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The Blue of Capricorn
This place is the northern limit of Eugene Burdick's Oceania - the realms of Polynesia, Melanesia, and Micronesia. In this book, the author of The Ninth Wave and co-author of The Ugly American explores a world rich in paradox and in drama, a modern world of polyglot islanders and of primitive savages, a physical world of languorous beauty and uncompromising rigors.
Some of the story must be told factually. The ocean itself is described in terms of its surface currents, the life of its tremendous depths, its winds, and the migrations of its birds. Some of it must be told in terms of its peoples - their histories and their customs forming the frame for individual portraits. And some must be told as fiction, to do justice to the subtle interplay of forces between the islander and the invader, the islander and the limitations of his tiny world, the foreigner and his acceptance of exoticism.
Here are poignant love stories of outsiders trying to come to terms with a life at once violent, remote and inescapably alluring.
Some of the story must be told factually. The ocean itself is described in terms of its surface currents, the life of its tremendous depths, its winds, and the migrations of its birds. Some of it must be told in terms of its peoples - their histories and their customs forming the frame for individual portraits. And some must be told as fiction, to do justice to the subtle interplay of forces between the islander and the invader, the islander and the limitations of his tiny world, the foreigner and his acceptance of exoticism.
Here are poignant love stories of outsiders trying to come to terms with a life at once violent, remote and inescapably alluring.
322 pages, Paperback
First published February 1, 1987
1 person is currently reading
47 people want to read
About the author
Eugene Burdick
20 books28 followersEugene Burdick was an American Political Scientist and co-author of The Ugly American (1958), Fail-Safe (1962) and The 480 (1965).
He was born in Sheldon, Iowa. His family moved to Los Angeles, California, when he was age 4. Burdick attended Stanford University and Oxford University where he earned a Ph.D. degree in psychology, and he worked at the department of Political Science at the University of California. In 1956, his critically acclaimed novel The Ninth Wave, a Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship winner, was published. At the end of the 1950s, he was among the first members of the Society for General Systems Research. He died suddenly of a heart attack at the age of 46.
He was born in Sheldon, Iowa. His family moved to Los Angeles, California, when he was age 4. Burdick attended Stanford University and Oxford University where he earned a Ph.D. degree in psychology, and he worked at the department of Political Science at the University of California. In 1956, his critically acclaimed novel The Ninth Wave, a Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship winner, was published. At the end of the 1950s, he was among the first members of the Society for General Systems Research. He died suddenly of a heart attack at the age of 46.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
February 11, 2012
The Black and the White will leave you with a lingering question about your own desire to escape to the south seas.. One of the must-reads for readers of western Oceania literature,
July 22, 2022
This book will have a firm spot on my bookshelf. The Blue of Capricorn is Eugene Burdick's intimate recollection of the Pacific and its people, food, drinks, lifestyles, and way of life that is so different than how we live in America - at least at the time of his writing in 1961. It's a collection of stories that covers various regions of the Pacific including Polynesia, Melanesia, Indonesia, and Australia. It is beautifully and vividly written - one can almost picture the landscape and smell the saltwater of the Ocean or see the critters and taste the wonderful food.
The stories that stood out to me most were "The Puzzle of the Ninety-eight," "Jack Nash," and "The Aborigine." The story of the "Ninety-Eight" is about 98 Americans taken as prisoners of War on the island of Wake near Hawaii that fought valiantly against their Japanese captors. The story about Jack Nash was my favorite. Nash was a Navy Officer that settled in the Pacific and married a native named Terita. They fall in love and have a wonderful time together. He later finds out she is suffering from tuberculosis and eventually succumbs to it, but not before they live life to the fullest on the island fishing, sleeping on the beach, eating extravagant dinners, swimming in the ocean, and spending all their time together. Years later, a body was found on a deserted island with a journal and it turned out it was Jack Nash. After failing to navigate a small boat, he wound up living a short while before running out of food and water. He had fallen in love with the Pacific however and left his heart and soul in it.
The book makes me want to tour the small islands of Micronesia, visit atolls throughout the Pacific, swim along the coral reefs, dine on a Tahitian lunch, and wander the Australian outback. It was in the outback where Burdick and an Australian visited an Aborigine family and witnessed their living conditions, hunting methods, and puzzled over how they were able to live in such a harsh environment with little water. As Burdick discovers, the Aborigine is an incredibly efficient human being - utilizing boomerangs in hunting to avoid excess bodily movement. They are experts of the land and Burdick even documents a situation where an Aborigine found a lost caravan of tourists by "running 5 miles an hour for 10 hours" to track them down.
Burdick leaves behind memorable quotes in the book - here are a few that stood out to me: “We have gotten so used to seeing stars that have been dulled by smog or the loom of city lights that to see them in the Pacific is like viewing a new sky.” Pg. 59
“Peering into the life of the coral reef one has the knowledge, felt more in the bones than in the brain, that this is the beginning of everything. Here in the warm salty water teeming with primitive animals and gorgeous color one senses that life began. It is really a kind of primordial sense of kinship, of looking backwards into the common origins and, oddly enough, it is not an experience that is depressing or degrading. It is exhilarating.” Pg. 124
“The second day Nash was home they would go to one of the little beaches on the windward side of Oahu. There they would swim, catch fish, sleep in the sun and talk. Often they would spend the night on the beach. Occasionally someone from Nash’s crew would see them clambering over the reef, searching for their dinner.” Pg. 104
“Later Toma served us an excellent Tahitian lunch; raw shrimp in lime juice, small red fish buttered and then broiled whole on hot coals, a plate of fa-fa and a plate of freshly cut pineapple. There was also a large carafe of Algerian red wine. When we had finished this, Toma brought over a large tin coffeepot of very strong coffee and we sat on the veranda sipping.” Pg. 161
The stories that stood out to me most were "The Puzzle of the Ninety-eight," "Jack Nash," and "The Aborigine." The story of the "Ninety-Eight" is about 98 Americans taken as prisoners of War on the island of Wake near Hawaii that fought valiantly against their Japanese captors. The story about Jack Nash was my favorite. Nash was a Navy Officer that settled in the Pacific and married a native named Terita. They fall in love and have a wonderful time together. He later finds out she is suffering from tuberculosis and eventually succumbs to it, but not before they live life to the fullest on the island fishing, sleeping on the beach, eating extravagant dinners, swimming in the ocean, and spending all their time together. Years later, a body was found on a deserted island with a journal and it turned out it was Jack Nash. After failing to navigate a small boat, he wound up living a short while before running out of food and water. He had fallen in love with the Pacific however and left his heart and soul in it.
The book makes me want to tour the small islands of Micronesia, visit atolls throughout the Pacific, swim along the coral reefs, dine on a Tahitian lunch, and wander the Australian outback. It was in the outback where Burdick and an Australian visited an Aborigine family and witnessed their living conditions, hunting methods, and puzzled over how they were able to live in such a harsh environment with little water. As Burdick discovers, the Aborigine is an incredibly efficient human being - utilizing boomerangs in hunting to avoid excess bodily movement. They are experts of the land and Burdick even documents a situation where an Aborigine found a lost caravan of tourists by "running 5 miles an hour for 10 hours" to track them down.
Burdick leaves behind memorable quotes in the book - here are a few that stood out to me: “We have gotten so used to seeing stars that have been dulled by smog or the loom of city lights that to see them in the Pacific is like viewing a new sky.” Pg. 59
“Peering into the life of the coral reef one has the knowledge, felt more in the bones than in the brain, that this is the beginning of everything. Here in the warm salty water teeming with primitive animals and gorgeous color one senses that life began. It is really a kind of primordial sense of kinship, of looking backwards into the common origins and, oddly enough, it is not an experience that is depressing or degrading. It is exhilarating.” Pg. 124
“The second day Nash was home they would go to one of the little beaches on the windward side of Oahu. There they would swim, catch fish, sleep in the sun and talk. Often they would spend the night on the beach. Occasionally someone from Nash’s crew would see them clambering over the reef, searching for their dinner.” Pg. 104
“Later Toma served us an excellent Tahitian lunch; raw shrimp in lime juice, small red fish buttered and then broiled whole on hot coals, a plate of fa-fa and a plate of freshly cut pineapple. There was also a large carafe of Algerian red wine. When we had finished this, Toma brought over a large tin coffeepot of very strong coffee and we sat on the veranda sipping.” Pg. 161
August 10, 2020
I purchased this for $1.95 at one of the largest used bookstores in the United States. It was the only copy.
This is a tragedy.
The first chapter begins, "There is a place where the Pacific coldly smokes." I wish that this were a recognized line, rather than the beginning of a book that is almost wholly forgotten. I wish that it would be reprinted with gorgeous illustrations of the thousand blues. I wish that I had a way of knowing what other gems are slowly buried over time. I wish that I could meet Eugene Burdick and talk with him. I admire Burdick for his relative impartiality, his intense attention to detail; for his adventurousness, creativity, and intellect.
It isn't that the book is flawless. Burdick's writing can be beautiful, but is too uncharacteristic and readily intelligible to be distinctive; yet the honest fact is that I like his personality and prose, whatever critics would call it. I found this book to be an incredible exploration of nature and mankind. "The Blue of Capricorn" is a poetic title, but it obscures what the book is really about, which is T H E P A C I F I C. This book is a love letter to that ocean. As someone who moved from the East to West Coast, I was in instant agreement about the grey, vast, wild violence of the Pacific compared to the Atlantic.
One chapter can describe the currents of the entire ocean, another explore the culture of Micronesia, and another contain a deeply memorable story about a single person who lived on one of its thousands of islands. All are interesting. The geographical and environmental descriptions are always lush with complex, sometimes morbid details, and provide an important bridge between the human stories. The writing is somewhere between fiction and nonfiction, at times specific and scientifically on point, at times taken from Burdick's own experiences, and at times built on rumors and imagination.
There are a number of stories that linger in my mind. One about 98 Americans who were kept captive by the Japanese on Wake Island during WWII fascinated me so that I spent over an hour researching, trying to understand the differences between those accounts and Burdick's version. What I discerned is that Burdick's account was likely drawn from the experiences of Americans who were shipped away from the island before things went dark, as the journals they left include some incidents described by Burdick. More importantly, Burdick's version is much better than reality, is a riveting story even if he had fabricated it entirely.
I have two favorite stories from The Blue of Capricorn. One is Lincoln Carver Bonaparte, about a brilliantly intelligent black man whose extreme darkness of skin even kept him ostracized from other black Americans, and so he joined the army and found his way to Melanesia. I won't go into more detail as it is a story of the sort of wondrous plotting found in Roald Dahl's Matilda or The Twits.
My other favorite, The Black and the White, contains my favorite moment in the book. It is about a Frenchman named Zola who moved to Tahiti to escape the grimy politics of Western society. All this story says about humanity could have been stretched across an entire novel, but I will end this review in support of this fading book by quoting that moment directly:
"That night after dinner a strange thing happened. We ate on the veranda overlooking the lagoon, watching the water gradually change into an even flawless green. In the center of the table was a flower and shell arrangement which Toma had made. It had a startling miniature beauty to it. Tiny shells, stamens of some sort of flowers, the green from the throat of wild orchids and an edging of blue petals which had been picked from flowers.
'That is a beautiful arrangement, Toma,' I said.
Toma was pleased. Zola looked down at the arrangement and smiled.
'It is a beautiful arrangement,' Zola said. He watched it intently for a few moments and the smile went from his face. He bent forward and with his hand gently pushed the tiny arrangement apart. He looked at me as he spoke to Toma.
'Put it back together, Toma,' he said.
Without a word Toma leaned forward and her fingers flicked over the diminutive shells and flowers and petals. Almost at once it was back in order. Then I realized that it was back in exactly the same order, it was an exact duplication of the first arrangement.
I looked up from the arrangement and Zola was watching me. His lips were turned up in a smile but there was something like pleading in his eyes.
'Can you do any other arrangements?' Zola asked Toma without looking at her.
'No, this is the only arrangement I make,' she said. She smiled. 'They taught us this when we were children. Mai-tai, eh.'
'Mai-tai,' I replied.
'Mai-tai and every girl on the island can do this single arrangement and the girls of the island have been making this arrangement and no other for over four hundred years,' Zola said. His voice was empty.
Zola's face was held in a tight little smile, but his eyes were suddenly deep and black with a strange expression. I sensed that he had looked over the edge of the chasm. Between us hung the knowledge that Toma could make only one flower arrangement, could cook poa only one way, cook fish only one way, make love in only one way, sing in only one pattern of songs, dance one kind of dance. Anything outside of the simple patterns did not interest her. And years ago Zola had come to know all of them.
Zola and I did not discuss this during the remaining days I was on his atoll. We walked and talked constantly, but he never referred to himself. When the PBY returned I rowed the old rubber boat out to it after saying goodbye to Zola and Toma. The sweat was pouring into my eyes by the time I reached the plane. I was tired. Just as I shipped my oars and looked again at Zola's house the salty drops of sweat fogged my vision. Zola seemed shrunken, small, hunched, almost bleached. He had stopped waving. Toma seemed life-sized and natural.
He was a prisoner not of a dream, but of those faded years in France which had instilled into his nerves and brain and soul an interest in questions beyond himself and beyond the day in which he existed. He had escaped only the real presence of European life; twisted through his mind like a maze of black jets were a set of conditionings and experiences which had burned into his youthful mind. From these he could never escape."
This is a tragedy.
The first chapter begins, "There is a place where the Pacific coldly smokes." I wish that this were a recognized line, rather than the beginning of a book that is almost wholly forgotten. I wish that it would be reprinted with gorgeous illustrations of the thousand blues. I wish that I had a way of knowing what other gems are slowly buried over time. I wish that I could meet Eugene Burdick and talk with him. I admire Burdick for his relative impartiality, his intense attention to detail; for his adventurousness, creativity, and intellect.
It isn't that the book is flawless. Burdick's writing can be beautiful, but is too uncharacteristic and readily intelligible to be distinctive; yet the honest fact is that I like his personality and prose, whatever critics would call it. I found this book to be an incredible exploration of nature and mankind. "The Blue of Capricorn" is a poetic title, but it obscures what the book is really about, which is T H E P A C I F I C. This book is a love letter to that ocean. As someone who moved from the East to West Coast, I was in instant agreement about the grey, vast, wild violence of the Pacific compared to the Atlantic.
One chapter can describe the currents of the entire ocean, another explore the culture of Micronesia, and another contain a deeply memorable story about a single person who lived on one of its thousands of islands. All are interesting. The geographical and environmental descriptions are always lush with complex, sometimes morbid details, and provide an important bridge between the human stories. The writing is somewhere between fiction and nonfiction, at times specific and scientifically on point, at times taken from Burdick's own experiences, and at times built on rumors and imagination.
There are a number of stories that linger in my mind. One about 98 Americans who were kept captive by the Japanese on Wake Island during WWII fascinated me so that I spent over an hour researching, trying to understand the differences between those accounts and Burdick's version. What I discerned is that Burdick's account was likely drawn from the experiences of Americans who were shipped away from the island before things went dark, as the journals they left include some incidents described by Burdick. More importantly, Burdick's version is much better than reality, is a riveting story even if he had fabricated it entirely.
I have two favorite stories from The Blue of Capricorn. One is Lincoln Carver Bonaparte, about a brilliantly intelligent black man whose extreme darkness of skin even kept him ostracized from other black Americans, and so he joined the army and found his way to Melanesia. I won't go into more detail as it is a story of the sort of wondrous plotting found in Roald Dahl's Matilda or The Twits.
My other favorite, The Black and the White, contains my favorite moment in the book. It is about a Frenchman named Zola who moved to Tahiti to escape the grimy politics of Western society. All this story says about humanity could have been stretched across an entire novel, but I will end this review in support of this fading book by quoting that moment directly:
"That night after dinner a strange thing happened. We ate on the veranda overlooking the lagoon, watching the water gradually change into an even flawless green. In the center of the table was a flower and shell arrangement which Toma had made. It had a startling miniature beauty to it. Tiny shells, stamens of some sort of flowers, the green from the throat of wild orchids and an edging of blue petals which had been picked from flowers.
'That is a beautiful arrangement, Toma,' I said.
Toma was pleased. Zola looked down at the arrangement and smiled.
'It is a beautiful arrangement,' Zola said. He watched it intently for a few moments and the smile went from his face. He bent forward and with his hand gently pushed the tiny arrangement apart. He looked at me as he spoke to Toma.
'Put it back together, Toma,' he said.
Without a word Toma leaned forward and her fingers flicked over the diminutive shells and flowers and petals. Almost at once it was back in order. Then I realized that it was back in exactly the same order, it was an exact duplication of the first arrangement.
I looked up from the arrangement and Zola was watching me. His lips were turned up in a smile but there was something like pleading in his eyes.
'Can you do any other arrangements?' Zola asked Toma without looking at her.
'No, this is the only arrangement I make,' she said. She smiled. 'They taught us this when we were children. Mai-tai, eh.'
'Mai-tai,' I replied.
'Mai-tai and every girl on the island can do this single arrangement and the girls of the island have been making this arrangement and no other for over four hundred years,' Zola said. His voice was empty.
Zola's face was held in a tight little smile, but his eyes were suddenly deep and black with a strange expression. I sensed that he had looked over the edge of the chasm. Between us hung the knowledge that Toma could make only one flower arrangement, could cook poa only one way, cook fish only one way, make love in only one way, sing in only one pattern of songs, dance one kind of dance. Anything outside of the simple patterns did not interest her. And years ago Zola had come to know all of them.
Zola and I did not discuss this during the remaining days I was on his atoll. We walked and talked constantly, but he never referred to himself. When the PBY returned I rowed the old rubber boat out to it after saying goodbye to Zola and Toma. The sweat was pouring into my eyes by the time I reached the plane. I was tired. Just as I shipped my oars and looked again at Zola's house the salty drops of sweat fogged my vision. Zola seemed shrunken, small, hunched, almost bleached. He had stopped waving. Toma seemed life-sized and natural.
He was a prisoner not of a dream, but of those faded years in France which had instilled into his nerves and brain and soul an interest in questions beyond himself and beyond the day in which he existed. He had escaped only the real presence of European life; twisted through his mind like a maze of black jets were a set of conditionings and experiences which had burned into his youthful mind. From these he could never escape."
November 21, 2023
Out dated views that are a bit offense at times and a part of Pacific history gone for good.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews