Word: seamans
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Hobohemian Thoreaus. The Subterraneans celebrates that "systematic derangement of the senses" from which Rimbaud concocted his visions of hell. The difference is that Jack Kerouac, ex-merchant seaman, ex-railroad brakeman, is not Rimbaud but a kind of latrine laureate of Hobohemia. The story line of The Subterraneans is simple and stark: it concerns a short, manic-depressive love affair between a "big paranoic bum" and occasional writer named Leo Percepied and a near-insane Negro girl named Mardou Fox. Says Kerouac: "I wrote this book in three full-moon nights," and it reads that way. The details...
Horrifying Anonymity. With plodding determination, Novelist Ott follows a class of enlisted sailors through a tour of minesweeper duty, a session of midshipmen's school and a chilling succession of raiding cruises with the North Atlantic submarine wolf packs (Ott, 34, began the war as a minesweeper seaman, ended it as an ensign on a submarine). His style is lumpishly Teutonic, and the translator's cliches do not make it any smoother. Ott's impersonal handling of his characters, though it gives a horrifying anonymity to their cockroach deaths, also makes for interminable, dull stretches...
...worst mistakes a recruiting officer ever made. Lieut. Siegel (Glenn Ford), Marblehead's chief whipping boy, is assigned to rectify the error, and manages to teach the brute a few appropriate words to say at war-bond rallies. Touched with gratitude after his first public ad-dresk Seaman Jones takes the opportunity to tell one and all, including the admiral himself, that Lieut. Siegel is "the best (BEEP!) officer I ever served under...
...only she-duty. He is assigned to look after a lady correspondent (Eva Gabor), who is all too easily persuaded to part with her panties, which are next seen fluttering from the halyards as the ship goes into battle. "Ggrrulfskrggrowlk!" roars the admiral, but a seaman standing by reminds him, with a jaw squared in patriotism, "Sir, that's what we're fighting...
...Seaman Jeffrey Cohee said that a guard once smeared his eyes with shaving lotion, on another occasion ordered him to say something and then shoved a pencil up his nose for saying...