Books : Delilah: A Novel about a U.S. Navy Destroyer and the Epic Struggles of Her Crew
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.52
EAN: 9781585741298
Edition: 1st
Format: Illustrated
ISBN: 1585741299
Label: The Lyons Press
Manufacturer: The Lyons Press
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 526
Publication Date: September 01, 2000
Publisher: The Lyons Press
Studio: The Lyons Press
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
Here is a twentieth-century classic that inspired a generation of nautical novels.
Delilah is an old, four-piper destroyer whose regular beat is one of the world’s most exotic—and dangerous—bodies of water: the Sulu Sea. Set at the beginning of the American century just before the Great War, this novel tells the story of how the ship and her crew patrol the islands in the time of violent racial and religious unrest.
In a series of disconnected and exquisitely drawn stories, Marcus Goodrich gives the reader a tantalizing glimpse into the heart of each crewmember as the ship puts down Philippine insurrections, searches for a gunrunnerÂ’s cave told of only in island folklore, and delivers medicine to western missionaries who would rather see the medicine destroyed than have it distributed to non-Christians. What emerges is a sensuous tapestry of the sailorsÂ’ lives, which are bound inextricably to the fate of their strange family on the Delilah. Here is the return of one of the twentieth centuryÂ’s most important and widely translated novels of the sea.
Average Rating: 
Rating:  -
This book's problem is that the central characters -- enlisted sailors in the US Navy aboard a 1917-era destroyer in the Philippines -- are brutal, ignorant, selfish, stupid men who fight and fight endlessly in bar-room brawls, engine-room brawls, etc., and it is impossible to care about them. Goodrich had the makings of a great story here -- a story like Huckleberry Finn, or the Odyssey, of men wandering by water in an alien land, tropical, hot, confusing -- and he so buries it with brainless brawling ... Read More
Rating: -
I did enjoy this book, though I felt it was sloww getting started. I agree with another reviewer, that while reading the last 80 to 100 pages, the book was very hard to put down.
Rating:  -
My naval career was a very modest one, but my impression is that this book exudes authenticity for the Navy of its time-period, and echoes of it still exist in the Navy I remember of 1951-1953. Some of the account, when not much was going on in Phillipines (where the Delilah was), were not overly exciting, but the book in its last 70 pages or so is unputdownable. A unique and vital book, and lives up to Good Reading's tout of it as the "One of the most powerful American sea Stories since Moby Dick."
Rating: -
Someone, somewhere ought to do justice to Marcus Goodrich and write a biography. The Columbia educated runaway from San Antonio eventually wrote the original treatment (not the screenplay) for "It's a Wonderful Life". (I believe it was his sister, Francis, who actually co-wrote the screenplay with her husband, Albert Hackett.) Before that, he had served in both World Wars, his experience in the first, aboard the sunken destroyer U.S.S. Chauncey, having formed the basis for "Delilah", published in January, ... Read More
Rating: -
This book won a Pulizter back in, I guess, the 20's. It is an amazing book. Parts of it seem surreal, as when the main characters explore the inside of an ocean-side mountain. But the people in the book are interesting, well-developed, and believable. Goodrich co-wrote the screenplay for "It's A Wonderful Life", but there's no resemblance.
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