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I Cover the Waterfront: Stories from the San Diego Shore
“Distinctive, original, fresh in in tone and manner, with a quaint whimsicality of feeling and expression.”—The New York Times
Life on the Western waterfront has always fascinated Max Miller, a special reporter for the San Diego Sun. Embraced by all the waterfront folk, he has joined them on their cruises, has learned the mystery of their crafts, and knows them like brothers.
Max himself has become a part of the waterfront. Not a fishing boat ties up to the wharf without Max Miller getting the story. Not a submarine comes in nor an airplane soars out over the water without Max Miller’s being invited to go. He is one of the first men to climb up the ladder of the Pacific lines, especially when celebrities are aboard.
A combination of newspaper reporter, philosopher, and poet, the author writes his charming sketches in his “studio” upstairs in the tugboat office, where he can look out over his domain. But reporting is not simply a job with Max Miller; it is the greatest pleasure of his life. He delights in setting down his impressions of the Western shore, where life is a constant flux and reflux, seasonal, immutable, and yet ever exciting—the departure of the sardine fleet, the hunt for elephant seals for the zoo, the sailing of the California fruit liners.
I Cover the Waterfront was first published in the early 1930s and has since gone on to become a classic. It is as memorable for its unique stories as it is for its individual style—so keenly sensitive to the personalities of men and to the romantic environment of the harbor and deep-sea life.
Life on the Western waterfront has always fascinated Max Miller, a special reporter for the San Diego Sun. Embraced by all the waterfront folk, he has joined them on their cruises, has learned the mystery of their crafts, and knows them like brothers.
Max himself has become a part of the waterfront. Not a fishing boat ties up to the wharf without Max Miller getting the story. Not a submarine comes in nor an airplane soars out over the water without Max Miller’s being invited to go. He is one of the first men to climb up the ladder of the Pacific lines, especially when celebrities are aboard.
A combination of newspaper reporter, philosopher, and poet, the author writes his charming sketches in his “studio” upstairs in the tugboat office, where he can look out over his domain. But reporting is not simply a job with Max Miller; it is the greatest pleasure of his life. He delights in setting down his impressions of the Western shore, where life is a constant flux and reflux, seasonal, immutable, and yet ever exciting—the departure of the sardine fleet, the hunt for elephant seals for the zoo, the sailing of the California fruit liners.
I Cover the Waterfront was first published in the early 1930s and has since gone on to become a classic. It is as memorable for its unique stories as it is for its individual style—so keenly sensitive to the personalities of men and to the romantic environment of the harbor and deep-sea life.
206 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1932
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133 people want to read
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Max Miller
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
June 5, 2022
I suppose there can be a mysterious sort of serendipity in the way a book finds its time and its audience – sometimes, in ways that the book’s author does not anticipate. Such was certainly the case in 1932, when Max Miller, a 28-year-old San Diego waterfront reporter and aspiring novelist, wrote a little book titled I Cover the Waterfront, and looked on in astonishment as the book became a runaway best-seller. Miller may not have realized it at the time, but he was capturing, in a laconic and efficient fashion, the spirit of an American society coping, as best it could, with a then three-year-old Great Depression.
I Cover the Waterfront struck a chord with readers across the nation for some reason, and here is my theory as to what that reason might be. Knowing that Miller’s book was a Depression-era best-seller, I began the book expecting that it would be an impassioned denunciation of the economic inequities and social injustices of the period – something along the lines of John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath (1939). But that is not what I found. Rather, what I Cover the Waterfront offers is a series of colorful sketches of wild, individualistic characters who respond to the slings and arrows of Depression-era misfortune with an energetic, uncomplaining determination to persist and endure.
In Miller’s pages, one sometimes meets the famous – like Charles Lindbergh, who, “before he was yanked away from all the earth-dwellers and sanctified into membership with the Deity”, was just a guy nicknamed “Slim,” whom the newspaper staff considered “just another goof out to get publicity” (p. 23) while he waited for construction of his plane to be finished. Most of Miller’s stories, however, chronicle ordinary people of the waterfront.
Often, the stories are humorous, as when Miller tells of the U.S. Navy diver who eludes his ex-wife’s attempts to collect overdue alimony payments by taking refuge in his ship’s decompression chamber and pretending to be decompressing from a long deep dive, even though “No pressure has been turned into the chamber, and the air is the same as in any other part of the vessel” (p. 77).
At other times, however, I Cover the Waterfront turns deadly serious, as when a sailor must be informed that his wife has murdered their two children. Bitterly Miller recalls how “the reportorial actor in me continued to register sorrow” as he gradually revealed to the sailor the ultimate heartbreak of the children’s deaths. “Now for the execution. Was my prisoner ready?...Very well, then let him have it” (p. 57). Miller then recounts how “back in the office my story made the front page…and the managing editor said the story ‘showed the good old stuff’” (p. 58). One is reminded here of the words of a fellow Californian of Miller’s, rock musician Don Henley, who in one song described the mentality of tabloid TV news reporters: “Get the widow on the set/We need dirty laundry.” Tabloid journalism, it would seem, has changed very little in 80 years.
Miller is comparably frank about his own job. He describes eloquently the boredom of copy editors’ meetings – “the copy reader is beginning with his talk, and it will not be long now before he tells us that the greatest story which ever broke, the one about the world, was told in seven ‘takes,’”, and “why doesn’t somebody hurry and tell us again about the greatest editorial ever written on Christmas” (pp. 50-51). He dreams of breaking with this monotony, of achieving fame; he is forever reworking his feature story about Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo’s 1542 discovery of San Diego Harbor – “I have the sun forming the resemblance of a halo over the locks of his hair, and the Pulitzer news-story prize committee should in time start noticing this paragraph” (p. 100). Yet he senses the futility of regularly mailing his Cabrillo feature back east: “They might become catty about my gestures, and might object in terms that the Cabrillo discovery, although important, no longer is exactly spot news, having reached the Spanish press first” (p. 101). How surprised Miller must have been when his book took off like a U.S. Navy F4B-4 fighter plane off an airstrip of the North Island Naval Air Station, and fame came his way after all.
An indicator of the success of I Cover the Waterfront was that it was quickly made into a 1933 movie starring Claudette Colbert, then one of the most popular actors of her time. The film shares the book’s San Diego setting, but its noir-ish thriller plotline -- a reporter pursues a human trafficker who is smuggling Chinese people into San Diego, while falling in love with the trafficker’s daughter – is worlds away from the earthy, workaday, human-interest anecdotes that are more characteristic of Miller’s book.
Today, it may seem difficult to reconcile the run-down, seedy San Diego waterfront of Miller’s book with the gleaming S.D. waterfront of today. So many parts of waterfront San Diego are occupied today by glass-and-steel condominium complexes, hotels, shopping centers, all of them featuring the kinds of price tags that have made contemporary San Diego one of the ten most expensive metropolitan areas in the United States. Modern San Diegans may tend to associate the waterfront with San Diego’s gleaming convention center, or with the nearby stadium where the San Diego Padres play baseball.
Yet on my last visit to San Diego, when I looked out upon San Diego Harbor from a hotel room on Coronado Island, I could see, to the south of the shimmering hyper-modernism of downtown, aircraft carriers and destroyers and other warships of the U.S. Navy – and, not far away from them, massive container ships off-loading or taking on cargo. A conscientious reporter like Miller, making his way through those waterfront districts today, would no doubt find colorful characters to describe and interesting stories to tell, just as Miller did 80 years ago in I Cover the Waterfront. It is a fascinating look back at the San Diego, and at the America, of an earlier time.
I Cover the Waterfront struck a chord with readers across the nation for some reason, and here is my theory as to what that reason might be. Knowing that Miller’s book was a Depression-era best-seller, I began the book expecting that it would be an impassioned denunciation of the economic inequities and social injustices of the period – something along the lines of John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath (1939). But that is not what I found. Rather, what I Cover the Waterfront offers is a series of colorful sketches of wild, individualistic characters who respond to the slings and arrows of Depression-era misfortune with an energetic, uncomplaining determination to persist and endure.
In Miller’s pages, one sometimes meets the famous – like Charles Lindbergh, who, “before he was yanked away from all the earth-dwellers and sanctified into membership with the Deity”, was just a guy nicknamed “Slim,” whom the newspaper staff considered “just another goof out to get publicity” (p. 23) while he waited for construction of his plane to be finished. Most of Miller’s stories, however, chronicle ordinary people of the waterfront.
Often, the stories are humorous, as when Miller tells of the U.S. Navy diver who eludes his ex-wife’s attempts to collect overdue alimony payments by taking refuge in his ship’s decompression chamber and pretending to be decompressing from a long deep dive, even though “No pressure has been turned into the chamber, and the air is the same as in any other part of the vessel” (p. 77).
At other times, however, I Cover the Waterfront turns deadly serious, as when a sailor must be informed that his wife has murdered their two children. Bitterly Miller recalls how “the reportorial actor in me continued to register sorrow” as he gradually revealed to the sailor the ultimate heartbreak of the children’s deaths. “Now for the execution. Was my prisoner ready?...Very well, then let him have it” (p. 57). Miller then recounts how “back in the office my story made the front page…and the managing editor said the story ‘showed the good old stuff’” (p. 58). One is reminded here of the words of a fellow Californian of Miller’s, rock musician Don Henley, who in one song described the mentality of tabloid TV news reporters: “Get the widow on the set/We need dirty laundry.” Tabloid journalism, it would seem, has changed very little in 80 years.
Miller is comparably frank about his own job. He describes eloquently the boredom of copy editors’ meetings – “the copy reader is beginning with his talk, and it will not be long now before he tells us that the greatest story which ever broke, the one about the world, was told in seven ‘takes,’”, and “why doesn’t somebody hurry and tell us again about the greatest editorial ever written on Christmas” (pp. 50-51). He dreams of breaking with this monotony, of achieving fame; he is forever reworking his feature story about Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo’s 1542 discovery of San Diego Harbor – “I have the sun forming the resemblance of a halo over the locks of his hair, and the Pulitzer news-story prize committee should in time start noticing this paragraph” (p. 100). Yet he senses the futility of regularly mailing his Cabrillo feature back east: “They might become catty about my gestures, and might object in terms that the Cabrillo discovery, although important, no longer is exactly spot news, having reached the Spanish press first” (p. 101). How surprised Miller must have been when his book took off like a U.S. Navy F4B-4 fighter plane off an airstrip of the North Island Naval Air Station, and fame came his way after all.
An indicator of the success of I Cover the Waterfront was that it was quickly made into a 1933 movie starring Claudette Colbert, then one of the most popular actors of her time. The film shares the book’s San Diego setting, but its noir-ish thriller plotline -- a reporter pursues a human trafficker who is smuggling Chinese people into San Diego, while falling in love with the trafficker’s daughter – is worlds away from the earthy, workaday, human-interest anecdotes that are more characteristic of Miller’s book.
Today, it may seem difficult to reconcile the run-down, seedy San Diego waterfront of Miller’s book with the gleaming S.D. waterfront of today. So many parts of waterfront San Diego are occupied today by glass-and-steel condominium complexes, hotels, shopping centers, all of them featuring the kinds of price tags that have made contemporary San Diego one of the ten most expensive metropolitan areas in the United States. Modern San Diegans may tend to associate the waterfront with San Diego’s gleaming convention center, or with the nearby stadium where the San Diego Padres play baseball.
Yet on my last visit to San Diego, when I looked out upon San Diego Harbor from a hotel room on Coronado Island, I could see, to the south of the shimmering hyper-modernism of downtown, aircraft carriers and destroyers and other warships of the U.S. Navy – and, not far away from them, massive container ships off-loading or taking on cargo. A conscientious reporter like Miller, making his way through those waterfront districts today, would no doubt find colorful characters to describe and interesting stories to tell, just as Miller did 80 years ago in I Cover the Waterfront. It is a fascinating look back at the San Diego, and at the America, of an earlier time.
December 28, 2018
I don't remember exactly where I read about or from whom I heard about I Cover the Waterfront, Max Miller's exceptional collection of vignettes about life on San Diego's waterfront during the 1920s. I have some hazy, unreliable recollection of its being included in a list titled, "100 Books All Men Should Read." Regardless of how I became aware of it, I feel very, very fortunate that I did.
I Cover the Waterfront is a great book. A great book. In it, Max Miller, a reporter covering the waterfront beat for a local newspaper, reveals himself to be a remarkably keen observer of the world that he inhabits. He is intimately familiar with its actors and machinations, and he writes about his world and himself with extraordinary honesty and sincerity. He has tremendous insight---he sees the meaning (or lack of meaning) behind peoples' actions, and communicates it in clear, simple, yet poetic prose. The vast majority of the book's 35 vignettes are both revelatory and poignant, and as a collection form a fascinating and moving window into Miller's place and time.
It is entirely possible that in a month or two I will revise my rating to a 5. Bottom line, this is a very unique, entertaining, illuminating, and worthwhile read. Strongly recommended.
I Cover the Waterfront is a great book. A great book. In it, Max Miller, a reporter covering the waterfront beat for a local newspaper, reveals himself to be a remarkably keen observer of the world that he inhabits. He is intimately familiar with its actors and machinations, and he writes about his world and himself with extraordinary honesty and sincerity. He has tremendous insight---he sees the meaning (or lack of meaning) behind peoples' actions, and communicates it in clear, simple, yet poetic prose. The vast majority of the book's 35 vignettes are both revelatory and poignant, and as a collection form a fascinating and moving window into Miller's place and time.
It is entirely possible that in a month or two I will revise my rating to a 5. Bottom line, this is a very unique, entertaining, illuminating, and worthwhile read. Strongly recommended.
July 12, 2022
I haven’t lived in San Diego in over 30 years but last week I returned home to scatter my dad’s ashes in ocean waters just beyond the bay. Since this was a reflective and nostalgic homecoming I wanted to find a fitting San Diego book to guide the journey. This 1932 book of vignettes written by a young and prematurely jaded local waterfront reporter seemed perfect.
Unfortunately, the writing style was a bit too safe and gently stylized to speak much truth. Even when it was being cynical it was gentle. When it was whimsical it was gentle. It stumbles and bumbles and obscures with all its gosh-darn gentleness. Take off the gloves, man! This is the waterfront, for chrissake!
But it’s a quick read and if you’re interested in San Diego in the late 20s and early 30s it’s worth a look. And when you're done check out Sarah Vaughan’s wonderfully aching 1957 live version of the song inspired by the book. Or Billie Holiday’s. Or any of the other million versions out there.
(The Kindle version had a few ORC typos scattered about, which was distracting.)
Unfortunately, the writing style was a bit too safe and gently stylized to speak much truth. Even when it was being cynical it was gentle. When it was whimsical it was gentle. It stumbles and bumbles and obscures with all its gosh-darn gentleness. Take off the gloves, man! This is the waterfront, for chrissake!
But it’s a quick read and if you’re interested in San Diego in the late 20s and early 30s it’s worth a look. And when you're done check out Sarah Vaughan’s wonderfully aching 1957 live version of the song inspired by the book. Or Billie Holiday’s. Or any of the other million versions out there.
(The Kindle version had a few ORC typos scattered about, which was distracting.)
January 2, 2021
Journalism once upon a time
This delightful memoir of Max Miller describing his work as the waterfront reporter in San Diego was a delight to read. His humility, his sense of humor, and his powers of narrative make this piece come alive! Thanks to Lou McClelland, I had a great afternoon of reading today!
This delightful memoir of Max Miller describing his work as the waterfront reporter in San Diego was a delight to read. His humility, his sense of humor, and his powers of narrative make this piece come alive! Thanks to Lou McClelland, I had a great afternoon of reading today!
February 14, 2014
The concluding paragraphs are some of the best I've read. The narrator's utter inability to tie things together neatly, in a way, ties things together completely. The vignette concerning the trout pond also stands out to me, as well as the allegorical tale of the reporters' poker game.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 18, 2020
A MUST read. If you're in the San Diego area, especially on the coast, this is required reading. Or if you just appreciate fine writing, I give this ten stars ... Miller has a fantastic way with words. It's an annual re-read for me, in a select category with Old Man and the Sea.
February 5, 2022
Reading this book felt like discovering a hidden gem, made brighter perhaps because of its obscurity. In a fruitless search for books that provide a good sense of San Diego, a friend recommended this one, and when I checked it out from a nearby library I was the first to do so since 1954. The pages literally crumbled in places when I turned them.
Though written in 1932 the tone of the writing is deciding modern with a humble, autobiographical approach laced with humor and stifled romanticism. You can feel Miller growing cynical as he describes the newspaper business and jettisons dreams of literary glory. But then he’ll throw in a vignette about some crazy local character and his appreciation for the absurd brings him back to life. One story of sleeping all night with a baby seal on the beach, afraid to move lest he disturb it, really captured for me Miller’s state throughout - full of wonder and appreciation but also sort of trapped by it.
Surprising that a book that was a best seller at the time is now more or less forgotten. I’ve ordered another of his books— this one on La Jolla— and am looking forward to it!
Though written in 1932 the tone of the writing is deciding modern with a humble, autobiographical approach laced with humor and stifled romanticism. You can feel Miller growing cynical as he describes the newspaper business and jettisons dreams of literary glory. But then he’ll throw in a vignette about some crazy local character and his appreciation for the absurd brings him back to life. One story of sleeping all night with a baby seal on the beach, afraid to move lest he disturb it, really captured for me Miller’s state throughout - full of wonder and appreciation but also sort of trapped by it.
Surprising that a book that was a best seller at the time is now more or less forgotten. I’ve ordered another of his books— this one on La Jolla— and am looking forward to it!
November 3, 2019
One of my reading challenges this year was to read a book set in San Diego (or by a San Diego author). I Cover the Waterfront is a non-fiction book written by a guy who was a waterfront reporter in the 1920's, and was published in 1932. It is a series of chapters or vignettes covering the people he knew on the San Diego waterfront and life as a waterfront reporter. It is an engaging, enjoyable read -and if you are interested in catching a glimpse of what San Diego might have been like when it was still a small town, when the tuna fleet was big and Portuguese and Italian fishermen dominated the port, before there were freeways, I'd recommend it!
July 15, 2021
Milton
Owned
Owned
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 15, 2021
Finished reading this one out loud on our front porch with the end of the day light because power was still out after the tropical storm. An ideal finish for a very good book.
July 18, 2022
Some interesting stories of the San Diego of long ago
September 28, 2024
Interesting little story chapters, supposedly taking place in San Diego. I can't find any record of a liner sinking with 496 passengers rescued, though.
October 8, 2025
✒️ Interesting and plausible story.
📕Published — 1932. In the public domain.
🎥 1933 movie version with Ben Lyon, Claudette Colbert, et al.
༺༻༺༻✬༺༻༺༻✬༺༻༺༻✬༺༻༺༻
📕Published — 1932. In the public domain.
🎥 1933 movie version with Ben Lyon, Claudette Colbert, et al.
༺༻༺༻✬༺༻༺༻✬༺༻༺༻✬༺༻༺༻
March 26, 2020
My grandmother gave me this book with an inscription on the inside of the cover: "If I could spend a day with an author..."
Albeit, I didn't expect much from this novel. After all, how much of a story can there be to tell about a small port town during the Depression? Miller thought the same, and I like to think that he surprised us both. His writing is beautiful, and the cast of characters is eclectic and unforgettable.
There is a hesitancy in this book, a cautious suggestion that maybe, just maybe, people can be vibrantly and beautifully human no matter where you are--or for how long.
Albeit, I didn't expect much from this novel. After all, how much of a story can there be to tell about a small port town during the Depression? Miller thought the same, and I like to think that he surprised us both. His writing is beautiful, and the cast of characters is eclectic and unforgettable.
There is a hesitancy in this book, a cautious suggestion that maybe, just maybe, people can be vibrantly and beautifully human no matter where you are--or for how long.
April 2, 2024
This 1932 classic ticks so many boxes for me: nautical / waterfront, journalism, California (San Diego!), 1920s / 1930s. Its bestseller status in its day is entirely understandable. The two film adaptations (I Cover the Waterfront, 1933, with Ben Lyon, and Secret of Deep Harbor, 1961, with Ron Foster) are both quite entertaining, although they take little from the book besides the basic situation. Max Miller wrote a lot of other books which I would now like to get to.
October 14, 2010
The charm of this book lies in all the ways that it's dated: in its tone and its depictions of San Diego of the 20s. Yet somehow none of it felt that foreign. The city has changed vastly, yet its past isn't that hard to summon up. And certain vignettes, like jaded-at-age-28-year-old Max, snuggling up to a young seal on the beach one night, will stick with me for a long time.
May 18, 2012
This is one of the books I that i enjoyed reading and that I cherish as an object. I picked up a copy at a charity book sale. When I opened it, I noticed that it was a first edition. Cool. I flipped another page a found the bookplate of Claire Luce (Booth) and her signature below the plate. Whoa, totally worth the hardcover price of $1, a great book, too.
May 20, 2009
Sghort stories from a 1930s San Diego water front news writer. Nothing totally stands out but they all coem together to give you an interestign feeling of the tiem adn place. Worth the read. Thanks to David for suggesting.
August 2, 2012
Overrated. Some nice vignettes, but mostly unremarkable. I suppose many give it a lot of existential or zen points. Would recommend more to So Cal shore dwellers. Also for a fourth grade reading list.
November 29, 2015
This is a gem of a book I've been wanting to read for a long time. Obviously influenced by Mark Twain, Miller's wit and observation is evident. But it's the poignancy of his writing that stays with the me.
January 9, 2014
Vignettes! Nothing beats a vignette when you're in the mood for a vignette. Short, simple, sweet.
Read
April 27, 2016everything i wanted it t be.
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