To the White Sea was published by Houghton Mifflin in 1993, Dickey’s last novel, and it strips his characteristic obsessions to their barest form. Muldrow is a tail-gunner from Alaska — a man raised in the frozen north, trained by his father to survive in wilderness, more comfortable with snow and silence than with human society. Shot down over Tokyo during the great firebombing raid of March 9, 1945, he begins walking north — toward the snow, toward the white sea of Hokkaido, toward the cold that is his natural element.
The novel is almost entirely action: Muldrow moves through Japan, avoiding detection, killing anyone who sees him (with a calm, emotionless efficiency that is both impressive and horrifying), stealing food and clothing, and steadily making his way toward the one environment where he knows he can survive indefinitely. There is almost no dialogue, almost no reflection, almost no interiority — just the physical facts of movement, concealment, and killing.
Dickey’s achievement is to make the reader inhabit Muldrow’s consciousness — a consciousness so reduced to survival that it has become almost inhuman. Muldrow is not cruel; he simply does not recognize other human beings as having claims on him. He is a perfect predator in a world of prey, and the novel asks (without answering) whether this is a form of madness, a form of enlightenment, or simply the natural state of a man who has never been socialized into the conventions that prevent most people from killing.
Collecting To the White Sea
First edition (Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1993): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition in dust jacket: $15–$40
- Without jacket: $5–$10
- Signed copies: $30–$80