I Cover the Waterfront: Stories from the San Diego Shore

By Max Miller

Distinctive, original, fresh in in tone and manner, with a quaint whimsicality of feeling and expression.”The New York Times

Life on the Western waterfront has always fascinated Max Miller, a special reporter for the San Diego Sun. Embraced by all the waterfront folk, he has joined them on their cruises, has learned the mystery of their crafts, and knows them like brothers.

Max himself has become a part of the waterfront. Not a fishing boat ties up to the wharf without Max Miller getting the story. Not a submarine comes in nor an airplane soars out over the water without Max Miller’s being invited to go. He is one of the first men to climb up the ladder of the Pacific lines, especially when celebrities are aboard.

A combination of newspaper reporter, philosopher, and poet, the author writes his charming sketches in his studio” upstairs in the tugboat office, where he can look out over his domain. But reporting is not simply a job with Max Miller; it is the greatest pleasure of his life. He delights in setting down his impressions of the Western shore, where life is a constant flux and reflux, seasonal, immutable, and yet ever excitingthe departure of the sardine fleet, the hunt for elephant seals for the zoo, the sailing of the California fruit liners.

I Cover the Waterfront was first published in the early 1930s and has since gone on to become a classic. It is as memorable for its unique stories as it is for its individual styleso keenly sensitive to the personalities of men and to the romantic environment of the harbor and deep-sea life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
• Release date: Sep 2, 2014
• ISBN: 9781632200020

Max Miller

Max Miller is the creator and host of the viral digital series Tasting History with Max Miller on YouTube. Prior to his YouTube stardom, Max was an employee of Walt Disney Studios in the marketing and film distribution departments. When the COVID-19 stay-at-home order went into effect in Los Angeles, Max was furloughed and began turning his passion for historic dishes into a self-taped video series. Within weeks of his first video on YouTube, Max’s channel and videos reached hundreds of thousands of viewers who wanted to learn more about historic dishes. Max’s channel has been covered in outlets like America’s Test Kitchen, ABC’s Localish, Chowhound, Foodsided, GLAAD, KTLA Morning News, A Hot Dog Is a Sandwich podcast, PopCulture, Rachael Ray, Today, UPROXX, and Yahoo!. Max currently resides in Los Angeles, California, with his husband, José, and their two cats.

Reviews for I Cover the Waterfront

[guybrarian_1 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

The title sounds familiar, yes? But I bet you haven’t read it. Why don’t more people know about this charming lost classic from 1932? Why are there only a few librarythingers who own it? It is a series of loosely-connected personal vignettes from the life of a lowly waterfront reporter in San Diego, ranging from humorous episodes to poignant and even tragic events, enacted by a cavalcade of colorful personages that might be at home in Steinbeck’s Cannery Row or Proulx’s The Shipping News. The deft sketches of people and places are enjoyable, but the book’s main draw is the 28-year-old narrator’s bemused, sardonic attitude towards his mundane job and his own disappointed hopes of becoming a great and admired writer. By turns sarcastic, self-effacing, whimsical, philosophical, laconic and low key, Miller’s persona is has the ring of truth and is truly endearing, keeping this Depression era gem as fresh as the latest paean to slackerdom. It is ironic that Miller’s only seriously lasting fame was built out of this poignant tale of a nobody resigned to obscurity.