All sons write letters home. But the way in which Richard Halliburton maintained the practice to the end of his days was absolutely unique in its regularity. Wherever he might be, in whatever far corner of the globe, he thought of his mother and father and at the first possible moment gave them news. Often the letters he wrote were long and full, and it is astonishing that he found time to write them. He must have utilized every spare moment to dash them off with his pen, in swift, terse, characteristic style, the headlong words tumbling over one another. Sometimes they were begun at the breakfast table and continued at odd moments during the day, but most frequently in the small hours of the night.
When the anxious days following his departure from Hongkong in the Sea Dragon lengthened into weeks and months and finally all hope of his survival was abandoned, his sad parents turned to reread these letters. Here, they found, lay a complete record of his life. His intimate thoughts were here. Here he had poured out his heart and his soul.
Of course, these letters were written with no thought of publication, but only from a desire to keep his mother and father in touch with him, to share with them his daily life, his every dream. They account for nearly every week of his career, from the day he entered Princeton in 1917 until the day when he sailed forth in the gorgeous but ill-fated Sea Dragon.
Though Mr. and Mrs. Wesley Halliburton were at first reluctant to make the letters public, they came to feel that in them he had told his own story of his life's adventure so much better than it would be possible for any biographer to do, it was right to have them published. There were, however, enough letters to make several volumes the size of this. The task of selecting what would reveal the man and tell his story with continuity was a laborious but a loving task.
The result is an unusual form of autobiography. For here is not the uncertain memory of past years, tinged with age and the years' changes but vivid, immediate impressions and forthright reflections given out to sympathetic hearts. Nor is it like a diary where the writer so often becomes self-conscious in his self-communings. It is an utterly candid report to the two persons whom he loved and whom he regarded as partners in every enterprise.
Here also is an epitome of all his adventures, the first-hand presentation, with fresh light and color, of his youth, of his Princeton days, of his first "runaway" journey abroad, of the travels that inspired his books, of his experiences on the lecture platform, with the radio and the movies, and of the Sea Dragon's voyage into the lost horizon.
Here Richard Halliburton's life unfolds like a drama. It grows and develops through success and disappointment. It ends in a tragedy that is itself in character—from the start he had resolved not to die in bed. The many facets of his magnetic personality stand out in sharp relief. Here youth speaks to youth in a universal tongue.
—from the dust jacket
The name of Richard Halliburton is synonymous with youthful adventure. During his less than two score years he packed away more tempestuous and thrilling experience than a dozen other adventurers might in twice as long. He was an originator, a trail-blazer whom countless young people have followed and are following. He epitomized their impulses and their dreams—the desire to see the world, the search for the burning moment, for the far horizon, for the unconventional life.
His name is already legend. What lies behind the legend? With all the wild intensity of his living, Richard Halliburton has also a quiet, studious side. He was refined, cultivated, fastidious. He loved good literature, history, poetry, music. Geography was a passion. He had a rare ability to assimilate knowledge. Above all, his intelligent imagination enabled him to live in any period his fancy chose. He craved to see the marvels of nature and of man, and when he saw them he invested them with a new magic of romance.
These things may be guessed from his previously published books. They become definitely articulate in this book. And, much more, the inner man is revealed here for the first time. Though he spoke repeatedly to vast audiences in every large city of America and in thousands of the smaller towns, though his books sell by the hundreds of thousands and have been translated into fourteen languages, though he counted a host of friends and acquaintances all over the world, he disclosed little of his true self. His great success seemed indeed the glorification of self-expression, but much was never expressed in lecture or the printed page. There he was always the great entertainer, the impersonator. What lay back of the gay and charming exterior?
The uneven tenor of his life was a deliberate thing.
He set for himself an achievement and would never relax from its demands. From college days he had a chosen occupation which he treated with the utmost seriousness; he had a philosophy of life to which he gave unremitting devotion.
—from the dust jacket
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