Jonathan Livingston Seagull: A story

Copyright

HarperThorsons

an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by Turnstone Press 1972

This edition published in the US by Scribner 2014

Published in Great Britain by HarperThorsons 2015

Copyright © Sabryna A. Bach 1970

Copyright renewed © Sabryna A. Bach 1998

New material copyright © Sabryna A. Bach 2014

Photographs copyright © Russell Munson 1970

Photographs copyright renewed © Russell Munson 1998

New photographs copyright © Russell Munson 2014

Photograph on dedication page copyright © Sabryna A. Bach 2014

Richard Bach asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

Interior design by Joan Stoliar

A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 9780006490340

Ebook Edition © JULY ISBN: 9780008162986

Version: 2015-09-08

Dedication

To the real Jonathan Seagull, who lives within us all

JonathanLivingstonSeagull.com

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

Last Words

About the Author

About the Publisher

Part One

It was morning, and the new sun sparkled gold across the ripples of a gentle sea.

A mile from shore a fishing boat chummed the water, and the word for Breakfast Flock flashed through the air, till a crowd of a thousand seagulls came to dodge and fight for bits of food. It was another busy day beginning.

But way off alone, out by himself beyond boat and shore, Jonathan Livingston Seagull was practicing. A hundred feet in the sky he lowered his webbed feet, lifted his beak, and strained to hold a painful hard twisting curve through his wings. The curve meant that he would fly slowly, and now he slowed until the wind was a whisper in his face, until the ocean stood still beneath him. He narrowed his eyes in fierce concentration, held his breath, forced one … single … more … inch … of … curve~…. Then his feathers ruffled, he stalled and fell.

Seagulls, as you know, never falter, never stall. To stall in the air is for them disgrace and it is dishonor.

But Jonathan Livingston Seagull, unashamed, stretching his wings again in that trembling hard curve—slowing, slowing, and stalling once more—was no ordinary bird.

Most gulls don’t bother to learn more than the simplest facts of flight—how to get from shore to food and back again. For most gulls, it is not flying that matters, but eating. For this gull, though, it was not eating that mattered, but flight. More than anything else, Jonathan Livingston Seagull loved to fly.

This kind of thinking, he found, is not the way to make one’s self popular with other birds. Even his parents were dismayed as Jonathan spent whole days alone, making hundreds of low-level glides, experimenting.

He didn’t know why, for instance, but when he flew at altitudes less than half his wingspan above the water, he could stay in the air longer, with less effort. His glides ended not with the usual feet-down splash into the sea, but with a long flat wake as he touched the surface with his feet tightly streamlined against his body. When he began sliding in to feet-up landings on the beach, then pacing the length of his slide in the sand, his parents were very much dismayed indeed.

“Why, Jon, why?” his mother asked. “Why is it so hard to be like the rest of the flock, Jon? Why can’t you leave low flying to the pelicans, the albatross? Why don’t you eat? Son, you’re bone and feathers!”

“I don’t mind being bone and feathers, mom. I just want to know what I can do in the air and what I can’t, that’s all. I just want to know.”

“See here, Jonathan,” said his father, not unkindly. “Winter isn’t far away. Boats will be few, and the surface fish will be swimming deep. If you must study, then study food, and how to get it. This flying business is all very well, but you can’t eat a glide, you know. Don’t you forget that the reason you fly is to eat.”