My Honda, bought in 2007, does not have a place to play Harbo and Samuelsen. The authors of DAYSWORK saw that the oystermen were important to me.

 

This is what the Washington POST says in its review of DAYSWORK:

Another interesting digression concerns the adventurers George Harbo and Frank Samuelsen, two oystermen who rowed across the Atlantic Ocean in 1896 and who inspired The Biographer. Harbo and Samuelsen’s voyage log is quoted:

“Days rowing 62 miles,” “Days rowing 90 miles,” “Days work 65 miles,” “Days work 45 miles,” “Days work 135 miles,” “Day’s work 100 miles,” “50 miles dayswork,” “Drifted back about 20 miles during the day (guesswork).”

 

This is what I wrote not in one of the two volumes but in MELVILLE BIOGRAPHY: AN INSIDE NARRATIVE:

              If I had not held myself in that state of grace, that “zone” athletes talk about, I could not have finished the second volume. Was it heroic? Well, writing the biography was the great adventure of my life, outdoing my five months of doing nothing but reading Shakespeare. Put it this humble way: at my lowest moments, when I felt that no one could carry on Jay Leyda's work while writing his own narrative biography, I played a tape of the group Forebitter in my Bronco II, the ‘Harbo and Samuelsen’ song about the hearty young Norwegian oystermen who set out to row across the Atlantic, west to east. ‘They were not only brave, but by God they could row!’ I listened and blubbered in the Bronco then went back to work. And of course if I had not been my own Leyda I could not have written a biography filled with new episodes and new understanding of my vastly larger cast of characters. At the simplest level, I found episodes when I dated documents. How many of my cherished stories started with transcribing and dating?