From Library Journal
His bomber hit by anti-aircraft fire, an American gunner must parachute into Tokyo days before the great firebomb raid on that city. Fortunately, this recorded version of Dickey's macho story of survival against the odds is abridged, making the hero more believable and the tale more mesmerizing. The book, unfortunately, contains too many instances of poetic flights of fancy and philosophical baggage for a blood-and-guts action story wherein the hero commits a large number of murders, both necessary and gratuitous. The main focus here is how to escape and how to become invisible in a nation where you are the outsider. Dickey's solution is highly imaginative and entertaining. This production, well narrated by Dick Hill, will appeal to those who love war and adventure stories. Recommended for large popular collections.- James Dudley, Copiague, N.Y.Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From AudioFile
"Hill presents Dickey's powerful first-person account, conveying savagery and mystical transcendence into nature in a dynamic balance." R.F.W. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine


From Kirkus Reviews
Dickey doesn't write many novels--three in 23 years--but he makes every one count. And when he's in peak form, as he is here, he makes every word count as well: In this unforgettable story of an American soldier escaping across WW II Japan--a story closer in spirit to Deliverance (1970) than to Anilam (1987)--the prose of this 70-year-old poet slices down to the bone of things like an immaculate knife. On a bombing mission over Tokyo, the B-29 carrying Dickey's hero/narrator--the gunner Muldrow--is shot down, forcing him to parachute into enemy territory. But Muldrow isn't like other men: Raised as a hunter in Alaska, he knows how to get things done. He alone survived the plane crash because he alone had the foresight to tape a parachute to the plane wall--and the same knack for survival gets him out of Tokyo by allowing him to take what he needs as Allied planes firebomb the city. He needs clothes: Amid the heat and smoke, he finds the right-sized man and blows him away. Muldrow decides to head for Japan's northern island of Hokkaido; there, in the snow and the cold, he will survive. He walks; he hops a train; he kills. He meets his match in a blind swordsman, and he almost dies when he encounters an American Zen monk who betrays him--just as this incident, alone in the novel, betrays Dickey's artifice through its too obvious contrast between the monk's grasping for reality and Muldrow's practiced hold on it. As Muldrow treks north, the mercilessness of that hold becomes ever more apparent and is mirrored in the stark beauty of the ever harsher landscape; by the lyrically brutal conclusion, Muldrow, like the animals he admires, has become one with the land: ``I was in it, and part of it. I matched it all.'' A ruthless adventure of body and soul by a writer of mature- -even awesome--powers. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


Review
"The book's closest forebear may be Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea... an exhilarating ride."--The New Yorker


Review
"The book's closest forebear may be Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea... an exhilarating ride."--The New Yorker


Book Description
Award-winning and best-selling author James Dickey returns with the heart-stopping story of Muldrow, an American tail gunner who parachutes from his burning airplane into Tokyo in the final months of World War II. Fleeing the chaotic, ruined city, he instinctively travels north toward a frozen, desolate sanctuary he is certain will assure this survival--and freedom. Making his way through enemy terrain, on the lookout for both danger and opportunity, Muldrow's journey becomes the flight of a pure predator. Moving through the darkness, bombarded by haunting visions that consume his imagination, every step in his violent odyssey brings him closer to a harrowing climax that is pure James Dickey.


From the Publisher
"The book's closest forebear may be Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea... an exhilarating ride."--The New Yorker


From the Inside Flap
Award-winning and best-selling author James Dickey returns with the heart-stopping story of Muldrow, an American tail gunner who parachutes  from his burning airplane into Tokyo in the final months of World War II. Fleeing the chaotic,  ruined city, he instinctively travels north toward a frozen, desolate sanctuary he is certain will assure this survival--and freedom. Making his way through enemy terrain, on the lookout for both danger and  opportunity, Muldrow's journey becomes the flight of a pure predator. Moving through the darkness,  bombarded by haunting visions that consume his  imagination, every step in his violent odyssey brings  him closer to a harrowing climax that is pure  James Dickey.

ANNOTATION

From the award-winning, bestselling author of Deliverance and Buckdancer's Choice comes the heart-stopping story of an American tail-gunner who parachutes from his burning plane into Tokyo during the final months of World War II.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

When James Dickey's best-selling novel, Deliverance, appeared in 1970 Robert Stone wrote in Time Magazine, "Dickey finds and renders a quality of terror in the struggle of human against human sufficient to chill the most complacent heart." He could just as easily have been describing To the White Sea, a transcendent meditation on the savage and primal descent of one man facing desperate odds. James Dickey's novel is at once brutal and lyrical, reaffirming his position as one of America's best and most important contemporary writers.

In a final sortie the day before the great fire-bombing raid on Tokyo in the last months of World War II, Muldrow, an American tail gunner, parachutes from his burning B-29 into the city. Protected at first by the smoke-blackened anarchy on the ground, he relentlessly treks north, away from the chaos and ruin of Tokyo, instinctively driven toward the island of Hokkaido, a frozen, desolate sanctuary he is certain will assure his survival - and freedom. With little more than a knife and a small map of Japan he makes his way across enemy terrain, alert to both danger and opportunity. But with every step and every breath his journey transforms into the flight of a pure predator. Haunting images consume his imagination as he stalks through a dark world where every passing moment of his violent odyssey brings him closer to a harrowing climax that is pure James Dickey in its fearsome conception. To the White Sea is a gripping adventure narrative that melds exacting, breakneck prose and true poetic imagination in the creation of an portrait, painted with the fierce and vivid reality of an unforgettable nightmare.

SYNOPSIS

Muldrow, the narrator of James Dickey's To the White Sea, is a little guy no taller than a tree stump but tough as a cockroach—which is the word some readers will use for him when they finally close this novel....Despite all the novel's activity, Muldrow can be a tedious narrator. And Mr. Dickey's language, which manages to be both airy and bloated, wobbles all over the place, especially when he attempts to balance the brutality of the action with his themes of transcendence. Although he labors mightily to persuade us, it will be hard for most readers to view this misdirected novel as a significant morality tale.—The New York Times

FROM THE CRITICS

New Yorker

The book's closest forebear may be Hemingway's The Old Man And The Sea... an exhilarating ride.

Laurence Lieberman - Southern Review

Within the work's horrific narrative labyrinth are numerous passages that offer a retrospective survey of Dickey's hard-earned poetic mythologies, his achieved personal mythos....[there are]eloquent forays into homemade theories of optics, physics, and aesthetics and into the esoteric lore of icebergs and arctic predators...

Atlanta Journal Constitution

A splendid tale...There are extraordinary passages of intense poetry...An intense, page-turning adventure.

Library Journal

His bomber hit by anti-aircraft fire, an American gunner must parachute into Tokyo days before the great firebomb raid on that city. Fortunately, this recorded version of Dickey's macho story of survival against the odds is abridged, making the hero more believable and the tale more mesmerizing. The book, unfortunately, contains too many instances of poetic flights of fancy and philosophical baggage for a blood-and-guts action story wherein the hero commits a large number of murders, both necessary and gratuitous. The main focus here is how to escape and how to become invisible in a nation where you are the outsider. Dickey's solution is highly imaginative and entertaining. -- James Dudley, Copiague, New York

Library Journal

His bomber hit by anti-aircraft fire, an American gunner must parachute into Tokyo days before the great firebomb raid on that city. Fortunately, this recorded version of Dickey's macho story of survival against the odds is abridged, making the hero more believable and the tale more mesmerizing. The book, unfortunately, contains too many instances of poetic flights of fancy and philosophical baggage for a blood-and-guts action story wherein the hero commits a large number of murders, both necessary and gratuitous. The main focus here is how to escape and how to become invisible in a nation where you are the outsider. Dickey's solution is highly imaginative and entertaining. -- James Dudley, Copiague, New YorkRead all 9 "From The Critics" >

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING

A tour de force and a triumph of the first order. — (Pat Conroy, author of Beach Music)