James Norman HallCritiques

Twenty one men were placed in the Bounty's launch following the celebrated mutiny. Lt. Bligh brought all but one of them to Timor island, the closest European colony. This is a novel necessarily kinder to Bligh than the two Hollywood films made in 1935, and 1965. In the opinion of Bligh's biographers, Bligh was a magnificent bad weather sailor, and a very good Navigator, but a very difficult human being to live with. In a rowboat with only seven inches (17.7 cm) of freeboard, it must have been a very difficult 2500 miles. Try "The Bounty" a British/Australian co-production for a better view of Bligh.½

Great historical fiction about the mutiny on the Bounty in the Tahiti area and William Bligh's long boat voyage of survival. The old copy I read had some great illustrations.

Pitcairn's Island follows the mutineers of the Bounty as they take refuge on the loneliest island in the Pacific.
In the annals of seafaring there is no more fascinating account of South Seas adventure than Pitcairn's Island. The novel unfolds a tale of desperation, profligacy, and betrayal as it chronicles the fate of Fletcher Christian, his fellow mutineers aboard H.M.S. Bounty, and a handful of Tahitians, who together take refuge on the loneliest island in the Pacific. Living undiscovered for eighteen years, the settlers of Pitcairn establish a primitive but thriving community whose peace is ultimately shattered by a struggle of bitter vengeance.

4/26/22

More tense and sad than suspenseful and exciting, and while I enjoyed the authors' attention to characterization, especially in the first and third books, that didn't make up for their storytelling deficiencies.

Here's wrote after reading in 1986: "Fictionalized account of the mutiny of the English "Bounty" in the late 18th century. Interesting detail provided on Tahitian life of that period and on life at sea. Most memorable character: Captain Bligh, "a brutal man in a brutal age".

Heard as audiobook

Librivox

A beautiful, sad, poignant tale told in an older style that I love - one where the main character sits down for a "fireside chat" with two long-time friends and spools out his narrative.

The beauty of the South Pacific shines in this story, not surprisingly, as it is written by one of the novelists responsible for Mutiny on the Bounty, another amazing yarn.

Highly recommend to lovers of classic literature and the gorgeous Polynesian islands and their peoples.

My second time through Mutiny on the Bounty, still didn't get to either of the sequels. Pretty much all I remembered from the first time around was that the Bounty was transporting breadfruit trees and there was, of course, a mutiny.

The mutiny itself is nearly over in an instant, but it is the luck and misfortune which befalls the crew afterward which makes it such an extraordinary tale.

The author of this short autobiographical description of life in the trenches during World War I is James Norman Hall. He went on to team with Charles B. Nordhoff and write some of the most successful works of historical fiction of the 1930s, including Mutiny on the Bounty, The Hurricane, and Botany Bay. But in this book he describes how he, as an American, managed to volunteer for duty in France and fight with the British Army (so-called "Kitchener's Mob," because it comprised of volunteers during the first year of the war in 1914).

The organization is simple yet enormously effective. It covers Hall's chance enlistment, his training in Britain, his deployment to France, and culminates in the Battle of Loos. For the most part, Hall even manages to keep some of his initial romantic visions of the war intact. Yes, he describes the slaughter at Loos in graphic detail, but always underscores it with the sense of mission and optimism he says British troops maintained.

All the while, Hall makes extensive use of notes he took and captures the speech, slang, and unique accents of Britain's volunteers. In so doing, he gives a flavor to the war that is immediate and honest. At this point, I remembered my own grandfather's journal of his deployment to France during World War I. I was struck with the identical imagery, common complaints, and the sameness of the description of the landscape. I suppose that sealed Hall's authenticity in my mind. This is a much neglected book of enormous importance, as we have just slipped into an age where all the participants in the Great War have died.

One of Nordhoff/Hall's less recognized novels, Botany Bay deserves better attention. It seems almost of the time (1831) from which it looks back over the events of the life of Hugh Tallant, an American caught up in poverty in England and sentenced to transportation to Australia (New South Wales). Its atmosphere in London is almost Dickensian. And the time detailing the founding of Sydney reads like an adventure story akin to James Finemore Cooper's.

Clearly, the research Nordhoff/Hall conducted into the preparation of their famous Bounty Trilogy paid off with a sort of twofer. It enabled them a head start on their research of London and England in the late 18th century as well as giving some prior insights into the settlement of Australia, which was to be governed in the very early years of the 19th century by William Bligh, who was made notorious through his depiction in the Trilogy.

The story of the novel itself is epic in scope, while also focusing on the intimacies of poverty and injustice in England and the dangers and thrills of settling a new continent. For good measure, Nordhoff/Hall throw in yet another long sea voyage in a small launch that, while it does not rival that of Men Against the Sea, nonetheless makes for eager turning of the pages.

This autobiography, alas, is incomplete. James Norman Hall died before he could finish it. Nonetheless, it contains a remarkable story, not just of a bestselling author but a war hero, adventurer, poet, and chronicler of Tahiti and the South Seas.

But first there is the person who emerges from behind the pen. In addition to My Island Home, I have read most of Hall's other biographically inspired work. And the remarkable thing is that I cannot think of a single instance in which he elevated himself through demeaning someone else or undercutting someone else's contributions. Whether because of his own sense of proper manners or inherent modesty, Hall never appears boastful or proud. Indeed, only through the intervention of the editor does the reader learn of Hall's numerous decorations as a fighter pilot in World War I. It leads you to believe that Hall must have been quite likable in person. Some 67 years after his death, he seems emblematic of a certain sort of mild mannered Americanism, now long out of fashion, possessed of humility, openness, and a sincere desire to experience exotic and remote places.

If Hall and his colleague, Charles B. Nordhoff are to be remembered in perpetuity, it will be because of their Bounty Trilogy, particularly Mutiny on the Bounty, which spawned two films, one of which--the 1935 version--is considered a film classic and another--the 1962 version--which remains severely underrated. Also underrated is Hall's and Nordhoff's other work, particularly The Hurricane and Faery Lands of the South Seas. Alone, Hall penned at least two other notable books, Kitchener's Mob, a unique view of life inside the British army in the trenches of World War I, and Lost Island, which describes the transformation of a South Pacific island and its people by the arrival of the US navy and army during World War II.

Hall, of course, was on to something. World War II obliterated the old way of life in the South Seas. More so than had been done in the preceding two centuries. But Hall, who died in 1951, did not have time to come to terms fully with his South Seas transformed. That task would fall to his successor in telling the tales of Polynesia and the South Pacific, James A. Michener. Michener was of another generation and another war. And his writing style also marks a point of departure from Hall's (and Nordhoff's) more mannered and steady style.

What a regret it is that Hall did not live to see another decade or more and write another novel or two. What a pity for all of us that he could not follow up on Lost Island and meet Michener's stories more head on.

This book continues the story of mutiny aboard the British armed vessel, the Bounty. It picks up the story of its captain, William Bligh, following the mutiny and details the 3600 mile voyage across open seas he took with 17 other members of the crew.

Nordhoff and Hall turned this adventure story into something more than mere action; it provided an alternative psychological insight into Bligh from the one detailed in the first book of the trilogy. It is extraordinary how Bligh transforms from a psychotic martinet into a bonafide hero in Men Against the Sea. From being a character of disgust, Bligh becomes a man uniquely suited to the task he faces of saving himself and his 17 member loyal crew.

Another turn in this volume from the first book Mutiny on the Bounty, is the change in narrator. Mutiny has as its narrator the young midshipman, Roger Byam. In Men Against the Sea, the narrator is the older, wiser, and more knowledgeable ship's surgeon, Thomas Ledward. Accordingly, the narration shifts from the perspective a young man eager for action and adventure--while being more than a bit naive--to an older man more nuanced with life and its disappointments and harsh demands. Ledward's narration and dialogue, therefore, is a bit more complex and expert than Byam's. This is a subtle shift that Nordhoff and Hall managed to pull off in a manner so to shift the reader's entire point of view from that of the first book.

Finally, there is the description of the sea. Men Against the Sea yields an image of the ocean that is constantly changing. From storms and purple clouds to sunlit days of blinding clarity, the passage of the men through the waters is as varied as any trek along the land. Blue waters, clear waters, foul waters, all turned glassy calm or foamy and violent, the sea is ever changing. By novel's end, the reader is just as eager to follow the fate of the Bounty's loyal seamen as he or she was to see out the eventual fate of the mutineers in the first volume.

These stories are about real people. But James Norman Hall has re-imagined them as literary works. Two will immediately stand out, "The Forgotten One," which gives the volume its title and "Frisbie of Danger Island." "The Forgotten One" is Hall's latest and best iteration of the story of Crichton, an Englishman who secrets himself away on a solitary island until he wastes away into death and obscurity. "Frisbie of Danger Island" traces Hall's relationship with the legendary Robert Dean Frisbie, who also isolated himself, albeit with his family, on yet another remote atoll, Puka Puka, which is also known as Danger Island.

These two stories bookend the volume. And they reveal how two men, drawn to solitude, cope with that loneliness, and how one, Frisbie, thrives in meaningful ways, while the other, Crichton, fades away into an unmarked grave. Both are haunting. The Crichton story must have obsessed Hall, for he introduced Crichton in his very first book co-authored with Charles B. Nordhoff, Faery Lands of the South Seas. It also featured prominently in Hall's posthumously published autobiography. From his very first contact with the South Seas until his last remembrances, Crichton loomed large in Hall's memories.

The relationship with Frisbie, however, is the overall highlight of the book. Frisbie's own works only came to be appreciated after his death. While he did gain publication of several books and many articles during his lifetime, he felt himself a failure and was always penniless and on the verge of poverty. Hall supported him throughout this time. But that doesn't lessen the commitment Frisbie himself made to his family. Once his wife died, Frisbie raised their children by himself. But when Frisbie died early, his children were separated and raised by friends of the family. One daughter Florence "Johnny" Frisbie published several acclaimed works in her own right, including Miss Ulysses from Puka-Puka: The Autobiography of a South Sea Trader's Daughter. Today, "Johnny" Frisbie just might be the sole remaining connection with those American authors who, for over a century, ventured into the South Seas to write tales of adventure and discovery, and retell the histories of devastated peoples in Polynesia.

Finally, there is my least favorite story in the collection, "Rivnac," who is a Czech expatriate living in Tahiti during the 1930s. The story unwinds itself slowly and there are times when the reader may become annoyed with Rivnac and Hall. But as is usual with Hall, by the tale's end, he has brought upon us an overall effect that is moving, filled with nostalgia, and longing. "Rivnac" becomes at the end a small masterpiece.

Pitcairn's Island is the most ambitious of the three books in the Bounty Trilogy. In fact, it is likely the most ambitious book Nordhoff and Hall ever undertook. In relating the story of the Bounty mutineers' escape and exile, the authors dispense with earlier perspectives and their wide epic sweeps. Whereas Mutiny on the Bounty described the voyage from England to Tahiti and the sailors' rebellion against Captain Bligh and did so from the point of view of Midshipman Roger Byam and Men Against the Sea told of Bligh and the rest of the loyal crew members' 3600 nautical miles sail in an open launch to Timor and did so from the perspective of the ship's doctor, Thomas Ledward, Pitcairn's Island mostly tells things from the third person. The latter novel also has all its action take place on a small, almost forgotten island in the far regions of the South Seas.

The result is a novel that pursues the study of its characters in a much more psychologically detailed manner. The lush island surrounded by ferocious seas also serves as a pressure cooker of sorts that eventually reveals the inhabitants of the island in all their petty jealousies, uncontrolled anger, drunkenness, and revenge. It results in a civil war, leaving a devastated community forever scarred with the memories of debauchery and murder.

Then, as the civil war comes to a close, the novel abruptly shifts to a flashback. The time moves from 1794 to 1808, and the last third of the story is told from the first person narration of the last surviving seaman, Alex Smith. The repentant Smith brings us back to the initial form of storytelling narration that existed in the first two books of the trilogy. And at book's end it provides us with a somber and elegiac close that will forever have those readers who themselves lust after clear mellow nights on the South Seas looking to the same skies that Smith did. Perhaps looking for their own redemption and escape.

For the first time in 50 years, I have just finished rereading Mutiny on the Bounty. After all that time, it still retained its vividness and pace. It remains a great adventure story. And it still appeals to me.

A few things to remark upon regarding what I see in its origins and structure:

First, the power of the storytelling is immense. The narrative is clean, punctuated with just the right moves to advance to the next level of the tale. I'm imagining that the strong structure of the novel is due to Nordhoff more than Hall. At least that is the point Paul Briand made in his double biography of the two authors--that Nordhoff at the beginning of their partnership and later supplied the discipline that Hall needed.

Second, early in his career Nordhoff became a successful author of boys adventures books. There is a trace of that lingering in Mutiny on the Bounty. But with the narration of Mutiny being through the eyes of young Roger Byam, having a touch of the boys adventure creep into the pages actually works to the benefit of giving the novel its verisimilitude.

Third, the syntax, vocabulary, rhythm of the language seems perfectly to fit to the 18th century subject matter. There is a touch of the archaic to it that is effective in detail and in overall effect.

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Now, below, is the review I made of Mutiny on the Bounty some years ago. This is how I remembered it. Turns out that my memory was strong and accurate, for I still stand by it.

This is what I read for adventure when I was twelve years old. Still a good choice. Inspired by the Clark Gable/Charles Laughton film, I found my way to the trilogy and discovered Men Against the Sea and Pitcairn's Island to be the equal of the first book. Together, all three volumes elevate the story of the mutineers and their captain to mythological heights, all the while providing fertile ground for the germination of the South Sea idyll stories that followed in its wake, both on film and in literature. I've yet to read Caroline Alexander's The Bounty: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty, which apparently debunks much of that earlier romantic myth-making, especially concerning the character and motivations of the principals. No, this version is to deeply etched into my memory to disturb, I think.

There is much magic in this book. Its authors, Nordhoff and Hall, take you to a place and time that has vanished from history--the South Seas in the immediate aftermath of World War I. The reader is made wistful for that age of trading schooners plying the waterways among the atolls, reefs, and larger islands of the South Seas. Tahiti is at the center, but the true adventures take place on nearly forgotten atolls populated by less than a hundred people. Places where the myths, legends, and stories of Polynesia still hold sway, albeit under the ever increasing presence of American and European commerce. At the end of the book, Nordhoff and Hall state that the islands have claimed the two permanently. As it happens, this almost turned out to be true. James Norman Hall remained in the South Seas for almost all the rest of his life. Charles Bernard Nordhoff stayed there for two decades.

Throughout, Nordhoff and Hall themselves long for earlier days in Polynesia. They imagine a time one hundred or two hundred years earlier, when the peoples of the region were untouched by the materialism, nurtured desires, and presence of White men. It is quite ironic, really. For just as Nordhoff and Hall lament the passing of that time, current readers in the late second decade of the twenty-first century feel the same towards Nordhoff and Hall's time.

This non-fiction book provides a look at the islands just before their historic cultures were obliterated for all time by the coming of World War II and its aftermath. Nordhoff and Hall could never have imagined the impact of the war in the Pacific, although they did live to see it--Nordhoff died in 1947, in California, and Hall died in 1951, on Tahiti. For those readers who still wish to be swept up in the romance and adventure of that earlier era, this volume remains a staple.

Frankly, it was difficult to get the images of John Ford's 1937 film version of The Hurricane out of my head as I read this. I only recently tracked down a copy of the book. And, as with most other Nordhoff and Hall works, The Hurricane proved a deceptively intricate reading. Both Ford's film and the book are anti-colonialist in their intent. But Ford is much more harsh towards the French, as represented by the governor, DeLaage, than is Nordhoff and Hall. Still, both works take aim at a system of "white man's justice" that is, in fact, unjust.

Told from the perspective of Dr. Kersaint, the book and film tell their story as a flashback. Kersaint himself is intriguing. Isolated from his own kind, he has become jaded with European attitudes towards Polynesians. His is a lethargy of soul and spirit, because of what he has seen. Especially soul rending is the fate of Terangi, the Polynesian sailor, who is put through the remorseless grind of the French legal system. Terangi's life with his family and his ultimate test of courage and moral certitude comes with the climax of the book, the awaited hurricane that strikes his island. Only a lucky core of islanders survive. And at book's end, all characters, French and Polynesian alike, seek redemption from the harshness of nature, both in man and in the sea.

Readers will need to have some awareness of Nordhoff and Hall's (and just Hall's) other works to get the full meaning of Lost Island. In particular, it helps to have read The Hurricane. For in Lost Island, Hall all but makes it specifically clear that the reason for the obliteration of the island being turned over to the US Navy is that a hurricane of war and the machine age is doing what nature itself could never do--scrape the island into a flat barren aircraft carrier made of sand and coral.

Other parallels also occur. Father Vincent is easily a somewhat updated version of Father Paul from The Hurricane. Both priests make the building of their churches a lifetime project. And they also both indulge in the creation of an almost magical garden--in both cases the priests import volcanic soil to the Low Islands where they can then grow fruit trees.

Hall had made clear in earlier works that he detested the automobile and the machine age. He was a romantic who never really accepted the twentieth century, preferring to live with the ideals and imagery of the late nineteenth century. And of course his exile to Tahiti was the one place where he could most closely recreate that anti-modern universe of the earlier century.

More than a couple of times in the book, Hall speculates about what life will be like for Polynesians in the twenty-first century, mentioning 2012 specifically. If only he could have known. Hall died in 1951. And now his Tahiti, and the Polynesia of the early post World War II years, looks appealing to readers as a time unsullied by the new technologies that have shrunk the globe into one cramped, over crowded electronic village.

Charles Nordhoff is listed as the co-author. But this is James Norman Hall's book. Entirely. It is apparent in everything from the childhood setting in Iowa to the imagery that also appears in other books that Hall had already finished or would write later, including Lost Island and his autobiography, My Island Home. Also conspicuous is a complete change in writing style and tone. The High Barbaree is filled with contemplative narration. Some critics, including Hall himself, saw this as the writer's weakness. It's not. It's what separates this work from his others and makes it, in retrospect, his forgotten masterpiece. Nordhoff was excellent at framing the action in their co-authored books. That is what made their most cinematic friendly books into their most successful, The Mutiny on the Bounty and The Hurricane. But The High Barbaree walks a fine line between the surreality of a dissolving dream and the sure-footedness of a belief in a higher spiritual realm.

The story itself is set during World War II in the South Pacific, in the vast expanse of open ocean amidst the Caroline and Marshall islands. Survivors of a Catalina PBY flying boat are adrift and awaiting rescue. As one day merges into another on the becalmed ocean, the central character, Alec Brooke, remembers a childhood story of a lost island paradise near where their plane has landed in the sea. The High Barbaree is that island. It is a refuge for all those broken by war and disaster. It is a place of memory, of a time when all things were unsullied by machinery, industrial devastation, and war. And it is home. A final destination for all.

Many of the essays and true stories in this collection can also be found in some of James Norman Hall's other works, specifically, his autobiography and a posthumous collection entitled, The Forgotten One. No matter. The ones already read are well worth reading again. And the heretofore unknown ones are, some of them, spectacular. In particular, there is Hall's melancholy work on nostalgia and travelling back home to the Midwest after sojourning in Tahiti for many years. That story is found in "One of a Kind Journey," in which the layers of sepia tinted remembrances pile upon the reader's imagination--until a devastating ending that reminds us that everyone takes a different journey in life. Some are epic and some are but the passing of years and the movement within a small dwelling on a forgotten street.

Another thing this work illustrates is just how varied a writer was Hall. Not only did he team up with Charles Nordhoff to write memorable pieces of historical fiction, he had an remarkable talent as an essayist and even a critic of literature. Poetry was never far from Hall's literary consciousness. He indulges in his thoughts on Coleridge and Wordsworth and Blake in these pages. He also details his admiration for Conrad. In so doing, he reveals himself to be a Romantic. And that is true not only of his storytelling but his outlook on life. Hall, essentially, remained a nineteenth century man, although he lived until 1951. He hated the automobile and all it symbolized and portended--although he also eagerly sought out adventure in an even newer mode of transportation than the automobile, when he became an aviator during World War I, flying with the Lafayette Escadrille.

The best of these stories and essays, however, describe the South Seas. Hall's observations of his own life on Tahiti are as descriptive and colorful as anything I've read about the men who ventured to this part of the globe. And the stories of the people he encountered are timeless as well as often heartbreaking and comic at the same time. To pick up these pages is to be transported back to the late 1920s and a time when the fear of mechanization was afoot but not yet fully realized. Hall's words are the last gasp of that view of the South Pacific that was forever obliterated with the coming of World War II and the postwar world.

1. De muiterij op de Bounty
2. Het eiland Pitcairn
3. Mannen tegen wind en water

Interesting story about something I had never considered. After the Revolution, what happened to the people fought against the Americans for King George? The story starts with leaving New York & eventually going to England. Took a while to read, but it was worth it!

Based on the facts of the mutiny on the Bounty, the person telling the story is fictional, but is modeled after Peter Heywood. I find this story really sad.

This is a group of short stories of how Doctor Dogbody lost his leg...10 different ways! I don't know why, but this put me to sleep!