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A small classic of travel writing and an indelible portrait of a young man coming of age during the Great Depression. In 1933, Clarence Jonk, full of youthful naïveté and an urge for adventure, decided to build a houseboat from scrap materials and float it the length of the Mississippi River. In the tradition of Huckleberry Finn and Henry David Thoreau, Jonk recounts a first-person tale of high adventure complete with wry and lyrical observations on life, love, and nature that capture the beauty and harshness of existence along the Mississippi River. Hoping to live rent free on a St. Paul lake in hard times, Jonk, a carefree college student and would-be poet, cobbled together his own houseboat from empty oil drums, scrap lumber, and two old Model T engines. Then, evicted by the local authorities, Jonk hauled his rudderless craft through city traffic to the Mississippi and boldly set out from Minneapolis bound for New Orleans in the chill month of October and into the teeth of an early winter. Accompanied at times by his sweetheart, friends, and a dog, Jonk fell overboard, was almost capsized by a blizzard, encountered hostile moonshiners, and fled angry farmers while scrounging for provisions on shore. Inexperience, hasty plans, and little cash made the journey a harrowing yet entertaining one as the boat reached La Crosse, Wisconsin, before being locked perilously in shifting ice for the winter. River Journey is as much a portrait of a now-vanished era as it is about a free-spirited man's attempt to find escape from mundane responsibility during the Great Depression. It is a story that begins in delight and ends in wisdom. About the AuthorCLARENCE JONK (1906-87) worked on the Mississippi as a lockman and carpenter, then became a farmer, World War II munitions-plant worker, building contractor, quarry operator, and finally, a full-time writer and inventor of toys and games. Reviews & Praise"The picture we get is that of an accident-prone poet aboard a Rube Goldberg houseboat as it careens down the Upper Mississippi ricocheting from bank to bank." -- NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW "[Jonk] is a close observer of nature and poetic in his feeling for the life he finds about him. . . . River Journey is a . . . journal of a time of innocence . . . touching in its beliefs and vision." -- BOOK WEEK "River Journey contains great snapshots of the Great Depression but its true subject is youth. Who but a youthful optimist would see voyaging down the Mississippi on a homemade, rudderless boat not as folly but a terrific adventure? And it is." -- JOHN HILDEBRAND, author of Reading the River: A Voyage down the Yukon and Mapping the Farm: The Chronicle of a Family "It doesn't matter that [Jonk's] original plan, to navigate the length from one City of the Saints to another, fell short by 1,550 miles. Over the 150 miles he did accomplish . . . he floated into an adventure that allowed him to build a life he could only fancy before. [He] was never the same after his voyage; then he could say with all the others who have traveled boldly, I went, and that has made all the difference." -- from the introduction by WILLIAM LEAST HEAT-MOON Copyright © 2003 Borealis Books · Send questions to the Webmaster |
