Word: sea
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Yankees cannot lose." "But I fear the Indians of Cleveland." --Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea...
...personal heroics, there was David Wells' perfect game. There was the 12-game-winning "El Duque," born Orlando Hernandez, the young man and the sea, who paddled away from Cuba and Castro. And Shane Spencer, who descended from Krypton to hit three grand slams in September. Manager Joe Torre moved players in and out of the lineup all year, and no one ever complained about playing time. Since professional sports is almost wholly made up of prima donna billionaires (see the NBA lock-out), that is a rare achievement...
This is because the author's masterwork is an astonishing naval saga set in Napoleonic times during England's long sea war with France, and it extends now to 19 closely linked novels. The latest, The Hundred Days (W.W. Norton; 282 pages; $24) is just out. And O'Brian, now close to 85, is busily at work on a 20th...
This is not genre writing, agreeable trash to be pigeonholed. If salt-soaked comparison is required, O'Brian's adventures suggest Joseph Conrad's sea tales more than those of C.S. Forester and his Horatio Hornblower. Conrad's prevailing mood is darker; though O'Brian can summon darkness and defeat, he is more arch and owlish. But as Forester did, O'Brian novelizes serially. The precarious lives of two memorable characters, friends and shipmates, thread through his books...
...civilizing nicety in this most civilized of narrations is that the two are passable amateur musicians. Maturin plays the cello, and as Aubrey admits, "I scrape a little, sir. I torment a fiddle from time to time." As chapters end--chapters of blood, crashing seas and weevily sea biscuit--the two are likely to take solace together, tormenting Locatelli or Boccherini. Friendship, lifelong and ramified, between these two and with recurring minor characters, is the bedrock theme of the novels...