Book Review
| Publication year | 2016 |
| Pages | 39 |
| Citation | Vol. 42 No. 2 Pg. 39 |
Slavish Shore: The Odyssey of Richard Henry Dana, Jr. Jeffrey L. Amestoy, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, Press, 2015
Paul S. Gillies, Esq., J.
Jeffrey Amestoy—Chief Justice of the Vermont Supreme Court (1997-2003), Vermont Attorney General (1984-1997), Commissioner of Labor and Industry (1982-1984)—we thought we knew him, but after his public service was over, Jeff Amestoy became a biographer, and a good one. His subject is the writer of the classic Two Years Before the Mast, Richard Henry Dana, Jr. Richard Henry Dana, Jr. was a man who became a successful Boston attorney, abolitionist, and prominent citizen, and who enjoyed great success but suffered the troubles that come with success. The book is intriguing and provocative—a worthy read. The biography will give you a respite from the cares of your life, and will engage and entertain you for a few hours.
You might wish to read (or reread) Two Years Before the Mast to prepare for Mr. Amestoy's own journey.
It all began with a sea voyage. Dana was 19, had started at Harvard, but had taken a leave of absence due to ill health and bad eyesight, when he boarded the sailing brig, the Pilgrim out of Boston in 1834. Two years later he disembarked. His sea chest was lost, containing his journal, but he recreated it and published his first book in 1840, after graduating from Harvard Law School. Naturally, he practiced admiralty law, and wrote The Seaman's Journal in 1841, among other works. He became a leading abolitionist whose public opposition to slavery brought him both notoriety and opprobrium. Unfortunately, Dana spent his last years as a defendant in a suit that drained his ambition and distracted him from his career.
Biography is challenging, both to read and to write. Chronology—the timeline of a full life—is a demanding structure to maintain. It is a true test of endurance and ethics to try to make sense of a person's full years, while simultaneously resisting the temptation to judge or to contour the arc of the story into a meaningful pattern. Everybody's life is interesting—but how much should be told, how much should be left out, how much must you elaborate? These are the tough questions a biographer has to answer when writing, since nobody really knows the inner life of another person, always brimming with details.
So much of a life is prosaic. But in details, in incidents and scenes, a character is...
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