Word: mckenna
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Sand Pebbles, by Richard McKenna. Writing his first novel at 49, an ex-Navy enlisted man tells how a ship's crew degenerates behind a façade of spit and polish, then finds itself again...
...Sand Pebbles, McKenna...
...SAND PEBBLES (597 pp.)-Richard McKenna-Harper...
Engines & Coolies. Chronicling the downfall of the Sand Pebbles, McKenna achieves a rare organic mixture of fast-moving story and far-ranging symbol. Holman proves to be a loner who hates the spit and polish of the Navy and the "game" of putting on a front for the Chinese. He tries to secede from the ship by taking refuge in caring for the one thing he knows and loves-engines. But when he begins to fix the Sand Pebble's decrepit coal-burning monstrosity-and, worse, agonizingly tries to teach a Chinese coolie how steam drives the pistons...
Beauty & Freedom. In a sense, McKenna has only done what comes naturally at North Carolina, the first (1795) state university to open its doors. Chapel Hill boasts "something in the air" that inspires purpose. In part, the spur is natural beauty: a town built around a tree-shaded oasis of ivied Georgian buildings on 552 acres. Alumnus Thomas Wolfe ('20) fondly described "Pulpit Hill" in Look Homeward, Angel as "a provincial outpost of great Rome: the wilderness crept up to it like a beast...