To the White Sea. - book reviews

National Review, Nov 15, 1993 by Robert Prysock

To the White Sea, by James Dickey (Houghton Mifflin, 275 pp., $22.95)

TOO many modern writers have tried to emulate Ernest Hemingways telegraphic writing style, only to have their work come off sounding childish and contrived. James Dickey, author of the celebrated book-cum-movie Deliverance, is the latest victim of the Hemingway temptation. This new book is a tightly plotted, well-executed story of survival against the odds, but its two-dimensional characters who think and speak like grammar-school children prevent it from being a complete success. The book is set during the waning months of the Pacific war against the Japanese. The story's protagonist, Muldrow, is a tailgunner on a B-29 that gets shot from the sky over Tokyo. Miraculously, he survives an on-board explosion and parachutes into the city, where he develops a relatively simple plan: to vanish into the snow and ice of Hokkaido, an island four hundred miles to the north, before the American Air Force burns Tokyo to the ground. As you might expect, he encounters numerous obstacles along the way, all of which he handles with extreme efficiency and troubling brutality. Without revealing anything more, let me say this: Though Mr. Dickey has failed to master the subtleties of the Hemingway style, he has nevertheless delivered an entertaining latenight read.