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You may perhaps have noticed that I enjoy reading trashy dated novels. No apologies.
I spotted this... somewhere... and having never seen the movie but having enjoyed some of Gallico's other books, I grabbed it and finally got around to reading it. Gallico has a compulsively readable quality for me that many better authors lack, and this book had that in spades. It also satisfied my need for a motley party of people surviving (or not) an unusual and vivid deadly catastrophe. And it even had a heroic Jewish woman, which I was not expecting and enjoyed despite the way she was written, which was... okay so I mentioned that this was dated and trashy.
The Poseidon, a luxury cruise ship whose captain has an unfortunate habit of cutting corners on safety, is sailing through a seasick-making storm when an underwater earthquake flips it over. The handful of passengers who aren't seasick and so are having lunch rather than in their cabins must ascend through the upside down ship, up upside down staircases and other obstacles, to reach the hull in the hope that any rescuers will be able to get to them before the ship sinks.
When I was a child, I used to lie on my back on the floor, looking up at the ceiling and imagining exploring the place I was in if it turned upside down. I used to imagine it if everything miraculously stuck to where it was, rather than behaving the way it really would if gravity still worked. The Poseidon Adventure is about how it would work if gravity did still work, but was nonetheless very satisfying to the part of me that still wants to explore an upside down world.
What makes it trashy: Oh, man, where do I even start? The book was published in 1969, and it feels regressive even for then. Every stereotype and offensive word possible flies thick and fast, there's a ton of "We made a two-second effort to convince these people to come with us and they stared at us while obviously still in shock, guess we'll just leave them to die then," a rape followed by the raped girl hoping she got pregnant (this kind of makes sense in context BUT STILL), screaming harridans, cheatin' husbands, sex in the middle of a giant pile of pastries, and an extremely strange minister who views God as a football coach - that's not my joke, that is totally literal.
But let me talk about Belle Rosen, my favorite character. Belle is a hugely fat old Jewish woman, terribly out of shape and not up to the rigors of the journey, who makes multiple attempts to just sit down and die in peace. She's married to Manny Rosen (also old and fat), and they own a deli and have kids and grandkids that she grumps about. She's often referred to as "the fat Jewess," mostly by a very unsympathetic character but also by some others, and much is made of how she's fat, fat, FAT.
She also has the only truly happy, honest, and loving relationship in the entire book. She and her husband are still madly in love and very tender with each other. While everyone else is being nonstop horrible to each other and wasting precious time arguing, being mean, getting into battles of the egos, etc, she is consistently nice, supportive, and sensible. She points out that all this bickering is a waste of time and everyone should just suck it up and cooperate, and then she puts her money where her mouth is.
And! Spoiler: When their way is blocked by a giant pool of oily water leading God knows where, she informs them that she used to be a champion swimmer, calmly strips down and swims underwater to see if it's possible to get through, and leads them all to safety.
At the end she dies of a heart attack, having known all the time that she had a weak heart when no one, not even her doctor or her husband, believed her. She is the real hero of the book, the only one who not only did great deeds, but managed to not be an asshole under extreme pressure. And I think Gallico, for all that he wrote her in an often terrible way, knew it.
Content notes: Child death, rape, wildly offensive in every possible way.
I have never seen the movie; should I hunt it down? Does it do a good job with the upside-down staircases and Belle Rosen, which would be my main reasons for watching?
ETA: There's three movies! There's the 1972 movie, which is the one I'd heard of, starring Gene Hackman as Reverend God Is My Football Coach, Ernst Borgnine as the asshole cop, Leslie Nielsen as the captain and apparent inspiration for the Airplane! movies, and Shelley Winters as Belle Rosen. There's Poseidon, a 2006 film directed by Wolfgang Peterson, which has Andre Braugher in it but I can't tell how big a role he has as the characters all have different names. And there's a 2005 TV movie which has Rutger Hauer, but I again can't tell in how big a role as the characters are changed (and the captain is named Paul Gallico!) Anyone seen any of these?
Please no comments along the lines of "I am a superior person who only reads actual good literature, unlike you." It's the judginess that annoys me. "Haha, that sounds hilaribad" is fine.
The Poseidon Adventure
Enjoy three covers in decreasing order of classiness.
I spotted this... somewhere... and having never seen the movie but having enjoyed some of Gallico's other books, I grabbed it and finally got around to reading it. Gallico has a compulsively readable quality for me that many better authors lack, and this book had that in spades. It also satisfied my need for a motley party of people surviving (or not) an unusual and vivid deadly catastrophe. And it even had a heroic Jewish woman, which I was not expecting and enjoyed despite the way she was written, which was... okay so I mentioned that this was dated and trashy.
The Poseidon, a luxury cruise ship whose captain has an unfortunate habit of cutting corners on safety, is sailing through a seasick-making storm when an underwater earthquake flips it over. The handful of passengers who aren't seasick and so are having lunch rather than in their cabins must ascend through the upside down ship, up upside down staircases and other obstacles, to reach the hull in the hope that any rescuers will be able to get to them before the ship sinks.
When I was a child, I used to lie on my back on the floor, looking up at the ceiling and imagining exploring the place I was in if it turned upside down. I used to imagine it if everything miraculously stuck to where it was, rather than behaving the way it really would if gravity still worked. The Poseidon Adventure is about how it would work if gravity did still work, but was nonetheless very satisfying to the part of me that still wants to explore an upside down world.
What makes it trashy: Oh, man, where do I even start? The book was published in 1969, and it feels regressive even for then. Every stereotype and offensive word possible flies thick and fast, there's a ton of "We made a two-second effort to convince these people to come with us and they stared at us while obviously still in shock, guess we'll just leave them to die then," a rape followed by the raped girl hoping she got pregnant (this kind of makes sense in context BUT STILL), screaming harridans, cheatin' husbands, sex in the middle of a giant pile of pastries, and an extremely strange minister who views God as a football coach - that's not my joke, that is totally literal.
But let me talk about Belle Rosen, my favorite character. Belle is a hugely fat old Jewish woman, terribly out of shape and not up to the rigors of the journey, who makes multiple attempts to just sit down and die in peace. She's married to Manny Rosen (also old and fat), and they own a deli and have kids and grandkids that she grumps about. She's often referred to as "the fat Jewess," mostly by a very unsympathetic character but also by some others, and much is made of how she's fat, fat, FAT.
She also has the only truly happy, honest, and loving relationship in the entire book. She and her husband are still madly in love and very tender with each other. While everyone else is being nonstop horrible to each other and wasting precious time arguing, being mean, getting into battles of the egos, etc, she is consistently nice, supportive, and sensible. She points out that all this bickering is a waste of time and everyone should just suck it up and cooperate, and then she puts her money where her mouth is.
And! Spoiler: When their way is blocked by a giant pool of oily water leading God knows where, she informs them that she used to be a champion swimmer, calmly strips down and swims underwater to see if it's possible to get through, and leads them all to safety.
At the end she dies of a heart attack, having known all the time that she had a weak heart when no one, not even her doctor or her husband, believed her. She is the real hero of the book, the only one who not only did great deeds, but managed to not be an asshole under extreme pressure. And I think Gallico, for all that he wrote her in an often terrible way, knew it.
Content notes: Child death, rape, wildly offensive in every possible way.
I have never seen the movie; should I hunt it down? Does it do a good job with the upside-down staircases and Belle Rosen, which would be my main reasons for watching?
ETA: There's three movies! There's the 1972 movie, which is the one I'd heard of, starring Gene Hackman as Reverend God Is My Football Coach, Ernst Borgnine as the asshole cop, Leslie Nielsen as the captain and apparent inspiration for the Airplane! movies, and Shelley Winters as Belle Rosen. There's Poseidon, a 2006 film directed by Wolfgang Peterson, which has Andre Braugher in it but I can't tell how big a role he has as the characters all have different names. And there's a 2005 TV movie which has Rutger Hauer, but I again can't tell in how big a role as the characters are changed (and the captain is named Paul Gallico!) Anyone seen any of these?
Please no comments along the lines of "I am a superior person who only reads actual good literature, unlike you." It's the judginess that annoys me. "Haha, that sounds hilaribad" is fine.
The Poseidon Adventure
Enjoy three covers in decreasing order of classiness.
From:
no subject
If you're going to watch an adaptation, the '72 film is probably the best. It eliminates a good deal of the worst stuff from the novel. I remember seeing the film as a kid, then reading the novel at a much later time and being appalled by how unpleasant/nasty certain parts of it were. I was also surprised by how graphic it was in comparison to the film.
Belle Rosen sure is a great character, though. :)