint of his journey, reaching Juneau) causing him to focus inward for the return trip to Seattle.
Despite his occasional lapses towards anti-americanism (throughout the book I kept wondering why he didn't move back to England or at least move north to British Columbia), Passage to Juneau is an intimate portrait of a man who is facing life's trials and the vagaries of some of the more treacherous seas in the world at the same time.
the inside passage April 3, 2007
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
I've read many of Mr Raban's books and loved them all but this is my favorite. This isn't just a "travel" book, it's the history of the beautiful Inside Passage. You really feel like you are on Mr Raban's boat as he travels from Seattle, where he lives, to Juneau. He recounts the history of all the travellers who went before him - how certain Sounds and Inlets got their names - tells you about the people he meets - the things he sees - and shares a little piece of his own life history as he travels. During this journey he deals with the death of his Father and his upcoming divorce from his wife. He is a master storyteller. I live on the Puget Sound and have scuba dived up and down this Passage - this book brings the whole area to life. If you haven't enjoyed Mr Raban's prose before now, start here. You'll be hooked.
A Rougher Sea January 9, 2007
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Let me see if I can write a review that does justice to this book and at the same time explain to myself why it is such a great piece of literature.
I think the first point to make is that the writing mirrors the, by turns, eddying, chaotic, reflective quality of the sea itself, leading one deeper and deeper into the author's own meandering introspections about life and, yes, water in a very (to this reader anyway) seductive style, a style which is nothing if not allusive, reflecting Raban's own lifelong fascination with and profound love of literature. The account of Captain Vancouver's voyage along this same passage, taken from many sources, while certainly the most superficially parallel and certainly the most discursively ongoing of the allusions, is not in the end, the most significant and profound. That award must surely go to Raban's recounting of Shelley's last days and ultimate demise in the chapter entitled "Charred Remains", striking a parallel, in a much more profound manner than those accounts of Vancouver's voyage, to the last days and death of Raban's father and to the unsurpassed final chapter in which he invokes Cowper's "The Cast-Away" as a metaphor for his crumbling marriage and his own mortality.
Perhaps one, like Raban, has to already have a love of and familiarity both these poets to see what a feat he has pulled of here - though Raban provides the basic biographical background for each. To stick with the last chapter---Cowper isn't a poet much read anymore. But he's always been one of my favourites. One really has to be familiar with his intensely unbalanced life and mind to fully appreciate his poetry. In any event, by this last chapter of the book, we know what it's like to walk in Raban's shoes, to be in his boat, to wander through his mind and heart and to know how much he loves his family. When the hammer falls at the end with his wife and daughter deplaning in Juneau, we feel how crushed he is by it. And Cowper's "The Cast-Away" is the perfect poetic expression of the way we feel he feels, drowned not by the "real" sea he's been traversing, but by Cowper's metaphoric sea of despair. I frequently return to Cowper's "The Task"-A poem given him as a sort of assignment to ward off one of his mental fits-as well as "The Cast-Away" as two of the greatest poems in the language. I NEVER thought I'd see a modern author apparently effortlessly bring the despair of the all but forgotten poet back to life, but......Raban does.
So, yes, readers looking for a "sea adventure" yarn had better look elsewhere. How to know if you will fancy the book? Do you love history, English literature, introspective depths? Above all, do you know the feeling of being drowned by despair? Can you relate to Cowper's couplet?
"But I, beneath a rougher sea,
And whelm'd in deeper gulfs than he."
In short, do you know that INNER Sea? If so, this book will not disappoint.
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