|
North to the Night: A Spiritual Odyssey in the Arctic | 
 enlarge | Author: Alvah Simon
Publisher: Broadway
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
Buy Used: $0.01
You Save: $14.94 (100%)
Rating:  64 reviews
Sales Rank: 159523
Media: Paperback
Pages: 328
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.2 x 1.1
ISBN: 076790446X
Dewey Decimal Number: 919.804
EAN: 9780767904469
ASIN: 076790446X
Publication Date: September 14, 1999
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: With pride from Motor City. All books guaranteed. Best Service, best prices.
| |
| Also Available In:
|
| Similar Items:
|
| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com Review
Following his "Arctic dreams" that began with a photograph of the haggard crew of the ill-fated ship Endurance, Alvah Simon and his wife, Diana, set sail to winter in the high north. "We call them explorers, but I knew that look in their eyes," Simon writes of the early Arctic adventurers. "They were seekers, and that is a different thing." With self-discovery as a deeper agenda, the couple ventures into Tay Bay of remote Bylot Island; it is their ultima Thule--"the Last Unknown." Their small boat is willingly frozen in the ice. When Diana is airlifted out of the Arctic to tend to an emergency back home, Simon is unexpectedly left in solitude. His journey turns inward as he confronts the "uncomfortable awakening of my spiritual self." In the waning daylight, then total darkness, Simon's days are punctuated by depression and mania, a crackled voice over the radio, Inuit visitors, and hard-earned lessons as he is driven by the forces of the Arctic winter and by "the total loss of the sun." In this elegant, well-paced book, the Arctic darkness becomes a psychological landscape perforated with light and revelation, and Simon's thrilling tale is as captivating as his language. There is a welcome intimacy here as we share the same icy hull, listening close to this searching man. Simon courageously tells us about his darkest moments, dreams, and nightmares, and when the sun emerges, new eyes greet land and relationships. Simon has discovered his ultima Thule. --Byron Ricks
Product Description
In June 1994 Alvah Simon and his wife, Diana, set off in their 36-foot sailboat to explore the hauntingly beautiful world of icebergs, tundra, and fjords lying high above the Arctic Circle. Four months later, unexpected events would trap Simon alone on his boat, frozen in ice 100 miles from the nearest settlement, with the long polar night stretching into darkness for months to come.
With his world circumscribed by screaming blizzards and marauding polar bears and his only companion a kitten named Halifax, Simon withstands months of crushing loneliness, sudden blindness, and private demons. Trapped in a boat buried beneath the drifting snow, he struggles through the perpetual darkness toward a spiritual awakening and an understanding of the forces that conspired to bring him there. He emerges five months later a transformed man.
Simon's powerful, triumphant story combines the suspense of Into Thin Air with a crystalline, lyrical prose to explore the hypnotic draw of one of earth's deepest and most dangerous wildernesses.
|
| Customer Reviews: Read 59 more reviews...
 Repulsive September 17, 2008
Piotr Deterovich (Michigan, USA)
Anyone who would consider this book is pre-loaded to enjoy a story of Arctic Adventure. So was I. And an adventure of sorts is reported in the book, but its reporter is (or at least comes across as) a sollipsist so complete that it is impossible to respect his voice, and so it is impossible to credit his story as an "adventure." Going to the Arctic and stranding himeslf in the ice (really, can we all agree that the best description for that action is "stupid"?) was nothing more than the selection of a dramatic backdrop against which to paint his self-portrait. This book served as confirmation for me that there is a class of persons in this country and world who are unable to contemplate the idea of their relative insignificance. I left this book with the impression that the author began with sense of Caesar-like self-importance and ended the same. The "spiritual" blather is half-baked slop from the School Of Oprahism. His wife's contribution (as carefully shown in the accompanying pictures) is to make sure that no one is unaware of her beautiful blond hair first, and her courage, second. She's every bit as self-laudatory as he is. Stipulated: these are brave and self-reliant people. They are also selfish, vapid people. Take a pass on this one unless you enjoy the company of such.
 Brilliant Adventure, Excellent Story September 2, 2008
Dena (Washington)
We are, many of us, driven by something. We may not understand it, but still we answer its call. For Alvah Simon, it is the call to explore.
Fortunately for his fellow adventurers, Simon can write too. In the prologue, Simon describes one moment from the literal dark night of his journey.
"As the snow hurls, horizontally, my tracks fill and begin to fade. It is a race now, for even a slight deviation from my outward course will take me past the salvation of the boat and on into an eternal emptiness. My hands probe frantically. I think, 'Surely I have gone too far,' and the dread of death fills my stomach."
Simon, his wife Diana and his cat Halifax sail to the top of the world to endure a winter encased in ice. After arriving at the winter-over point, Diana is called away by a family emergency. A radio call to an Inuit village 100 miles away brings men on snowmobiles to take her from the ice leaving Simon and Halifax alone.
Few people spend a single night alone under the stars. Simon spends months alone in a place where the smallest mistake can kill you. Even greater than outer dangers, are the inner demons released in stillness.
In reading this book, I found myself trying to bridge the gap between my own experiences and Simon's. Yes, I've been cold, hungry, alone, and afraid. But Simon has battered the edges of possibility so profoundly that the gap simply cannot be fully bridged. Still, he brings us close.
From the beginning, his journey is risky. With only a tiny window of travel between break-up and freeze-up, Simon and his ship-mates race North. One early night, he is speeding along when two tankers who had been travelling with him fall behind and he feels a shadow of fear. Still, he charges ahead until:
"A chill and then a shape appeared out of the fog -- a wall of ice, granite-hard, bow-crushing, bone-breaking ice. I slammed the helm over, ran up to the bow, dropped the yankee, and reefed the main."
In the next port, Simon pours out his tale to a stranger who responds simply "He who knows nothing, fears nothing."
Many days later, and facing a mechanical problem, Simon attempts to dock at a remote U.S. military base and is turned away.
"As we sailed away, I sadly looked over my shoulder at the exact spot that Knud Rasmusssen and Peter Freuchen first called "Ultima Thule." The last unknown is no longer. With radars and radios and airplanes and rockets, they were defending freedom as they understand it. By pushing on north and out of this region entirely, I was defending freedom as I understood it."
The meat of the story, I leave to Simon. But I will tell you that in the end -- after enduring months of cold, darkness, solitude and fear -- Simon finds the freedom he defends in the fearsome being of a Polar bear.
"I took one more step. The bear grunted and rocked forward. I opened my arms, turning my palms to the heavens. ...the bear rose above me, a horrible mountain of fang and claw, crushing power, and lightning speed.
The moment hung in its own eternity. And then the bear spun around and slid away in great strides across the tundra. I stood stunned and faint, my soul indelibly embossed with the bear's message: "Here I give you back your life. It has been washed pure by your fear. Enjoy it deeply, learn from it daily, and use it wisely, for there is a purpose larger than yourself."
This is a brilliant adventure, beautifully told. Read it.
 remarkable and unforgettable September 12, 2007
Maurice Mciver (USA)
Journey with Alvah as he sails for the Arctic and he will open his world to you as most do only with close friends. Share in his triumphs and struggles through his year in the Arctic. And more than just the physical adventure of a lifetime, Alvah shares the spiritual dimensions of being utterly alone in the most inhospitable of environments, completely engulfed by a harsh and wondrous Artic wilderness. This is a remarkable and unforgettable tale.
Adventure in the Arctic September 4, 2006
R. Moffatt (New Zealand)
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
If you like an exciting adventure that you don't want to end and if you enjoy the style of writing that makes you feel you're actually there experiencing what the writer is going through you'll enjoy this book. To gain an understanding of some of the native peoples of the frozen Arctic wilderness and this unique place on earth read this book!
 Unbridled narcissism in an arctic setting. ?Spiritual? July 6, 2006
grouper52 (Silverdale, WA United States)
4 out of 7 found this review helpful
I could not agree more with every word of Isha Beharim's review. My first impression at the beginning of the book was of the author's extreme self absorbtion, and the impression never left me, and the self absorbtion never left the author either, despite whatever "spiritual" experience he may have had. The book, by the way, never comes within a country mile of anything even remotely spiritual, and I think perhaps the word was used in the sub-title only to improve sales, although, who knows, maybe sadly this sort of stuff passes for spirituality for this guy.
The book was only interesting as the most extreme example of this sort of narcissist-meets-survival writing, which seems all the rage these days, and which also seems increasingly boring to me. I believe this book has cured me of my interest in this entire genre, and for that I suppose I owe a debt of gratitude.
|
|
|
Powered by Associate-O-Matic
| |
