Out of print for over seventy years, Gentleman Overboard by Herbert
Clyde Lewis is being rescued for today's readers to launch Boiler
House Press's new series, Recovered Books.
Halfway between Honolulu and Panama, a man slips and falls from a ship.
For crucial hours, as he patiently treads water in hope of rescue, no
one on board notices his absence. By the time the ship's captain is
notified, it may be too late to save him...
Rediscovered in 2009 by Brad Bigelow as part of tireless research for
his popular Neglected Books website, Gentleman Overboard has since
achieved the status of a cult classic and even become something of an
international phenomenon, having seen translations into Spanish, Hebrew,
and Dutch.
The newspaper Ha'aretz has called it 'A miniature masterpiece that
emerged from oblivion'; the Spanish magazine El Cultural dubbed it 'una
perlita' 'a little pearl'. A masterful piece of narrative tension, and
way ahead of its time, Gentleman Overboard sets the question of
existence in its most basic terms. The story speaks fiercely to the
contemporary moment and for all who share a sense of loneliness through
having found themselves isolated by politics, disease, economics --or
indeed just sheer accident and bad luck.
The fate of the novel's hero even has ironic parallels with that of the
author, Herbert Clyde Lewis, who died forgotten and alone in 1950, a
victim of Hollywood's black list, and who has since slipped beneath the
waves of fashion and time, but now hopefully is to be recovered from the
murky depths for the readership he posthumously deserves.