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Mr. Jones and Me
by Patience Wales
from SAIL Magazine, June 2003
Reprinted by permission.


In the 1970s I was managing editor of SAIL, and one of my jobs was to read unsolicited manuscripts. These varied from the unpredictable and wonderful (Herb Payson) to the unutterly terrible (Tristan's early submissions). Before Tristan began sending manuscripts to Motor Boating & Sailing or any other U.S. magazine, he floated his early efforts to SAIL. I remember that they were not only unbelievable, they were stilted and too long. The reader moved very slowly and stiffly with him over every bloated detail. But accompanying these pieces came clear, funny, intimate covering letters. I realized that Tristan had the dreaded "writing for publication" disease, so I told him to stop sending me stories and instead send me letters that described his life on board Sea Dart. He began writing to me as a friend instead of as an editor, and the rest is both history and myth.

As Tristan's first editor in this country, I felt some compunction to question events that were clearly either biologically or geographically impossible. When straightforward incredulity didn't work, I would reject the story. Once I had written an in-house note to Keith Taylor, SAIL's editor at the time, that said something like, "The old boy has clearly gone around the bend on this one [a submission entitled "Into the Green Hell"], so I'm sending it back." Keith's assistant then returned the manuscript to Tristan at Lake Titicaca with my note inadvertently attached. A few weeks later Tristan sent my note back to me; "I don't think you meant to include this," he wrote. I think he was sort of flattered.

I liked Tristan. I knew he was a teller of tall tales, but he told them so imaginatively and with such clarity it was hard not to suspend disbelief. As is true of every good salesman, his stories became true to him. In person he was funny, articulate, and charming. He looked "real".

Here's an example of Tristan at work: Against all advice, he towed that hideous little seagoing horror Sea Dart down Atlantic Avenue in Boston to visit SAIL back when the magazine was based on Commercial Wharf. Atlantic Avenue is a big street — lots of traffic, lots of congestion, lots of cops. Tristan stopped his huge rig on the street alongside several (it was that long) no-parking signs and sauntered into SAIL's office for lunch. When he looked out the window to see two policemen on horseback peering at his truck and boat and getting ready to give him two tickets, he grabbed two of his books, rushed outside, and strolled up to the horses. Pretty soon both cops were riding off thumbing through autographed copies of The Incredible Voyage (you can say that again!), and Tristan returned to a lovely long lunch with his editors.

The poet Diana Der Hovanessian has written a book of poetry entitled How to Choose Your Past. This is exactly what Tristan did, and it's ironic how strong an impression he — a self-invented man — made on people who knew him. His very name was wish-fulfillment. Why doesn't it seem to matter that he chose his past, that most of it was myth instead of history? Maybe because in his stories he slew dragons, and his readers could ride along with him into adventure, sort of like a cop on a horse.
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