Old Glory: An American Voyage

by Jonathan Raban

Book Overview

The bestselling, award-winning author of Bad Land realizes a lifelong dream as he navigates the waters of the Mississippi River in a sixteen-foot motorboat, producing yet another masterpiece of... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0671250612
• ISBN13: 9780671250614
• Release Date: September 1981
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Length: 409 Pages
• Weight: 1.65 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Not Bad Land

The beautiful passages describing the river are reminiscent of Twain's Life on the Mississippi. I have enjoyed being able to visit, via internet, some of the hotels where Mr Raban stayed and the voyage itself instills enough terror to caution the inexperienced against a solo journey. The part of the book I find off-putting is his description of Americans. Apparently we are all overfed or stupid or both. While not disputing the veracity of the argument it seems unkind to describe people who have been generous enough to feed and house him on his vagabond journey in this manner. If you can get past thinking that if you had met him along the way that he would derisively describe the size of your butt in a best seller then you might like this book (other of the passages ARE funny). If you find yourself pecuniarily embarrassed and can only afford one Raban book I would recommend Bad Land.

A Wonderfully Written Book

Cerebral, yet accessable, Jonathan Raban is hard to peg in terms of genre. A book such as Old Glory could be considered travel writing, but such easy classification would fall far short of the mark. He incorporates history, some incredible descriptive prose, and sparse but welcome bits of dry British wit. In fact, his Englishness is part what makes the book so interesting - you see America, warts and all, from the eyes of an outsider. Raban is a stylist, who reveals himself to the reader slowly. I found him to be a very interesting, complex, slightly tortured figure. I will never look at the Mississippi as just some long line on a map ever again. The whirlpools, the logs, the dangers; always moving atop and into the unknown and on a vessel ridiculously undersized for such a trip; a metaphor, certainly. In terms of pure writing style, there cannot be many better than Jonathan Raban. This is a writer, you think, you will come back to.

One of my all time favorites

I have owned at least two copies of this book and voyaged with Raban at least half a dozen times down the river. Each time some new little part of this beautifully written book seems to highlight itself. Raban has a great sense of humor, writes with an incisive and sometimes unkind clarity that has obviously upset some of the reviewers. I can understand that. It could be a shock if you set off down the river thinking your companion is a perfect English gentleman and find instead he is a slightly cynical foreigner, who is very perceptive but often unkind. It would not surprise me if some of the people he met along the way felt ill-used on reading the book. But wonderful writing has little to do with being Mr. Nice guy. This book was written during Carter's presidency and captures this period magnificently. It is one of my all time favorites.

a tattered flag, still waving

I have traveled a fair amount through the small towns of the United States and have to concur with Mr. Raban's depiction of both the towns and the people who live in them. Other readers who have taken the time to write reviews of this book here seem to have remembered only about half of what Raban wrote about each of the towns that he visited.His initial impressions were often filled with disappointment. He had approached this trip with a boyhood dream in his head and he was continually set back on his proverbial heels by the reality of these river towns in 1979. More often than not, however, further exploration of the town, conversations with some of its citizens and reflection on his part, caused Raban to revise his evaluation of many of the places that he visited.Some reviewers may perhaps have forgotten that this book describes this region as it was after years during which the US economy struggled through an oil crisis, bouts of inflation, intervals of high unemployment and the tail end of the history of the "old economy". Should someone have the time and inclination to retrace Raban's steps nearly 25 years later, I would not be surprised if they found these towns and their people had changed quite a bit, probably for the better in social and economic terms. For instance, Raban devoted most of a chapter to the failed election campaign of Memphis's first black candidate for mayor. A quick Google (keywords: Memphis Tennesee government) will show you that the present mayor of Memphis (Willie W. Herenton) is African-American. I'm going to guess that he is not the first black mayor of Memphis.I loved Raban's modus operandi for getting to the heart of a place. Tie up your boat, go to the nearest bar and strike up a conversation. This would seem to me to be the most reliable means to quickly get an unvarnished opinion about a place. Sure, someone on a bar stool is likely to have a slightly dimmer view of the place where he or she lives than the average citizen, but Raban was rarely, if ever, content with their views. He basically used the tavern-sitters as a 1979-era local flesh-and-blood Google; he found out the basics about a place like who are the local characters, what are the main industries, which are the burning local political issues etc. His fellow barflies were more important as sources of germane questions than as sources of definitive answers.Raban's perspective on the St. Louis metropolitan area is one that I can vouch for personally, having visited there 10 years after he did. Furthermore Jonathan Franzen's novel The Twenty-seventh City is an elaborate description of the city-county socio-politico-economic tensions during the late 1980s. The continuum between Raban and Franzen's descriptions is pretty easy to imagine. Franzen grew up in the county and would have been a teen-ager when Raban was shacked up with his rich, wigged-out girlfriend out in Clayton.I took one long journey through the US accompanied by a Danish fr

Old Glory

First I read Huckleberry Finn and then I read Raban's Old Glory. Now I always recommend that the two be read together. The order does not matter. The small town people Twain wrote about are still there according to Raban. His humor and outsider's understanding of American kookiness was sharp, entertaining and to the point.

Bringing the Mississippi River to life........

Old Glory tells the tale of Raban's solo journey by boat down the Mississippi from Minneapolis to New Orleans. Along the way, he visits the great cities and backwater towns that dot this legendary American wonder. Raban demonstrates that the Mississippi is, in myriad ways, much more than a river. He records the life-altering relationships between people and place and brings us the history and experience of this ultimate American artery. I have crossed the Mississippi by bridge and plane countless times and, with a cursory glance, acknowledged it as a major American marker. Raban, however, brings a soul to the Mississippi that, at once, uncovers a latent reverence, inspires a profound understanding, and rekindles a vicarious sense of spirit and adventure in the American citizen for "our" river and it's lore. This is an excellent book that deserves, and will certainly earn, your attention.