Book Review -- Blue Meridian, Peter Matthiessen

Blue Meridian is the written account of Peter Gimbel's expedition to film white sharks for the documentary Blue Water, White Death in the late 1960s. Considering the greatness of that movie, and Matthiessen's own storied literary career, you'd expect any review of it to be sprinkled with stock lines such as "a real page-turner!" and "I couldn't put it down!" or the always popular "I didn't want it to end!" And then again, maybe not.

There's one major problem with Blue Meridian that almost completely sinks it. The book isn't simply a written version of the documentary but is, rather, Matthiessen's first-hand account of what went on behind the scenes during the filming. And because of the expedition's extended nature (it lasted months longer than it was supposed to) and Matthiessen's own prior commitments, he wasn't there for large chunks of it. These gaps in the story stand out like a proverbial white elephant, with Matthiessen attempting to convey (seemingly halfheartedly at times) what others told him had transpired in his absence. It just doesn't work.

But that's not to say that Blue Meridian is a total disappointment. It isn't. The sections written from Matthiessen's own experience can be pretty interesting, sometimes veering off quite a bit from the storyline of the movie. He particularly succeeds in flushing out Gimbel's personality in ways the documentary couldn't. For instance, Matthiessen's account of the testing in the Bahamas Gimbel did on the shark cages he built gives an incredible sense of the danger the divers placed themselves in just by entering them, but also of Gimbel's own pit bull nature. It's also amazing to see how lax training standards were then compared to today. Matthiessen basically received no formal dive training before being declared ready to jump in with the sharks (hey, there's an idea for PADI and NAUI -- a Shark Diver certification!). It's also interesting to see Matthiessen accurately predict that the travelogue footage of the the expedition showing the divers, Valerie Taylor in particular, interacting with various types of marine life in cute and cuddly ways, would be a major weak point in the film.

All in all, if you like Blue Water, White Death and are interested in more background info on it, Blue Meridian is a decent read. Other than that, the book, unfortunately, doesn't stand well on its own.

Blue Meridian was originally published in 1971 and is currently available from Penguin Nature Classics.