Word: gaff
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...down," he says. "I quit smoking the same way, by sucking on a crayon." Like so many other Billings geeters--yet one more slang term--Justin is a teller of wild tales. He shows off the sunken veins in his arms and describes how he once had to gaff his shot of crank--inject it straight into his jugular vein--while watching himself in a rearview mirror. "The jugular," he says, nodding earnestly, "the only vein in the body that won't roll over...
...GAFF TOPSAILS...
...Gaff Topsails takes places on a single midsummer's day in 1947, when some fishermen smell a new iceberg, "musty yet at the same time pure, like the air in a vault that has gone undisturbed for centuries." Stranded just offshore an Irish Catholic settlement in Newfoundland, the fishermen imagine the berg as a schooner, a basilica, an image of the Virgin Mary, Star of the Sea. As the rest or the town awakens, the drunken lighthouse keeper believe it to be a ship come to rescue him from his delusional exile. A teenage girl believes it as an omen...
...most evident in its ability to grapplewith this ambiguity--to name duplicity withsharp-shooter accuracy that gives weight to eachside and validity to contradiction. Refined by avocabulary that sends the reader scurrying for thedictionary both in attempt to reacquaint herselfwith nautical anatomy and with words of ratherstartling specificity, Gaff Topsails is notalways an easy book to read. Although Kavanagh'sintimate knowledge makes for description asaccurate and illuminating as his vocabulary,imbuing this description with creative imaginationdemands a heavy toll in effort. There is a chapterdevoted exclusively to the geological history ofthe Newfoundland coast, pages replicating thedialectical banter of bored...
...Gaff Topsails offers few clear judgmentsabout the contradictions that fill its pages andwhich of the many perspectives is correct. It doesnot define the iceberg as a symbol of salvation ordamnation, but rather shows it as both, acathedral of blue ice and a treacherous perilwhose exact scope cannot be fathomed. If only forits descriptive power, the book is a deeplymesmerizing celebration of ambiguity and of theundeniable good in every conception