I have a longstanding distrust of memoirs. I generally feel
that they are rather clever ways that people find to make money off bragging
about themselves. I also find that they
are frequently heavily ghost written, especially if they appear to have been written
within a couple of months after the author achieved something of great
note. A classic example of this is
Bradley Wiggins’s autobiography which came out *cue shock and astonishment* a
few months after he won the Tour de France and Olympic gold and just in time
for Christmas. Reading it was akin
really to listening to a publicist with a few more swear words, it was
dreadful. Exceptions to this rule tend
to come from people who have a background in media or in writing in
general. These include the autobiographies
of Stephen Fry and Tina Fey both of which are full of home-truths,
self-reflection and are genuinely interesting reads.
A Captain’s Duty
therefore should have set off all of the alarm bells. This is a memoir written
by a man with no background in writing, which was originally published a year
after the hijacking which provides the backbone of the story and it even
credits the ghost writer, Stephan Talty.
The only time that a ghost writer gets such a prominent credit is when
he essentially wrote the entire thing.
Nonetheless I thought that I’d give it a go. Afterall it has pirates, a thrilling rescue
and Barack Obama – what more could one want in a book?
For those who are not familiar with the background to this
book I shall provide a short synopsis.
In April 2009 a cargo ship captained by Richard Philips was captured by
Somali pirates. The ship’s crew and its
captain managed to engineer the situation so that the pirates only escaped with
the captain himself aboard the ship’s lifeboat.
Therein occurred a stand-off between these pirates and the US navy which
was ended when navy SEALs stormed the boat, killing the captors and rescuing
Captain Philips. Hooray!
Now for the sake of argument I am going to assume, with a
pinch of salt, that what the books says is broadly true. There have been numerous suits by members of
Philips’s crew that the book contains not so much facts as a huge tin of whitewash,
acquitting Philips of charges of incompetence and even collusion with the
pirates. It is not for me to make a
judgement on that, I shall let the great legal minds of the US deal with that. However, I will say that this book very
quickly irritated me as very quickly the author started bragging. He presents himself as this macho authority
figure who rose from the wrong side of the track to become the ideal family man
as well as leader of men. His wife loves
him, his children worship him, and his men respect and fear him. His account of
what happened on the boat reads very much like a film script (shockingly it has
now been turned into a film starring Tom Hanks) and really it seems to be an
exercise in the author crawling up his own backside and giving it a good
licking. It does all seem too good to be
true. There is very little introspection
and what self-admonishment there is is severely played down.
That is not to say that it is not a well-written book. It paced very well and contains plenty of
action. There are parts of it that
really do seem like they come from a film script and the scenes are easy to
imagine and relate to. It’s odd because
this seems like a really negative review when actually I did quite enjoy much
of the book. The issue I have with the
book is, however, extremely pervasive and gets in the way of me being able to,
in good conscience, recommend that you buy it.
If, having read this, you feel that you can get past the issues I
describe then by-all-means give it a go.
You’ll probably like it.
5/10
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