Product Description

For the millions of fans of Jimmy Buffett's music as well as his bestselling books, Tales From Margaritaville and Where Is Joe Merchant?, here is the ultimate Jimmy Buffett philosophy on life and how to live it.  As hard as it is to believe, the irrepressible Jimmy Buffett has hit the half-century mark and, in A PIRATE LOOKS AT 50, he brings us along on the remarkable journey which he took through the Southern hemisphere to celebrate this landmark birthday.
        
Jimmy takes us from the legendary pirate coves of the Florida Keys to the ruins of ancient Cartegena.  Along the way, we hear a tale or two of how he got his start in New Orleans, how he discovered his passion for flying planes, and how he almost died in a watery crash in Nantucket harbor.  We follow Jimmy to jungle outposts in Costa Rica and on a meandering trip down the Amazon, through hair-raising negotiations with gun-toting customs  officials and a 3-year-old aspiring co-pilot.  And he is the inimitable Jimmy Buffett through it all.
        
For Parrotheads, for armchair adventurers, and for anyone who appreciates a good yarn and a hearty laugh, here is the ultimate backstage pass -- you'll read the kind of stories Jimmy usually reserves for his closest friends and you'll see a wonderful, wacky life through eyes of the man who's lived it.   A PIRATE LOOKS AT 50 is a breath of fresh air and a ingenious manual for getting to 50 . . . and beyond.


From the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #263758 in Books
• Published on: 1999-05-01
• Released on: 1999-05-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 448 pages

Amazon.com Review
Tales from Margaritaville (stories) and Where Is Joe Merchant? (a mystery) secured songwriter Jimmy Buffett's niche reputation as an affable, poetic beach bum. A Pirate Looks at Fifty, a travel-diary-cum-autobiography, features Buffett behind the wheel of his Grumman Albatross seaplane, safely piloting family and friends through a three-week trip around South and Central America and the Caribbean. He blends gentle scenic narration with rambling, unplugged life stories meant to convey that he's made peace with the whole aging process. For Buffett, turning 50 "can be a ball of snakes that conjures up immediate thoughts of mortality and accountability. (`What have I done with my life?') Or, it can be a great excuse to reward yourself for just getting there. (`He who dies with the most toys wins.') I instinctively chose door number two."

On this tack, Buffett plans an opulent, laid-back trip for his brood and goes into so many details about his favorite possessions (three pages on knapsacks!) that the cheerful vagabond in flip-flops is nearly eclipsed by the rich, domesticated businessman/dad he's become. In addition, stinging losses and limitations--his dad's Alzheimer's disease, his own terrifying solo plane crash in 1996--creep into his cozy yarns. Yet Buffett's infectious, grinning attitude towards life eventually finds resurrection in extended riffs on fly-fishing, solo piloting over water, and surfing. In such passages, he earns his claim to a "saline psyche," a legacy inherited from his grandfather, skipper of a five-masted barkentine that ferried lumber from New Orleans to the Caribbean. Sailing and soaring over Atlantic, Caribbean, and Pacific seas, Buffett looks at 50 and sees a very good life.

From Publishers Weekly
The breezy pop craftsman of "Margaritaville" and "Cheeseburger in Paradise" famously spends most of his time sailing, trotting out 1970s chestnuts on the summer tour circuit?and writing. Buffett's bestselling Tales from Margaritaville (1989) and Where Is Joe Merchant? (1992), among other books, created a world of sun-baked characters whose doings bore some resemblance to those of their author. This memoir draws back the curtain between fact and fiction, and genially takes stock in a manner likely to appeal to the Me generation. Though he rambles, repeats himself and may even raise hackles ("I have been too warped by Catholicism not to be cynical"), Buffett is earnest and unapologetic in his hedonism, seeing his mock pirate's life as the antithesis of the conformity foisted on him as a child in Alabama. In a series of loosely chronological vignettes, Buffett quickly takes us from his bar-band beginnings to a brush with death when he crashes one of his fleet of seaplanes. A lower-latitude voyage with his family (in a newer, bigger plane) to celebrate his 50th birthday makes up the bulk of the book, and takes them from Florida to the Cayman Islands, Costa Rica, Colombia and the Amazon. The diaristic logbook that Buffett keeps along the way provides endless opportunities to muse on the music business; his older, wilder ways; navigation and, on the horizon, approaching mortality. Buffett's prose won't itself win him more "parrotheads" (as his fans are called), but those with enough patience or reverence to wade through long descriptions of beloved gear, favorite books or "fucking tikki pukki drinks" will find beneath these amblings a disarmingly direct character. Simultaneous audio, CD and large-print edition; author tour.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Mellow singer-songwriter Buffett's previous best-selling books?the essay-and-story collection Tales from Margaritaville (LJ 10/1/89) and the novel Where Is Joe Merchant? (Harcourt, 1992)?were sometimes reviewed as "laidback" and "perilously close to sloppy." With this autobiographical journal, even his most devoted fans may feel he has stepped over that line. Eleven sections offer 66 chapters, many consisting of multiple vignettes. Some of these are entertaining?Buffett never takes himself or others too seriously?but the more one reads the more superficial the writer appears to be. Genuinely sentimental memories are treated with the same slapdash attitude as a fishing story. This approach is partly justified in the introduction, where Buffett explains that the impetus for this "journal" was that he had signed a book deal and could not make any of his other ideas work. These intertwined, meandering recollections would make a nice column in the local paper, but as the memoirs of a creative talent they are deeply disappointing. Buy as demand warrants.
-?Eric Bryant, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

actually liked it
I was prepared to hate this book. If you have ever spent much time in Key West or even walked up and down Duval Street a few times, you become sick of Jimmy Buffett. It seems there is a Buffett song being played in every bar and there are three or four or more bars every block. However, I had read Tales From Margaritaville a while ago and seem to remember liking it. This is not the autobiography I thought it would be. Buffett comes across as likeable and not shallow. He can write and this book tells the reader more about him than anything else he has done. While still not a fan of his music, I recommend this book as well as Tales From Margaritaville.

Pirate looks at fifty
It was a fairly good book but not as good as his other novels. Some of the stories were not that interesting and I'm not a big fan of journals. It did provide some insights into the pirate.

interesting enough, but.................
this book was interesting enough if you want to know more about fishing
than Jimmy. Yes, I know he loves to fish, but I wanted a little more
background.