Word: novelized
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Wealthy? Retired? Unfulfilled? Do what the famous do and dig deep into the unknown for that first novel...
Toss by Boomer Esiason: Esiason was a quarterback for 14 years and is currently a host on Monday Night Football. His first novel (with Lowell Cauffiel) is a thriller featuring a rookie quarterback whose life is turned upside down when a former QB is murdered...
...story, adapted from a short novel by the Honore de Balzac, follows a soldier named Augustin Robert (Ben Daniels) who is sent to Egypt in 1798 as the guide and protector of Jean-Michel (Michel Piccoli) an important artist/historiographer. Jean-Michel is on an official mission to draw, measure and document the cultural landmarks of the Egyptian dunes. Of course, the military party with whom he travels are little concerned with monuments or cave-drawings. They have been yanked from their homes and families to conduct a miserable campaign against the Mameluke Dynasty, marching around the desert with their camels...
Fiction or not, Bass's work is all of a piece, a desperate, eloquent defense of wild places, and it is not surprising to find that his first novel, Where the Sea Used to Be (Houghton Mifflin; 464 pages; $25), grows from the same earth. He used the identical title for a short story about a mystical oil geologist who, like the novel's hero, can see oil beneath mountains. The lead female character, a woman strong enough to ski for miles carrying a grown man on her back, could be the daughter of a yeti-like succubus...
...novel's magic is only intermittent. There are wonderful imaginings: an epic, weeklong elk hunt in deep snow, a coffinmaker who carves his boxes in the shapes of totemic beasts. Bass's theme, however--humanity as a curse on nature--isn't quite realized in the unlikely person of a ruthless oil prospector called Old Dudley. And the author's habit of delivering long, italic nature lectures is windy self-indulgence. The dust jacket should bear a sign: EDITOR NEEDED, APPLY WITHIN...