Jonathan Raban - Waxwings

Table of Contents

Acclaim for Jonathan Rabans WAXWINGS

Waxwings ... is hugely satisfying; buzzing with life from Seattles dot-com industry, sharpened by domestic intrigue and then alarm as the protagonists life begins to fall apart.

The Independent on Sunday

The best novel yet about the dot-com era.... Rabans snapshots... are fall-over funny. [He] nails our short-lived intoxication and hints at the hangover to follow. Time Out New York

Rabans pages... sing with dazzling phrases and fresh insights.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Sharper (and a lot faster) than The Bonfire of the Vanities , [ Waxwings ] may well be one of the best accounts ever written of an American era. Kirkus Reviews (starred)

Its a testament to Rabans control that he can integrate personal and public catastrophes so deftly in this witty novel.... He prods us to consider that were living in a period that makes us all somehow foreigners. The Christian Science Monitor

Rabans views, ironic and humane, are always acute; always illuminating. His proseagile, musky, particularis a treasure.

The Guardian (London)

Marvelous.... As with [Tom] Wolfes extravaganzas, Waxwings teems with juicy, funny characters emblematic of their time and place... but, unlike Wolfe, Raban knows how to bridge the gap between the broad social canvas of satire and the interior life of delicate, rounded characters. Entertainment Weekly

Waxwings has great amplitude and intelligence.... A wide-ranging, pungent, sharply observed novel. The News & Observer (Raleigh)

A delicious social comedy... Waxwings is also an elegant meditation on immigrant America. The Boston Globe

Generous, funny and beautifully written... Waxwings is extraordinarily rich and expertly paced and arranged. The social range of the novel is enormous; the characterizations acute. Every character, however incidental, has a voice. The Columbus Dispatch

Rabans specialty is the sly, unsparing metaphor and jarring observation, and hes at the top of his form in Waxwings . Yet he perceives his adopted homeland without American Beauty style snarkiness or intellectual dispassion la DeLillo, displaying instead the compassion and bracing honesty of an ambivalent lover.

The Village Voice Literary Supplement

Waxwings stimulates the reader both emotionally and intellectually, gently tapping at the funny bone while giving us characters we care about.... It is a solid example of contemporary literature: entertainment with a message about modern society and the modern individual. South Florida Sun-Sentinel

Imagine Evelyn Waugh with a social conscience and, perhaps, a tad more humanity.... Enormously pleasing.... Wonderful fun, as lively as anything out there. The Hartford Courant

Jonathan Raban

WAXWINGS

The author of ten previous books, Jonathan Raban was born in England and since 1990 has lived in Seattle. His honors include the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Heinemann Award of the Royal Society of Literature, the PEN/West Creative Nonfiction Award, the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award, and the Governors Award of the State of Washington.

ALSO BY JONATHAN RABAN

Soft City
Arabia
Old Glory
Foreign Land
Coasting
For Love and Money
God, Man, and Mrs. Thatcher
Hunting Mister Heartbreak
The Oxford Book of the Sea (editor)
Bad Land
Passage to Juneau

FOR MY DAUGHTER,
JULIA RABAN

November, the pilot said.

Wave-crests were breaking gray on a sea as black as crpe. Ragged nimbus clouds brushed the ships bridge. The lone spot of color was on the radar screen, where the coastline showed as a wide brushstroke of glowing copper.

Steady as she goes, the pilot said. Zero-seven-five.

Zero-seven-five. Compact, broad-bottomed, the captain was a dense blot of shadow at the wheel.

They spoke quietly, as if they were in church. Eleven stories up from the water, the noise of the engines was a distant rumor. Though a westerly gale was blowing down Juan de Fuca Strait, it was inaudible on the bridge, for the ship had been built with hurricanes and typhoons in mind, and the bronchial churring of the air-conditioner drowned out whatever sounds were being made by the weather. The Pacific Auriga, 51,000 tons, bound for Seattle from Osaka and Hong Kong, was too big to notice the small sea on which it now found itself, its only apparent motion a slight mechanical vibration underfoot.

Youve got the Dungeness light there, Cap, the pilot said. Starboard. Two oclock.

Yes, Ive got it, the captain said, a little shortly, for he was an old hand on this run, and the pilot new to him. Stepping aboard from the launch off Port Angeles, the pilot presented himself on the bridge with a cocky, affectless assurance to which the captain, a New Zealander, took an immediate dislike. Now the young American was fiddling with the radar closest to the wheel, officiously targeting echoes.

You can go to zero-eight-zero, Cap. The spits right on the two-mile ring. Tides making about three knots.

We usually see DougDoug Nielsen?

Captain Nielsens taking the week off. Family emergency.

Im sorry to hear that.

Ahead of the bridge, lines of stacked containers stretched away into the darkness. The water puddled on their tops caught the light from the deck below the bridge and glistened like a wet highway, blinding the Captain to the sea beneath the ship.

Better slow her down to eleven, twelve knotswhatevers comfortable, the pilot said, voicing what the Captain had already decided. Were in no hurry. Youll be dropping the hook for the night in Elliott Bay: they wont berth you at Harbor Island till five at the earliest.

Your cabins made upthe purser saw to it. David? the Captain said to the lounging shadow of the Third Officer. Could you rustle up a fresh pot of coffee? Coffee for you, Mr.?

Warren, the pilot said, Warren Kress, speaking his name for the second time in fifteen minutes. You have decaf ?

Were out of decaf, the Third Officer said. I can make you a cup of tea, if you want.

My wifes got me on decaf these days, Kress said. Ill take a glass of water, though. As he moved away from the radar, he unfolded himself, slowly, in sections, and stood as tall as a basketball player. From somewhere above the Captains head, he said, Yeah, the funeral was today.

Sorry?

Captain Nielsens grandkid.

Not the little girl? He was talking about her last time he was on board. She died?

Yeah, she got killed. Five years old. It was just a couple days after her birthday.

Oh, Jesus. What was ita car accident?

A cougar.

The brand of car that ran her down? the Captain thought. Why does he have to say that?

A mountain lion, the pilot said. She was killed by a cougar.

How?

She was at her day-care. In Sequim. Its a Montessori place in a new development out there, real close to the woods. Ashleythe kid was playing by herself in the yard, a ways off from the others, and the cougar dragged her into the bushes. Teacher was in the bathroom and I wouldnt care to be in her shoes right now. The other kids say they never heard her yell or anything. She just disappeared. First they thought shed wandered off, then that a child-molester mustve abducted her. They were running around looking for a man, and it was half an hour before they found her. A clean killone bite severed the carotid artery. Her right arm was gone, torn right out of the socket. Port fifteen, Captain: zero-eight-zero.

The pilot, his voice level and dispassionate, sounded like a radio announcer reading from a bulletin.

They got the cat. The Fish and Wildlife guys treed and shot her about a mile away. They were lucky to find her, but the day-cares toast: they were meant to have a chain-link fence around the yard, according to code, and the subcontractor fouled it up. Theyd only been open since Labor Day. The familys bringing suit.