SAILOR - AUTHOR'S COLLECTION Of MANUSCRIPT And ARCHIVAL MATERIAL Documenting Life in the Merchant Marine during the Depression. Including an Unpublished Autobiographical Story, MS Correspondence, a Yearbook, and 250+ Photographs.
(various): (various). Ca. 1918 - 1936. Total of 83 manuscript and 2 typescript letters, plus 1 V-mail, comprising 250 pp; of these, 54 are from Arthur to various friends, etc. (155 pp), and 29 are from Arthur's parents and 3 are from others (97 pp). "Notes" folder: 64 ruled leaves (1 blank), manuscript text to recto only. Scrapbook album: 46 tan construction paper leaves, several blank and/or noticeably missing items. Numerous loose ephemera. Over 250 b/w photographs ranging in size from ~2-1/4" x 1-1/4" to 8" x 10", including many official Navy photos. Also 8 b/w RPPCs, 2 half-tones, and various negatives, color printed certificates, postcards, etc. Most text on 10-1/2" x 8" leaves. Most items loose, disbound. All now housed in a banker's box. PARTIAL COLLECTION, with at least one element (a 1919 diary) known to be elsewhere. Two letters quite toned and brittle; evidence of photo album removal to verso of postcards and occasional other items, including 6 RPPCs affixed to full leaf; slight mustiness. Some photographs poorly developed and/or lightly soiled. Overall, text is clean legible and images are sharp. About Very Good. Item #44154
A collection of material detailing career sailor and struggling writer Arthur Gordon’s attempts to find work in the Merchant Marine during the height of the Great Depression, as well as his considerable efforts to set aside time for writing and honing his craft. Gordon served as a lieutenant in the Navy during WWI, as Chief Writer on the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey Oceanographer during the early 1930s, and again as an officer in the U.S. Navy during WWII, eventually attaining the rank of commander; his stories of sea life were published in various popular magazines, primarily during the 1940s.
Gordon is an introspective writer with a good, if sometimes uneven, sense of how to turn his experiences and thoughts into an often humorous and lightly self-mocking story, particularly in "Notes upon leaving the Coast Survey and looking for employment as a Merchant Mate Jan 5 - June 14, 1935," a 63 pp autobiography of these experiences written in the third person. "Notes" offers a highly detailed account of Gordon's experiences as an unemployed seaman during the Depression, and life aboard an oil tanker when his attempt to gain a position as a 3rd Mate didn't work out: "Las Piedras is an oil tank town with a single narrow dock extending from the shore, providing bollards for tying up the ships and supports for the pipe lines. The town is small and, I think, exists only because of the oil tanks, for the location has no charm otherwise.... The white oil men live as colonials in an impoverished outpost. They take what stores they need from the steward's supplies aboard ship. Loading is done by gravity, since the storage tanks ashore are on the cliff..."
The letters, roughly divided between copies of correspondence sent from Arthur to his friends, and letters sent to Arthur from his parents, show Gordon to be an enthusiastic and encouraging friend to multiple young men and a few women, as well as a dutiful son whose unemployed parents relied heavily on his earnings. Of some note as well are a handful of thoughtful, if conflicted, references to homosexuality, with at least one of Gordon's male friends appearing to have a crush on him and hints that Gordon may have been in gay relationships himself and/or struggled with his sexuality:
"…. I quite fully agree with you concerning the chemical make-up of man and the push and pull of attraction or dislike. I have had occasion to study what it is that draws me, to which I react most noticeably, and I am continually dismayed that usually it is the ‘wrong’ thing. ... I’m skeptical of any kind of relation that presupposes permanency. Knowing myself, I feel that ‘vows’ would soon be broken. I cannot stand constant association. Routine maddens me. The merest suggestion of ‘chain’, of compulsory anything, and I’m off. I don’t think hetero marriages are particularly successful, and I don’t think homo are either, for almost the same reasons. I don’t mind the companionate idea with women. With men, I fight shy. I am getting to the age where, in others, I condemn homo as degeneracy. I mean that among young people, it seems almost natural as a manifestation of excess love, as an overflow which can be handled without social consequences. At 45, it’s greasy and quite awful. Consider the advanced homos you know . . . Am I right? I am not dictating here; nor dogmatizing. I hope to start a discussion. Homos are interesting to me because I find that along with it is usually an unidentified awareness and an understanding of life unequalled in the stolid conventionites(?). I do not think they are God’s elected, but I don’t think that about any one….”
All-in-all, in interesting, multilayered primary source account of one man's experiences at sea during the Depression and his deep engagement with his correspondents, with heavy overtones of a writer's bildungsroman, traveling, seeking new experiences, etc.
Price: $1,750.00