Word: sea
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...show had no publicity. To reachthe show, you had to wait in a line that wound itsway up stairs festooned with graffiti and oddsmells, like how you pass through a themed areawhile you're waiting in line for a ride at anamusement park. Victory at Sea opened. When theybegan to play, my friend said, "Oh no! They havefeelings they'd like to share with us!" And indeedthey did. Or I think they did. Lots of bands thesedays make it difficult to tell what they'resinging about. Victory at Sea played what I wouldin a generous mood call meditative songs...
Somehow in the midst of uneasiness and sadness, the novel sparkles with the humor of the surreal (in one exchange, Lily asks Ronny "What did you do to yourself?" and is met with "Oh. I caught fire.") and with unusual imagery (Lily is called "every inch a Sea Monkey... Pale and alien and underwater"). But while the bleak humor is generated by the peculiarities of the characters, there is a definite authorial love for the seemingly unlovable characters, a love which transfers to the reader...
...centuries, dismayed sailors and startled whalers would return from their voyages with stories of huge, tentacled sea monsters that terrorized the ocean. For the landlocked, these stories were mere exaggerations-until...
Since that date, more than 100 giant squid, all dead, have been found on various coastlines and in the nets of deep sea fishers. While scientists have learned much about the animal, it still remains somewhat of an enigma...
...with any good marine fiction, the sea itself is background, scene shifter and, from time to storm-lashed time, main character. But the series swims also on an ocean of wondrous language, in which inept seamen, for instance, are not only "sad brutish grobians," but "froward dirty disreputable rough good-for-nothing disorderly ragabashes and raparees." If there is a serious flaw, it is that since the novels are mostly about men, they are probably mostly for men. O'Brian writes good female characters, but mostly they remain ashore (and one of the best, Maturin's flamboyant wife Diana, dies...