Old Glory
Authors: Jonathan Raban
JONATHAN RABAN’s
Old Glory
“He can skewer life in an anecdote and evoke a river scene in a few brushstrokes.”
—
The Nation
“Wonderful.… Mr. Raban … is excellent company. He is a popcorn-popper of opinions, and they are unpredictable.”
—
The New York Times Book Review
“Mr. Raban has a keen ear, but for the river itself, he has to evince not only a keen eye but a capacity to use a painter’s palette. He gives us the strong brown god in all its rage, sullenness and beauty.”
—Anthony Burgess
“Throughout his epic journey he struggles to reconcile the real, treacherous, protean river with the shimmering dream-waters of his boyhood. This is what gives his book its remarkable power, elevating it close to the level of myth.”
—Salman Rushdie
Also by
JONATHAN RABAN
Soft City
Arabia
Foreign Land
Coasting
For Love and Money
Hunting Mr. Heartbreak
Bad Land
The Oxford Book of the Sea
(editor)
JONATHAN RABANOld Glory
Jonathan Raban is the author of
Soft City, Arabia, Foreign Land, Coasting, For Love and Money, Hunting Mr. Heartbreak
, and the bestselling
Bad Land
, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award. He won the W.H. Heinemann Award for Literature in 1982 and the Thomas Cook Award in 1981 and 1991. He also edited
The Oxford Book of the Sea
. He lives in Seattle.
FIRST VINTAGE DEPARTURES EDITION, JUNE 1998
Copyright © 1981 by Jonathan Raban
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Originally published in hardcover in Great Britain by William Collins Ltd., London, in 1981. First published in hardcover in the United States by Simon and Schuster, New York, in 1981.
Grateful acknowledgment is hereby made to quote previously published material as follows:
Lines from the poem “The Dry Salvages” from
Four Quartets
by T.S. Eliot, copyright 1943 by Esme Valerie Eliot. Reprinted by permission of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., for the U.S. and Faber and Faber Ltd., London, for Canada.
Song lyrics from “People” by Bob Merrill and Jule Styne, copyright © 1963, 1964 by Bob Merrill and Jule Styne. Chappell-Styne, Inc., and Wonderful Music Corp., owners of publication and allied rights throughout the world. Chappell & Co., Inc., sole and exclusive agent. International copyright secured, all rights reserved, used by permission.
Song lyrics from “Love Me Tender” by Elvis Presley and Vera Matson copyright © 1956 by Elvis Presley Music. All rights administered by Unichappell Music, Inc. (Rightsong Music, Publisher). International copyright secured, all rights reserved, used by permission. Song lyrics from “Second-Hand Rose” by Grant Clarke and James F. Hanley. Copyright © renewed by Fisher Music Corp.
Untitled poem by Gavin Ewart
(New Statesman
, 1979), used by permission of the author.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Raban, Jonathan.
Old Glory : a voyage down the Mississippi / Jonathan Raban.
p. cm. — (Vintage departures)
Originally published: New York : Simon and Schuster, c1981.
eISBN: 978-0-307-79162-7
1. Mississippi River—Description and travel. 2. Mississippi River Valley
—Description and travel. 3. Raban, Jonathan—Journeys—Mississippi
River. 4. Boats and boating—Mississippi River.
I. Title.
F355.R3 1998
917.704′33—dc21 98-11006
Author photograph © Jean Lenihan
Random House Web address:
www.randomhouse.com
v3.1
For Linda Taylor
I
do not know much about gods; but I think that the river
Is a strong brown god—sullen, untamed and intractable,
Patient to some degree, at first recognised as a frontier;
Useful, untrustworthy, as a conveyor of commerce;
Then only a problem confronting the builder of bridges.
The problem once solved, the brown god is almost forgotten
By the dwellers in cities—ever, however, implacable,
Keeping his seasons and rages, destroyer, reminder
Of what men choose to forget
.
T. S. E
LIOT
,
The Dry Salvages
One man may paint a picture from a careful drawing made on the spot, and
another may paint the same scene from memory, from a brief but strong
impression; and the last may succeed better in giving the character, the
physiognomy of the place, though all the details may be inexact
.
J. F. M
ILLET
, on landscape
painting from memory
True and sincere travelling is no pastime but it is as serious as the grave, or any part of the human journey, and it requires a long probation to be broken into it
.
H. D. T
HOREAU
,
A Week on the
Concord and Merrimack Rivers
The River
I
t is as
big and depthless as the sky itself. You can see the curve of the earth on its surface as it stretches away for miles to the far shore. Sunset has turned the water to the color of unripe peaches. There’s no wind. Sandbars and wooded islands stand on their exact reflections. The only signs of movement on the water are the lightly scratched lines which run in parallel across it like the scores of a diamond on a windowpane. In the middle distance, the river smokes with toppling pillars of mist which soften the light so that one can almost reach out and take in handfuls of that thickened air.
A fish jumps. The river shatters for a moment, then glazes over. The forest which rims it is a long, looping smudge of charcoal. You could make it by running your thumb along the top edge of the water, smearing in the black pines and bog oaks, breaking briefly to leave a pale little town of painted clapboard houses tumbling from the side of a hill. Somewhere in the picture there is the scissored silhouette of a fisherman from the town, afloat between the islands in his wooden pirogue, a perfectly solitary figure casting into what is left of the sun.