Word: franklin
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...mixture does not work, partly because the historical and the personal plot lines that Vollmann imagines to be parallel simply are not. One of the former is the death in 1846 of Sir John Franklin and all the members of his British navy Arctic expedition, sent to find the Northwest Passage. Vollmann relates that event to a glum romance in present time between one of the author's fictional alter egos, whom he calls Captain Subzero, and a young, deaf Inuit woman named Reepah. Vollmann insists at length that Subzero, an & Arctic tourist who, as Vollmann himself did, makes...
...juxtaposition is absurd: Franklin and his wife fascinate historians because they embody so perfectly the courage and blind arrogance of 19th century Britain, but Subzero and Reepah are simply dreary. And Subzero, picking moodily at the scab of his 20th century conscience, fretting that the Inuit find him contemptible, giving tips on Arctic trekking (down sleeping bags collect moisture and freeze; masturbation at very low temperatures isn't worth the trouble) is just not as interesting to Vollmann's readers as to the author himself...
...door. It was her first news interview in weeks, and her first ever devoted to Whitewater, but this was no charm offensive: she met her guests from TIME not in the customary spots -- the solarium or the family quarters -- but in a combat zone, the Map Room where Franklin Roosevelt plotted troop movements throughout the Second World...
Faced with such unsettling coincidences, some key industry figures have begun to wonder whether they aren't seeing a preview of the costs climate change may impose on society. "The insurance business is first in line to be affected by climate change," says Franklin Nutter, president of the Reinsurance Association of America. "It is clear that global warming could bankrupt the industry." Insurers must set their premiums in anticipation of future calamities, Nutter and his colleagues know, and when they look ahead, they see prospects even more alarming than those in the recent past...
Paris and Philadelphia were never exactly sister cities, except maybe to Benjamin Franklin. In current movie terms, and when the incendiary issue of AIDS is raised, the towns couldn't be further apart. The hit film Philadelphia treats its subject gingerly, making its hero a saint and a near monogamist. Cyril Collard's French film Savage Nights is defiantly incorrect, even reckless, in its political agenda. Its hero is a fellow who is HIV positive but continues to have unprotected sex. C'est la vie. C'est la mort. No big difference...