Gardner McKay's Journey Without a Map, with introduction by Jimmy Buffett, is a memoir extraordinaire one of those rare books that just keeps getting better and better as you read along, its last half transfixing. McKay was a maverick who went into the South American forest alone for nearly two years; starred in, and walked away from, the starring role in an expensive hour-long TV series after four years; raised lions and cheetah in the wilds of Beverly Hills; was the theatre critic for the LA Herald; wrote successful plays, novels, poetry and stories; walked across Venezuela; was a world-class sailor; a sculptor, with pieces in the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum; wrote and kept over 200 journals (the basis for this memoir); turned down nearly 50 starring movie roles; served as a film critic; taught university courses; rode with the Egyptian camel corps; and finished this memoir as he was dying of cancer, giving him what he called "a real deadline." He was, above all, an adventurist. Of his quitting television, after he had acquired international fame: "Fame is so cheap that I wanted to go someplace where someone, some stranger, might be able to make up his own mind about me without already having formed an opinion based on drivel that needed to be overcome or ignored."
Author Biography:
George Cadogan Gardner McKay was born in Manhattan, New York City. His early years were spent in France, Connecticut and Kentucky. At age fifteen, he published his first story. He attended Cornell University where he edited the humor magazine, wrote a film review column for the paper, and was briefly president of his class. He rowed on their crew. He has been awarded several prizes for his writing: - The Drama Critics Award for playwriting, the Sydney Carrington Prize. He won three National Endowment for the Arts grants for playwriting. Five of his play have been published by Samuel French Publishing Company, Sea Marks, Masters of the Sea, Toyer, Me, In Order of Appearance. McKay's plays have been, and continue to be, produced in every state in the union and internationally. Sea Marks won the National Regional Theatre Award in Canada. The Drama Critics Circle Award, best play of the year, and has been produced in NYC in many Off-Broadway productions - among them the Players Theatre ("Best Off- Broadway Play, Walter Kerr, New York Times) the Manhattan Theatre Club, and other theatres. Sea Marks has also been broadcast on B.B.C. Radio Theatre, London. McKay's play Toyer was first staged at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., directed by Tony Richardson. It has also been produced by Michael White at The Redgrave Theatre in England and more recently in London, at The Arts theatre in the West End. McKay's play Untold Damage (PBS) Written and directed by McKay for PBS, was cited as the best television production by Television Theatre. McKay was Drama critic and Drama editor for the Los Angeles Herald Tribune. During the time he was with the Herald he invented a method of review called the "Triple Review": Three brief reviews of the same play by three writers. He taught playwriting at U.C.L.A at his Playwriting Roundtable. Later he taught playwriting and screenwriting at University of Southern California, Juneau Alaska, and the University of Hawaii. McKay's novels include Toyer (a novel, which won critical acclaim upon its release in 1998 and is currently in pre-production for a major motion film). Journey Without a Map(autobiography). The Kinsman, The Last American, 10 Bloomsbury Square, and Trompe L'Oeil. From 1995 - until his death in November 2001, Mr. McKay wrote and recorded stories for his weekly radio show "Stories on the Wind" which aired on Hawaii Public Radio each Sunday night.
