The Furthest Reaches: Nearest Touch

The Furthest Reaches: The Nearest Touch, by Richard Robinson, is the story of a married man of a certain age - let us call him September - who has a problem in life so refractory that he seeks escape on the last ferry of the season, as it sails along the Alaskan Peninsula, across the Aleutian chain, to the furthest reaches of the earth, at the edge of the Pacific.Literarily, September is a cross between the angry man of Notes from Underground (Dostoevsky), the unreliable narrator Dowell of The Good Soldier (Ford Madox Ford), and the talented lush Dick Diver of Tender Is the Night (F. Scott Fitzgerald).Told in his own words, The Furthest Reaches: The Nearest Touch is a day-by-day, hour-by-hour log of one alcohol-drenched week of adventure - on land and at sea; it is a story of glinting beauty and dry humor, but also of tedium, repetition, and deep sadness - the darkness and despair are so thick at times, you could cut them with a boning knife.