Wanderer is not your typical actor's memoir. Only 40 of its 400 pages discuss the author's Hollywood career, and his tone is entirely scornful. Far more time is devoted to Hayden's sailing adventures. He worked as an AB seaman, a dory fisherman, foretopman on a racing crew, schooner captain, and owner of various decrepit ships. He commanded sailing vessels in the Mediterranean during World War II and cooperated with the House Un-American Affairs Committee in the 1950s. He also got married a few times, but he doesn't talk much about that. In 1959 he defied a court order and sailed to Tahiti with his young children.
The first time I read Wanderer I was most struck by how much commercial shipping was still under sail in the 1930s. This time I was entertained by how often Hayden made bold decisions to change his life, and how quickly he regretted each of those decisions.
The best thing about Wanderer is not the adventures but its self-reproachful protagonist. Sterling Hayden is a fascinating, frustrating, unpleasant character. It's unusual to encounter such a personality in an autobiography. As author and subject, Hayden recounts parts of his story in the first person, parts in the third person, with some second person sprinkled in. There is a dissertation to be written about how he chooses which episodes to narrate in which form.
My copy of Wanderer is a worn pocket-sized Bantam Books edition with a cover price of 85 cents. Reading it in this format added to my enjoyment.
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