Williwaw by Gore Vidal 10 out of 10

 Williwaw by Gore Vidal

10 out of 10

The exhilarating Williwaw is one of the masterpieces that make staying at home such a peripatetic, glorious experience, given the chance to travel the wide world in the company of exuberant characters, in intense, stormy, exotic surroundings, created by the brilliant minds of angelic creators…a few days ago, this reader had the chance to fly over to Africa in the company of 007, as imagined by William Boyd (somewhat unexpectedly not by his original Maker, Ian Fleming) in the intriguing Solo http://realini.blogspot.com/2020/08/solo-by-william-boyd-10-out-of-10.html

In Williwaw, the story takes us to the Aleutian Islands, where the wondrous Gore Vidal has been stationed and thus has had the chance to get inspiration for this wonderful Magnum opus, written when he was only 19 (!), an aspect that made the under signed think of two ways to take this incredible detail, one being the jealousy, chagrin that one is not able to write anything close to this even after decades of effort, but the other is much more appropriate, a feeling of gratitude, elation for the opportunity to go through something so rewarding, thought provoking and magic, born in the mind of such a young man and yet so mature, sophisticated, imaginative and also penetrating, able to look at those he had navigated with and find the seeds for the characters that populate Williwaw.

Perhaps the most interesting character in the book is an unexpected one, that might not attract the attention of most readers – alas, the book seems to have fallen into some obscurity, for when you look on the net, the first information you get refers to another book with the same name, at least in this part of the world – the few that take it on would not think of the chaplain O’Mahoney, the one that does not do much on the ship, except and because he is quite sick, and then when he has to perform his duty at a tragic moment, when somebody dies – for this is both a psychological novel and a crime story.

The chaplain though has a kind of epiphany, a feeling that he is unable to share with the others on board the vessel, even when he tries to bring up the experience, the vain, arrogant, quite despicable Major Barkinson – who would be promoted Colonel and the one who is most scared during the Williwaw and affected by the massive storm, taken down by sickness, frailty, lack of courage, weakness, shortcomings that he will forget in his pathetic egotism, with his ridiculous and quite amusing tendency to show others his profile, thinking he looks like Wellington, acting at a certain stage as if he has been paramount in the middle of the tumultuous, aggressive, killer weather, when in fact he was beaten, finished, washed up, losing his grip and acting without power, vitality and bravery and then ultimately turning against the skipper of the ship and accusing him of doing the wrong thing!

Evans is the skipper of the ship, a complicated man, married and then divorced because the war has placed a barrier between him and his wife, a character that is analyzed with finesse, talent, insight, just like all the figures that populate a narrative that reminds this reader of the equally phenomenal, Pulitzer Prize Winner The Caine Mutiny by great Herman Wouk http://realini.blogspot.com/2017/06/the-caine-mutiny-by-herman-wouk.html?q=caine in which we also have a captain that is not liked by his crew, albeit Evans is in a different position from that of Philip Queeg, the latter acting like a mad man, and both captains of the ships have to face a tremendous storm.

Williwaw is the Native American name for the strong wind that will hit the ship in the middle of the narrative, causing damage, havoc, sickness and an epiphany for the chaplain, who would state that this caused him to change, to realize he does not care about petty things anymore, given that he will have had to face death, nature at its most terrifying and they are very close to being crushed and only luck or the Almighty have changed a tragedy into a possible opportunity for redemption…this recalls the experience that Dostoevsky had when he had been sentenced to die for subversive activities and he had to face the firing squad, dividing his last minutes so that he could take part from his family, friends and life and admire a ray of sunshine falling on top of the tower of a church nearby…he is pardoned at the last moment, but we can read about the thoughts, desperation, hopes, desires of the last moments, when one would rather live on a small rock in the middle of the ocean than die, in his Magnum opera – The Demons, The Idiot, Brothers Karamazov, Crime and Punishment, all available at http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page or also for free on the librivox site, where volunteers have produced the audiobooks for these and other fundamental works of mankind.

On board the ship there is acrimony and resentfulness, due to the long time that the crew has had to share the same small space, it becomes difficult to tolerate idiosyncrasies, habits – for instance, the skipper has a few grudges with the rest, in particular he dislikes the fact that his first mate – maybe based by Gore Vidal on himself, given that he was also a first mate – John Martin, who used to be an actor before the World War II, uses long words, an aspect Evans does not agree with in anybody- but one particular conflict stands out, that between the second mate, Bervick, and the Chief engineer Duval.

Second Mate Bervick used to see much of Olga, a Norwegian woman, who is one of the few women on the islands and thus in great ‘demand’ , one who would see the situation as one to take advantage of and make some money from her encounters with the very horny, lascivious and determined men from the ships, but when she starts seeing Duval, as well as others, the animosity between the two degenerates and it becomes a source of continuous friction, irony, sarcasm and then insults are traded and the bitterness reaches a near boiling point…the two are so possessed by their conflict that they continue with it even when Major Barkinson, Lieutenant Hodges and the chaplain are on board the ship which has to take the major to bring a report and seeing that the others have business in the same parts, they travel along.

Skipper Evans is very upset that members of his crew are out of line in front of the major who outranks him, the officer he had informed that the weather could be, indeed, it often is quite bad in the sea, but Barkinson would later pretend he had not known about that and accuse the skipper of being wrong in his decision to take the vessel to sea, when the purpose of the trip was to get the idiotic, malevolent, rather contemptible major to where he was needed…