THE SEA WITCH

by Alexander Laing '25.New York: Ballantine Books, 1968. 400pp. $.95.

Admirers of Alexander Laing will welcome this newly revised edition of this durable work to refresh their memories and share their pleasure with the succeeding generation for whom it will also afford a glimpse of a resplendent chapter in American mercantile history.

That this book has so well withstood the test of time is owing to the author's repair of time's ravages, as well as his perennially appealing theme: ships and the men who sail them — more particularly, the legendary century of the clippers. When he was invited to usher his 35-year-old novel through a paperback printing, he took the opportunity to prune, rewrite extensively, and erase anachronisms. Part of this up-dating, paradoxically, restored terms and ideas considered offensive by earlier and more prudish ears. The principal revision in this . Ballantine edition lies in the concluding chapters. Here in 24 pages, Mr. Laing carries out his original idea for Book VII by projecting the one character maintained throughout the novel — Hugh, the figurehead carver — into mythology by having future London antiquaries seek out his extraordinary scrimshaw as the fine art of an unknown master. And he wanted the ship itself transmuted by its final agony into legend. A valid idea, for the spirit of the past is evoked only by its artifacts, and martyrdom insures its remembrance.

By the device employed, however, the author ran some artistic risk in effecting this transmutation, but he nevertheless achieves his hope that the thoughtful reader will ascribe it to psychological aberration induced by severe stress. Again, a valid vehicle, for who of us dares say which is the shadow and which the substance?