The Author Jimmy Buffett

So far Jimmy Buffett has written six books. Two ("The Jolly Mon" and "Trouble Dolls") are children's books that he co-wrote with his daughter, Savannah Jane. One of them is his auto-biography -- "A Pirate Looks At Fifty". This book is a delightful rambling travelogue and diary that was number one on the non-fiction best seller list. The remaining three are pure romps of fun: "Tales From Margaritaville: Fictional Facts and Factual Fiction", "Where is Joe Merchant?", and "A Salty Piece Of Land", and they are all also certified best sellers.

"Tales From Margaritaville: Fictional Facts and Factual Fiction": This is a book that I go back and re-read on a regular basis. Sometimes the whole book, sometimes just parts. It is a collection of stories where many of them are titled the same as some favorite songs of Buffett's - it feels like you're being let in on an inside joke.

"Where is Joe Merchant?": What's not to love about this book? The female protagonist is a hemorrhoid-ointment heiress. While searching for her brother (who is supposed to be dead) she finds a great cast of characters include dreamers, wackos, modern-day pirates - and a psychic in need of her crystal. Oh and don't forget the rocket ship. Welcome to paradise.

"A Salty Piece Of Land": When the first edition of "A Salty Piece Of Land" was released, it included a CD single of the same title. Also, shortly after the release, there was a simulcast, available in theatres nationwide, of Jimmy Buffett taking questions from the live audience in New Orleans, LA -- about the book in particular, his writing in general, and he tossed in several songs and anecdotes for good measure.

from BookIdea.com
Reviewed by John L. Hoh, Jr.
Set in Bananaland, this story tells of a peaceful people who live on an island -- a peace disturbed by pirates. One day a guitar washes ashore, a guitar adorned with jewels and the picture of a white dolphin. One young man, Jolly Mon, picks up the guitar and instinctively knows how to play the guitar, and plays beautiful music. The residents of Bananaland want Jolly Mon to sail the seas and let others know of Bananaland's plight. So a boat is made of mahogany, Good King Jones sends Jolly Mon off in Orion (christened by Princess Marigold with cocoa milk). Jolly Mon goes from island to island singing his songs, spending the most time at Coconut Island. One day the sad news comes that Good King Jones has died and Princess Marigold has summoned Jolly Mon to return. En route Jolly Mon sees a ship afire. Can he save the people on the ship-or is the fire a ruse? Can Jolly Mon make it back to Bananaland?

from Mostly Fiction BOOK REVIEWS
Reviewed by Judi Clark JAN 16, 2000
Reading "Tales from Margaritaville:Fictional Facts and Factual Fiction" is like being at a love-fest for the CD recordings "Songs You Know By Heart" and "Off to See the Lizard". In the story Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes, we meet Tully who is leaving Wyoming with his horse. Then there are the Heatwave Alabama tales: Off to See the Lizard, Boomerang Love and then finally the Son of a Son of a Sailor story.

I read this book a long time ago but it hasn't left my collection. When I run across the book while rearraning the bookshelves (i.e. hunting for another book), I sometimes stop and read a story again just for the fun of it. I'm not a parrot head, but I have been exposed to enough Buffett from sailing that I think its fun stuff, always great memories.

From Publishers Weekly
Lizzy Rhinehart discovers that her father, a noted environmentalist, has been lost in the Florida Everglades. Having only her housekeeper and her dog to rely on, Lizzy is distraught--until she remembers the "trouble dolls" her father bought her in Guatemala. Legend has it that if you tell the dolls your troubles before going to sleep, they will find a solution. Lifting up her pillow, Lizzy takes comfort at the sight of a tiny village full of trouble dolls busily working on all sorts of problems. The next day, with the dolls perched on her visor, Lizzy and her dog take off to find her father. This emotionally charged story is a welcome blend of myth and reality, set in modern times but connected by folklore to the world of animals and magic.

from Mostly Fiction BOOK REVIEWS
Reviewed by Judi Clark MAR 4, 1998
This is a light hearted, but surprisingly good, novel from the famous Florida Keys singer-songwriter.

Joe Merchant, a rock singer, is missing. His sister Trevor Kane, asks her ex-lover Frank Bama to find him. The book is about seaplanes, noise polluting Jet Skis, dolphins, crystals, and lots more. There is a precious scene with Bama landing his seaplane in Cuba, leaving it unguarded while Castro takes it out for a sneak flight. I have to assume that if you are true Parrothead you have read this and Margaritaville until you've memorized the words. Even if you are not Jimmy Buffett fan, but like a book that romps around the Caribbean, then I think you'll enjoy this one a lot! Read it on a cloudy day and you feel much better.

from Kirkus Reviews
This first nonfiction outing from singer/songwriter Buffett (Where Is Joe Merchant?, 1992, etc.) is more food for his Parrothead fans, but there is some fine writing along with the self-revelation. Half autobiography and half travelogue, this volume recounts a trip by Buffett and his family to the Caribbean over one Christmas holiday to celebrate the writer's 50th birthday. .... Both Parrotheads and those with a taste for the Caribbean find something for their palates here.

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 "f***ing tikki pukki drinks" will find beneath these amblings a disarmingly direct character."

From BookPage.com
Reviewed By Paul Goat Allen
Tully Mars, the introspective cowboy introduced in Jimmy Buffett's best-selling short story collection, Tales from Margaritaville (1989), is back in a truly unforgettable storytelling tour de force. It involves an abandoned Caribbean lighthouse, an expatriate on the run from psychotic bounty hunters and a 102-year-old woman's improbable dream-all blended together as only Buffett can, with generous helpings of liquid libation.

Buffett's first novel in more than a decade can be best described as one big madcap quest involving a cast of characters that could have easily appeared in a modern-day retelling of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. In addition to Mars, "a good guy with a few bad habits," and his trusted horse Mr. Twain, there's Thelma Barston, a mentally unstable poodle ranch owner; Waldo and Wilton Stilton, bumbling twin bounty hunters; Tex Sex, a famous country singer with more than a few skeletons in his closet; Ix-Nay, an Indian medicine man; and Sammy Raye Coconuts, a flamboyant world traveler and entrepreneur.

Mars, lying low on an idyllic Mexican island after a confrontation with his former boss in Wyoming turned violent, fatefully meets a woman who will change his life. Cleopatra Highbourne, enigmatic captain of a legendary schooner, enlists Mars to help her restore a 150-year-old lighthouse in the southern Bahamas, on an island called Cayo Loco. The reconstruction, however, includes finding an extremely rare lens. Thus Mars begins a quest-both physical and spiritual-that will lead him to Mayan shamans, internationally renowned entertainers, drunken sailors, wily pirates, cult leaders, hedonistic spring break coeds and even a few ghosts.

If Tales from Margaritaville was the literary appetizer, A Salty Piece Of Land is the long-awaited five-course meal. Buffett's newest offering is both breathtakingly beautiful and wildly bizarre, laugh-out-loud funny and heartbreaking, irreverent and profound-easily his best work of fiction yet.

UPDATE: "Swine Not?", is now available!

On April 3, 2007, I was thrilled to learn that Jimmy Buffett had another new book coming out. It was the oddly titled "Swine Not", and was to be released late November 2007 (below you can read the cached info on it from Amazon.com). However, the release was then cancelled with no information available. I'm now happy to report that the book has published and is available!

from Amazon.com (cached page)
Bestselling author and famed musician Jimmy Buffett presents a charming fable for all ages-the exciting adventure of Rumpy, a pig in Manhattan. Jimmy was inspired to write this book by friend who really does keep a pig in Manhattan! When Rumpy, a pet potbelly pig, and her human family move to the big city, she couldn't be more excited. Her long lost twin brother moved to the city long ago and now she will finally have the chance to find him. But when she finds herself locked inside the apartment, with an evil chef is lurking outside, Rumpy has to overcome the obstacles. Will she ever be able to get down to the streets and find her twin? All she needs is a few new friends and the perfect disguise.

from the New York Times Book Review
I think "A Salty Piece Of Land" is very possibly Buffett's best work to date. In many ways this novel is pleasantly evocative of another maritime adventure -- "Treasure Island". Though Robert Louis Stevenson, has assuredly weathered the test of time, it is a little too early perhaps to make a judgment on Jimmy Buffett. What the two writers share, however, other than a deep and abiding love of the sea, is an unabashed and unequivocal desire to create and to view each of their works first and foremost as an entertainment. In any literary era, in any latitude, this attitude must be considered as refreshing as it is rare. "A Salty Piece Of Land" is a tangy tale, at times turbulent and unpredictable as the ocean, at times as wistful as the whitecaps on the waves. In this novel the reader will encounter a colorful crew indeed: cowboys and Indians, sailors and pilots, treasure hunters, ghosts, and, of course, those ubiquitous pirates. The book revolves around an old abandoned lighthouse on the mythical island of Cayo Loco, a lighthouse that, becomes something of a spiritual beacon in a world remarkable for its unwillingness to be led to the light. Perhaps it is because Buffett has long been a writer of lyrics that his prose style now seems to flow in a fresh, fanciful, finely imagined fashion. Buffett knows better than most that life is all about how we mix our metaphors. And yet the nonfictional aspects of the book appear to be as grounded and well constructed as, for want of a better image, a lighthouse at sea. Buffett has clearly researched his subject. But I suspect the true research for this novel has already been done on land and air and sea in all the years the author has spent as a highly active participant-observer of life. What makes the incredible so credible to the reader, what makes the old lighthouse shine again, is the spiritual savvy Buffett has gleaned from the beach of life as he's wandered in the raw poetry of time.