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 enlarge | Author: Sterling Hayden
Publisher: Sheridan House
Category: Book
List Price: $17.95
Buy New: $11.25
You Save: $6.70 (37%)
New (19) Used (12) Collectible (1) from $9.89
Avg. Customer Rating:  20 reviews
Sales Rank: 74400
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 434
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 5.4 x 1.3
ISBN: 1574090488
Dewey Decimal Number: 791.43028092
EAN: 9781574090482
ASIN: 1574090488
Publication Date: March 1998
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand New, Perfect Condition, Please allow 4-14 business days for delivery. 100% Money Back Guarantee, Over 1,000,000 customers served.
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| Customer Reviews:
Wanderer July 22, 2006
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
A griping story that reads like fiction. Hayden is a "one of a kind" spirit that lives life to the fullest. He wants good things for the world and lives up to his character of being an iconoclast. A great read for sailors or romantics who dream of being before the mast and finding lifes' meaning out on the sea.
Weird guy, great story March 23, 2005
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
What can you say about this book. I owed three different libraries late fees for this book. I finally bought it and can't stop telling people to get it. His movie roles were dynamite, his career trajectory is fascinating and his journey is captivating. Hayden's floating journey is one for all fans of his work and a better idea for those who thought he was bananas.
 Embarrassingly Good April 28, 2004
29 out of 29 found this review helpful
I bought my copy of "The Wanderer" when it was first published in 1964, because Sterling Hayden was one of my favorite actors. I especially enjoyed his work in The Asphalt Jungle, Johnny Guitar, The Killing, Suddenly, and Terror in a Texas Town, among others. Now, 40 years later I have decided to reread the book, and I forgot how good it was. The central theme of the book is Hayden's escape from Hollywood, with his young children in tow, on the schooner for which the book is named. He made this voyage to the south seas against orders of the court, who considered it too dangerous for the children. As he tells of this less than idyllic voyage, he intersperses fragments of his life, concentrating mostly on his late teens and twenties when he was a working seaman. He is very stylistic in his writing, and sometimes his switching from first to third person narrative is quite jarring, but the effect is emotionally charging. As he ages into his thirties and beyond, Sterling finds his life falling apart. He becomes a Hollywood heart throb and detests his work and lifestyle. He becomes a Communist for a few months, but never really gets with the program, and to save his hated career, he goes before the HUAC and bares his soul and names names, an action he quickly and forever regretted. He seesaws between impotency and affairs, he can't communicate with the women he loves, he struggles with no notable success with psychotherapy, he finds his life adrift with no anchor in sight. All of these travails he lays out with such frankness, I felt embarassed for him. Hayden holds nothing back as he displays his warts and finds no joy in his life, except with his children. Does he simply settle, or does he come to some kind of compromise he can live with? I hope it's the latter, because after all his trials he deserves it. But I feel it is the former. Yet, shortly after the book is completed, he films one of his most important roles as Jack Ripper in "Dr. Strangelove." I won't wait 40 years to read this book again.
Yep, Spike Africa is my grandfather January 9, 2004
6 out of 11 found this review helpful
Each page of this book is a piece of my family history. Spike was my grandfather. If you like a good sea tale, this is the book fo ryou.
A frustrated man relates February 6, 2003
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
This story is a bit of a autobiography. At times it jumps around in an attempt to describe several parallel thoughts but it gets a bit confusing. It serves well as a "period piece" of sorts revealing the social and cultural elements of the author's youth and early adulthood. The story has less to do with sailing and more to do with the author's search for himself. Interesting and fairly well developed story line. Sometimes I got the feeling that this book was some kind of catharsis for the author in order to make sense of his unorthadox life. He battles against a world with order and goals that values expensive houses and big retirement accounts at the expense of enriched experiences.
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