Open Writing

Prior to leaving to seek the fabled Northwest Passage in 1845, John Franklin wrote about explorers needing to “go beyond textbooks, go out into the bypaths and untrodden depths of the wilderness and travel and explore and tell the world the glories of our journey.”

Success doesn’t smile equally on everyone, however; neither Franklin nor his crew survived their journey. The American sailor Joshua Slocum did pull it off fifty years after Franklin’s doomed voyage, when he rebuilt a one-man sloop called the Spray, and circumnavigated the globe in it, becoming the first to every achieve the feat.

Slocum wrote about his adventures in the very readable “Sailing Alone Around the World,” which he published in 1900. I read it years ago, and lately I’ve been enjoying an audio version of it I borrowed from the library. Not everyone likes hearing books, but I find hearing a book I’ve already read is a fresher experience than re-reading it. In this instance it’s reminded me of several literary connections in Slocum’s narrative.

Rounding the Horn of South America, with its pirates, stormy weather, and numerous islands, was difficult, and exponentially more so when sailing solo. Slocum’s lifetime at sea and superb navigating skills enabled the Spray to survive the storms and shoals, and shortly before entering those waters, the captain of a larger ship provided Slocum a bag of carpet tacks. Each night he’d scatter the tacks on deck and lock himself in his cabin with his guns.

I grew up in Texas, which meant falling prey to an infinite variety of painful plant-life. Nothing hurt worse than stepping on stickers, those tiny, thick, spiky-wedged hunks of pain. So I wasn’t surprised to learn that Slocum found the tacks did the trick took care of the barefoot pirates without gunplay.

After rounding the Horn, Slocum rested at Juan Fernandez Island and described visiting the very site where another solitary explorer, Alexander Selkirk, had lived when marooned there in 1704. Selkirk had almost lost the ability to speak when rescued four years later.

He soon recovered and related his story to a British journalist who wrote a popular article about it, which led to Selkirk becoming the model for Daniel Defoe’s “Robinson Crusoe.” Slocum also visited Samoa and became pals with Robert Louis Stevenson’s widow, who gave him some of her late husband’s sailing books.
Slocum recalled that his on-board library helped maintain his mental health during his lonely voyage.

Speaking of explorers reminds me of the recent passing of another great one: Arthur C. Clarke. His NY Times obituary describes Clarke as “a writer whose seamless blend of scientific expertise and poetic imagination helped usher in the space age.” Clark worked on radar projects as an RAF officer during World War II, and in 1945 he wrote a detailed description of how communication satellites were possible. He wrote nearly 100 books, mostly science fiction, that featured an optimistic outlook on technology improving mankind’s lot.

Clarke believed that space and ocean exploration provided frontiers and a focus that would minimize human conflict. This had a profound impact on his readers, from entertainers like Stanley Kubrik, with whom he co-wrote “2001: A Space Odyssey,” and Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, to a passel of future astronauts and scientists. But what influenced Clarke?

The Times obit says “the formative event of his childhood was his discovery, at age 13 – the year his father died – of a copy of Astounding Stories of Super Science, then the leading American science fiction magazine.” Its stories fired Clarke’s imagination, and the same publication bought his first short story 15 years later.

Science fiction remains one of the most popular genres of fiction at the library, as generation upon generation of readers rediscover and redefine it. They are, like Clarke, and so many who visit the library, explorers of the mind, and American librarians are committed to defending the freedom to intellectually explore. This librarian agrees with John Steinbeck, who wrote, “This I believe: That the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected.”