{"id":1074,"date":"2015-10-25T17:59:07","date_gmt":"2015-10-25T17:59:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wombatsdigit.com\/w\/?p=1074"},"modified":"2015-10-25T17:59:07","modified_gmt":"2015-10-25T17:59:07","slug":"the-log-of-the-carla-mia-by-w-carl-jackson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wombatsdigit.com\/w\/the-log-of-the-carla-mia-by-w-carl-jackson\/","title":{"rendered":"The Log of the Carla Mia by W. Carl Jackson"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Source:<\/a>
Source: https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/britishlibrary\/11237463205\/in\/album-72157639804990613\/<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Trip to the Quiet Room<\/em> (also known as\u00c2\u00a0Butterfly<\/em>, or\u00c2\u00a0William Murphy’s Trip to the Quiet Room<\/em>) started as an in-betweener project (I’ve talked about this before<\/a>). I had finished the first draft of a novel called, tentatively,\u00c2\u00a0Rudyard Kipling’s Chair<\/em>. It was a tangle of stories about a vast underground black market of goods operating in plain sight at a popular homewares store, a group of cat’s eye enthusiasts, ostensible whalers, coffee farmers, a library theoretician, the cutthroat world of publishing, a band of misfits aboard a suspicious cargo ship, and a solo trip across the Atlantic in a 30 foot ketch.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>
A tentative book cover<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I finished the first draft in February, 2011, put it aside to let it marinate in its own juices, and started the project that would become\u00c2\u00a0Trip to the Quiet Room<\/a><\/em>. In between drafts of\u00c2\u00a0that<\/em> book I picked up RKC again, and it currently lies on the operating table, innards spilt all over the floor, walls, probably ceiling. Like I said, it has a tangle of stories, some of which survived the extraction surgery, some of which didn’t. It probably won’t walk again, and if it does it’ll most certainly have a limp.<\/p>\n

One of the core sparks of inspiration behind the story was the story of my great uncle Carl Jackson, who, in June, 1978, set sail in a 30 foot ketch, by\u00c2\u00a0himself<\/em>, across the Atlantic. I’m reasonably certain he knew about airplanes and about boats that were much bigger and also piloted by someone else. He was a librarian (Dean of Libraries, Indiana University, Bloomington, amongst other positions) and published a log of his journey, called\u00c2\u00a0The Log of the Carla Mia: Being an account of a single-handed passage across the Atlantic Ocean in a thirty-foot auxiliary ketch in the summer of nineteen seventy-eight<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

I had heard the story of his trip across the Atlantic (and its companion trip back from Europe to America that didn’t succeed) a few times,\u00c2\u00a0and that alone was inspiration enough to start off a story about a man who would leave the eastern shores behind, headed for Europe, but maybe without that clear intent. While I wrote the book I got to read the manuscript of Carl’s (the privileges of being in an internationally renowned literary family) account, editing notes and all.<\/p>\n

\"W.<\/a>
W. Carl Jackson’s “Log of the Carla Mia”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It’s a fascinating story to read; the daily routines of attempting to sail yourself across the Atlantic, the descriptions of a life at sea and a lot of tension (despite the fact that you can guess he made it safely, if we’re reading his manuscript account of the trip). It was a much different account than I’d expected and while the structure of that story was much, much, much<\/em>\u00c2\u00a0different than the roiling sea of storylines that made up\u00c2\u00a0RKC<\/em>, I think I still pulled some great maritime details that made the practicalities of living at sea for a short time.<\/p>\n

But the\u00c2\u00a0point<\/em> of all of this is that another relation of Carl Jackson’s (and mine, by extension), Mike Potter, has created a map of all the locations marked in The Log of the Carla Mia: Being an account of a single-handed passage across the Atlantic Ocean in a thirty-foot auxiliary ketch in the summer of nineteen seventy-eight<\/em>, so you can feel the trip in pretty intimate detail, watch where things start to unravel, and where he finally ends up. You can check it out here (I think):<\/p>\n