Log of the S.S. the Mrs Unguentine - Dalkey Archive Essentials by Stanley Crawford Paperback

About the Book

"Log of the S.S. The Mrs. Unguentine is a masterpiece of modern domestic life, a comic novel of closeness and difficulty, miscommunication and stubborn resolve. "Forty years ago I first linked up with Unguentine and we made love on twin-hulled catamarans, sails a-billow, bless the seas . . ." So begins the courtship of a certain Unguentine to the woman we know only as "Mrs. Unguentine," the chronicler of their sad, fantastical tale. For forty years, they sail the seas together, alone on a giant land-covered barge of their own devising. They tend their gardens, raise a child, invent an artificial forest-all the while steering clear of civilization. Rarely has a book so perfectly registered the secret solitude of marriage, how shared loneliness can result in a powerful bond"--

Book Synopsis

Log of the S.S. The Mrs. Unguentine is a masterpiece of modern domestic life, a comic novel of closeness and difficulty, miscommunication and stubborn resolve.

"Forty years ago I first linked up with Unguentine and we made love on twin-hulled catamarans, sails a-billow, bless the seas . . ."

So begins the courtship of a certain Unguentine to the woman we know only as "Mrs. Unguentine," the chronicler of their sad, fantastical tale. For forty years, they sail the seas together, alone on a giant land-covered barge of their own devising. They tend their gardens, raise a child, invent an artificial forest-all the while steering clear of civilization.

Rarely has a book so perfectly registered the secret solitude of marriage, how shared loneliness can result in a powerful bond.

Review Quotes

"Mrs. Unguentine's account of her marriage and its downfall is a hymn, a dirge, a fantasia and an omen. Crawford said he thought of the book as an "apocalyptic novel," but its prose is lush and generative." -The Wall Street Journal

"Like that second the in its title, Log of the S.S. The Mrs. Unguentine is a stubborn creation that demands attention, and that odd surname is right on the money: This formally seamless book stings and soothes, like the most potent ointment, applied to literature too content to play it far too safe." --Bookforum

"While Crawford's novel brings to mind the great literature of the sea (Moby-Dick, Mutiny on the Bounty, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner), he doesn't allude to it; he doesn't have to. Log of the S.S. The Mrs. Unguentine--the book's most inelegant passage is its title--is a brave and audacious novel whose style, structure, story and language come together like strands of hemp spliced into an intricate knot." --Chicago Tribune

"No one captures the mind of a control freak like Stanley Crawford." --The Village Voice

About the Author

Stanley Crawford (1937-2024) wrote and farmed with his late wife Rosemary in Northern New Mexico from 1969 until his passing. He was the author of five novels and three works of nonfiction and was the recipient of two NEA writing fellowships and a three-year Lila Wallace Reader's Digest Writing Award. In his later years, he taught at Colorado College and with the UMass Amherst MFA Writing Program.

Ben Marcus was born in Chicago in 1967. The son of a mathematician and a literary scholar, he was raised in the Midwest, Austin, London, Aarhus, and New York. He holds degrees from New York University and Brown University, and has taught at schools in Texas, Virginia, New York, and Rhode Island. In addition to The Age of Wire and String, he is also the author of Notable American Women, Leaving the Sea, New American Stories, and Notes from the Fog.