Odtaa

Santa Barbara #1

by John Masefield

ODTAA is an adventure novel first published in February 1926. Its title stands for One Damn Thing After Another.

It opens with establishing narrative describing the fictional South American nation of Santa Barbara which "lies far to leeward of the Sugar States, is at the angle of the continent, with two coasts, one facing to the north, the other east. The city of Santa Barbara is in a bay at the angle where these two coasts trend one from each other."

The novel is set prior to the events described in "Sard Harker" (published in October 1924).

The novel inspired a work for orchestra, also titled ODTAA, by Doreen Carwithen.

Genres: Fiction

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1926

About the author

Masefield was born in Ledbury, a rural area in England to George Masefield, a solicitor and Caroline. His mother died giving birth to his sister when Masefield was only 6 and he went to live with his aunt. His father died soon after. After an unhappy education at the King's School in Warwick (now known as Warwick School), where he was a boarder between 1888 and 1891, he left to board the HMS Conway, both to train for a life at sea, and to break his addiction to reading, of which his Aunt thought little. He spent several years aboard this ship and found that he could spend much of his time reading and writing. It was aboard the Conway that Masefield’s love for story-telling grew.

In 1894, Masefield boarded the Gilcruix, destined for Chile. He recorded his experiences while sailing through the extreme weather. Upon reaching Chile, Masefield suffered from sunstroke and was hospitalized. He eventually returned home to England as a passenger aboard a steam ship.

In 1895, Masefield returned to sea on a windjammer destined for New York City. However, the urge to become a writer and the hopelessness of life as a sailor overtook him, and in New York, he deserted ship. He lived as a vagrant for several months, before returning to New York City, where he was able to find work as an assistant to a bar keeper.

For the next two years, Masefield was employed in a carpet factory, where long hours were expected and conditions were far from ideal. He purchased up to 20 books a week, and devoured both modern and classical literature. His interests at this time were diverse and his reading included works by Trilby, Dumas, Thomas Browne, Hazlitt, Dickens, Kipling, and R. L. Stevenson. Chaucer also became very important to him during this time, as well as poetry by Keats and Shelley.

When Masefield was 23, he met his future wife, Constance Crommelin, who was 35. Educated in classics and English Literature, and a mathematics teacher, Constance was a perfect match for Masefield despite the difference in age. The couple had two children (Judith, born in 1904, and Lewis, in 1910).

In 1930, due to the death of Robert Bridges, a new Poet Laureate was needed. King George V appointed Masefield, who remained in office until his death in 1967. Masefield took his appointment seriously and produced a large quantity of verse. Poems composed in his official capacity were sent to The Times. Masefield’s humility was shown by his inclusion of a stamped envelope with each submission so that his composition could be returned if it were found unacceptable for publication.

On 12 May 1967, John Masefield died, after having suffered through a spread of gangrene up his leg. According to his wishes, he was cremated and his ashes placed in Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey. Later, the following verse was discovered, written by Masefield, addressed to his ‘Heirs, Administrators, and Assigns’:

Let no religious rite be done or read
In any place for me when I am dead,
But burn my body into ash, and scatter
The ash in secret into running water,
Or on the windy down, and let none see;
And then thank God that there’s an end of me.

Reviews

[Stephen Hayes · Rating 1 out of 5]

I actually read this book twice, even though I thought it was one of the worst books I had ever read.

I read it the second time just to see if it was as bad as I thought it the first time, and it was. The blurb made it sound interesting, but it simply did not live up to the blurb. There are a few books i have read that have been unbelievably bad -- so bad that i could not believe they were as bad as I thought they were, and I've read two of them twice because I didn't think they could really be as bad as i thought they were, but they actually were, and I must resist the temptation to read them yet again to see if they were really that bad. The other one I read twice was The Crystal World by J.G. Ballard. and another, which I've so far resisted the temptation to re-read, is Tehanu by Ursula le Guin.

Odtaa is about dictator in a Latin American country (ficitious) who proclaimed that he was God. It is strange that all British novels about dictatorship are extreme and far-fetched, like George Orwell's 1984, or Huxley's Brave new world, or the book I read just before reading Odtaa, Mandrake by Susan Cooper.

Perhaps they exaggerate to make the point more strongly, or perhaps it is just that they have no real conception of living in a dictatorship at all. They miss completely the ordinariness of it, the complacency of the people, the acceptance of the situation as part of everyday life. They show the ordinary people as the unconditioned, who become aware of the dictatorship, while those who accept the status quo are presented as being in some way extraordinary.

I wrote the previous two paragraphs when I was in the UK, just after reading Odtaa for the first time. That was in 1966, when South Africa was still in the throes of apartheid and Verwoerd the architect of apartheid, had just been assassinated, with the prospect of Vorster, the man who turned South Africa into a police state, taking over as prime minister (which he did).

[Brian Gowthorpe · Rating 1 out of 5]

Pitiful and weird with terrible dialogue. How on earth was it published? Such a shame after the poems, The Midnight Folk and his fascinating life.

[Travis Lambert · Rating 5 out of 5]

"One Damn Thing After Another"

[Stacia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Best acronym ever - sometimes it is just One Damn Thing After Another