 | This article needs additional citations for verification .(November 2012) |
Sailor Twain, or The Mermaid in the Hudson is a graphic novel, written and drawn by Mark Siegel and published in 2012 by First Second Books.
| | This article needs additional citations for verification .(November 2012) |
Sailor Twain, or The Mermaid in the Hudson is a graphic novel, written and drawn by Mark Siegel and published in 2012 by First Second Books.
The story takes place in 1887 in the Hudson Valley, on the steamboat Lorelei. Sailor Twain is told in a series of flashbacks, starting with the night that Elijah Twain, the captain of the ship, finds an injured mermaid clinging to the deck. He hides the mermaid in his quarters and gives her medical care. In turn, she breaks his writer's block and inspires him to create. When in port, Twain visits with his wife, Pearl; who uses a wheelchair. It is implied that their relationship is straining, and is seen frequently leaving her to be at the Lorelei with the mermaid.
The owner of the Lorelei, Lafayette, begins to act strangely after his brother drowns under mysterious circumstances. A notorious lady's man, he takes his courtship with the women who board the Lorelei very seriously. Lafayette also spends his time poring over a volume about the history of the occult in the Hudson Valley written by C.G. Beaverton, and is seen throwing messages in bottles out in the river. Twain notices his strange behavior, and becomes suspicious of Lafayette when the mermaid vanishes from his quarters.
Life aboard the Lorelei grows tumultuous as Lafayette and Twain search for the missing mermaid. Lafayette believes the mermaid's song was responsible for his brother's death and has sworn to break her spell by killing her, or by finding seven loves, as C.G. Beaverton's book advises. Twain, driven by lust and creative frustration, tries to protect the mermaid from Lafayette.
When the reclusive Beaverton pays the Lorelei a visit in response to Lafayette's letters, it is revealed that the author is female, and destined to be Lafayette's seventh and truest love. The mermaid, restored to health, asks Twain to aid her in breaking a curse put on her by her father. By using a magical pendant Twain follows her to her undersea lair, only to find the shadows of the mermaid's past victims. After hearing the Mermaids song, they were dragged underwater with her. They were split into two, half of their souls eternally bound to the mermaid.
On the Lorelei, Lafayette and Beaverton consummate their love, and the mermaid's spell over him is broken. In breaking her spell, Lafayette has also denied the mermaid her chance to break the curse. Engraged, the mermaid screams her song, causing Twain to split in two like the other victims. While the Sunken Clone Twain tries to console her, the real Twain runs into Lafayette's brother, previously victimized by the Siren. He gives him a Russian nesting doll and instructs him to give it to Lafayette. The brother helps Twain to the surface before sharing a kiss with his estranged lover, a singer who was caught in the sirens song, dragging them both down. In the middle of their kiss, the mermaid destroys them both, and instructs Clone Twain to “Avenge her” by killing Real Twain and Lafayette.
On the boat, Real Twain discovers a letter from his wife, saying she has moved to California to pursue a cure for her condition, hoping that would make Twain love her again. He finds Laffayete soon after and gives him the doll. The doll has seven layers(representing the seven lovers), with a second gateway pendant found within the innermost one. Lafayette grabs the pendant and runs over to Beaverton's quarters. He gives her the pendant, stuffs cotton in her ears and instructs her to leave the boat. The two share a loving kiss. Clone twain confronts Real Twain and attempts to entice him to his side, saying they could still help the Siren together. Real twain resists, and the two engage in a brawl.
While all this is happening, a frustrated ship employee has sabotaged the boiler, causing steam to start building up at the ships bottom.
Lafayette, ears stuffed with cotton, grabs a rifle and runs to the front of the ship. He spots the mermaid and aims down his gun. The mermaid, desperate, screams her song into the air, catching everyone onboard with her magic. Clone twain mocks Laffayete, stating that bullets are useless(this might not be true, considering a harpoon severely wounded her). Lafayette smiles and takes off his ear plugs, exposing himself to the song. To the mermaid's surprise, he's seemingly immune, his love for Beaverton likely shielding him from the effects. Lafayette is ready to pull the trigger, but the 2 Twain's brawl sends them careening into the river. Distracting him in the critical second. The buildup of steam in the boiler soon becomes too great, and the entire boat explodes from the pressure. Lafayette and all of the passengers are killed in the resulting blast, but both the Mermaid and Beaverton survive. Underwater, one of the Twain clones stabs the other in the chest with a harpoon.
The book's epilogue has Twain concluding telling the tale to Beaverton, and it is revealed that it was the Clone Twain all along telling the story, having taken the form of Real Twain. Beaverton, baffled, leaves the bar and heads to the marina. Clone Twain follows her, and desperately begs for her pendant so he can reunite with the mermaid. Beaverton reluctantly gives it to him, and Clone Twain walks into the river, his sailer captain hat left floating at the surface. Beaverton spots something in the water and grabs it with a stick. It was a messenger bottle Laffayete had thrown into the river earlier in the story. Beaverton opens the bottle and reads the note. The reader doesn't see what the note reads, but its message makes Beaverton blush as she gazes to the passing ships.
The book was originally serialized online from 2010 to 2012, where it received 800,000 unique visitors. Alongside installments of the book, Siegel published a companion blog, where he posted the songs, stories, maps, and other findings that comprised his research. He also hosted discussions with readers and included portraits of some of the comic's fans in the book.
Sailor Twain received positive reviews from a number of publications including starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and Booklist, who wrote,
Siegel's novel of obsessive romance and mythological realism churns through deep pools of humor, passion, and darkness. Studied panoramas of the intricate working of steamboats will steal away whatever breath you have left over from the mermaid's beauty and the story's outright tension as it steers toward a complex, catastrophic climax. Though serialized online, this is a luxurious graphic novel in its print form and is absolutely not to be missed. [1]
A gripping novel with compelling characters, enhanced by haunting, erotically charged drawings.
— John Irving [2]
This extraordinary work of fiction pushes the graphic novel well beyond its previous limits. The narrative takes us on many journeys through space and time, but is more than a mere tale. It's about the past and present, the absolute importance of myth, of language, of stories themselves. In superb words and drawings, it also explores obsession and love in a way that is original to the genre, and to literature itself. In the best sense, the completed work succeeds in a very difficult task: making the reader more human. Bravo!
— Pete Hamill [3]
A romance in the truest sense of the word, Sailor Twain is a marvel of graphical beauty and complex, intelligent storytelling. Siegel creates a misty, magical Hudson river that is somehow realer and truer and more seductive and many fathoms deeper than the real thing.
In Greek mythology, sirens are humanlike beings with alluring voices; they appear in a scene in the Odyssey in which Odysseus saves his crew's lives. Roman poets place them on some small islands called Sirenum scopuli. In some later, rationalized traditions, the literal geography of the "flowery" island of Anthemoessa, or Anthemusa, is fixed: sometimes on Cape Pelorum and at others in the islands known as the Sirenuse, near Paestum, or in Capreae. All such locations were surrounded by cliffs and rocks.
In folklore, a mermaid is an aquatic creature with the head and upper body of a female human and the tail of a fish. Mermaids appear in the folklore of many cultures worldwide, including Europe, Asia, and Africa.
The Lorelei is a 132-metre-high (433 ft), steep slate rock on the right bank of the River Rhine in the Rhine Gorge at Sankt Goarshausen in Germany, part of the Upper Middle Rhine Valley UNESCO World Heritage Site. The 1930s Loreley Amphitheatre is on top of the rock.
"The Little Mermaid", sometimes translated in English as "The Little Sea Maid", is a fairy tale written by Danish author Hans Christian Andersen. Originally published in 1837 as part of a collection of fairy tales for children, the story follows the journey of a young mermaid princess who is willing to give up her life in the sea as a mermaid to gain a human soul.
The Nixie, Nixy, Nix, Näcken, Nicor, Nøkk, or Nøkken are humanoid, and often shapeshifting water spirits in Germanic mythology and folklore.
Merrow is a mermaid or merman in Irish folklore. The term is anglicised from the Irish word murúch.
Kaiba (カイバ) is a Japanese science fiction anime television series produced by Madhouse. The series is created, written, and directed by Masaaki Yuasa, it was broadcast for 12 episodes on WOWOW from April to July 2008. In North America, the series is licensed by Discotek Media. The story revolves around an enigmatic character named Warp, and takes place in a strange world mixed with a universe where changing bodies and trafficking memories are possible.
Siren is the name of two supervillains, both appearing in books published by DC Comics. The first character to use the name is Hila, the identical twin sister of Mera. Originating from the same underwater sub-realm as her sister, Hila was the younger twin and considered the black sheep of the family. She eventually makes herself an enemy of both Mera and Aquaman. The second Siren was a minor Lwa resembling a mermaid. An eco-terrorist, the second Siren joined forces with Vandal Savage and becomes an enemy of the Teen Titans.
Mermaids, like many other creatures of mythology and folklore, are regularly depicted in literature, film, music, and popular culture. In the folklore of some modern cultures, the concept of the siren has been assimilated to that of the mermaid. For example, the French word for mermaid is sirène, Italian sirena, and similarly in certain other European languages. This usage existed by the Middle Ages.
The Dogs of Babel is the debut novel of Carolyn Parkhurst. It was one of The New York Times Notable Fiction & Poetry books of 2003. The novel became a best-seller. The Dogs of Babel was the first book that Parkhurst wrote; it was not the first novel that Parkhurst envisioned.
Wilson G. Hunt was a steamboat that ran in the early days of steam navigation on Puget Sound and Sacramento, Fraser, and Columbia Rivers. She was generally known as the Hunt during her years of operation. She had a long career on the west coast of the United States and Canada, and played an important transportation role in the California Gold Rush; it also transported the Governor and the state legislature as the state capital of California moved from Benicia to Sacramento in 1854.
James William Troup was an American steamship captain, Canadian Pacific Railway administrator and shipping pioneer.
The Sirena is a mythological sea creature from Filipino culture. In some regions of the Philippines, particularly Bicol and Visayas, Sirenas are known as Magindara and portrayed as vicious mermaids. Like Sirens of Greek mythology, they have alluring and irresistible singing voices; unlike Sirens, who are portrayed as part woman and part bird, Sirenas are often described as mermaid-like creatures living under the sea. In Philippine mythology, the Sirena is a mythological aquatic creature with the head and torso of a human female and the tail of a fish. The Sirena is an Engkanto –' the Filipino counterpart of English mermaids. Engkantos are classified as one of the Bantay Tubig, a Filipino term for mythical guardians of the water. In addition to the Sirena, other examples of Bantay Tubig are Siyokoy, Kataw, and Ugkoy. The male version of a Sirena is called a Sireno. Sometimes, Sirena are paired with Siyokoy. A popular mermaid character in the Philippines is Dyesebel.
The Little Mermaid is a 1968 Soviet animated film based on Hans Christian Andersen's 1837 fairy tale "The Little Mermaid". The film was adapted in English by Films by Jove for the series Fairy Tales from Far Off Lands, second season of Stories from My Childhood.
Rapture of the Deep: Being an Account of the Further Adventures of Jacky Faber, Soldier, Sailor, Mermaid, Spy is a historical novel by L.A. Meyer, published in 2009. It is the seventh book in the Bloody Jack book series about a teenage girl named Jacky Faber, alias Bloody Jack, set in the early 19th century. In this installment, Jacky returns from her 'history-defining' adventure as a Parisian nightclub spy and messenger for Napoleon Bonaparte.
Mark Siegel is known both as an author, illustrator, and as the editorial director of First Second Books, a Macmillan imprint which publishes graphic novels for all ages. He grew up in France until the age of 18, after which he moved back to the United States where he presently lives.
The Mark of the Golden Dragon: Being an Account of the Further Adventures of Jacky Faber, Jewel of the East, Vexation of the West, and Pearl of the South China Sea is a historical fiction novel by L.A. Meyer published in 2011. It is the ninth book in the Bloody Jack Adventure series about a teenage girl named Jacky Faber, alias Bloody Jack, set in the early 19th century. It is preceded by Bloody Jack (2002), Curse of the Blue Tattoo (2004), Under the Jolly Roger (2005), In the Belly of the Bloodhound (2006), Mississippi Jack (2007), My Bonny Light Horseman (2008), Rapture of the Deep (2009), and The Wake of the Lorelei Lee (2010). It is followed by Viva Jacquelina! (2012), Boston Jacky (2013), and Wild Rover No More (2016).
Mahō no Mako-chan is a Japanese anime series by Toei Animation. The story is loosely based on the 1837 Hans Christian Andersen tale "The Little Mermaid". It was broadcast from 1970 to 1971 on Nippon Educational TV (NET), later rebranded as TV Asahi.
Sailors' superstitions are superstitions particular to sailors or mariners, and which traditionally have been common around the world. Some of these beliefs are popular superstitions, while others are better described as traditions, stories, folklore, tropes, myths, or legends.