Word: shake
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Memories of '38 live on in the horror stories of those who lived through those few hours of hell--and Everett Allen has made an effort to ensure that those stories don't die with their aging heroes. A Wind to Shake the World is Allen's homage to the Big Wind, a meticulously documented diary of the storm's progress as it hacked its swath of destruction across a defenseless New York-New England coastline. It is the story of how swift death burst onto a country that didn't yet know enough about hurricanes even to bother naming...
...Wind to Shake the World is neither great literature nor incisive social commentary. Allen is a journalist, not a novelist, and his style makes this obvious. His prose moves fitfully at best, is downright turgid at worst, and is obviously better suited to the front page of a New England town newspaper than the inside of a classy $10 hard-back. Always the reporter, he is long on detail and short on interpretation. An endless stream of names, places, death tolls and other gruesome details flashes past, making the book itself a hurricane of facts that often leaves the reader...
...extent, perhaps the charges are true. Allen, a native of that fine old whaling town, New Bedford, is plainly obsessed with all things nautical and often seems more to mourn the founderings of classic yachts than the deaths of those who went down with them. A Wind to Shake the World is thus more a showcase for the battle of man against nature than a display of how people react to each other in times of crisis. The heroism, of which there is plenty, seems yanked from a John Wayne movie script; we see lots of heroes, but precious...
...more couples meet simultaneously, the cross-kissing begins to resemble the start of a football game, when multiple captains of the two teams must go through all permutations of the hand shake. Sometimes habitual non-kissers avoid kissing the hostess as they come to a party, but will have several drinks and, thus mellowed, will kiss goodnight as they leave, muttering later, "Why did I kiss that woman?" The converse also occurs: people kiss in a warmth of expectation as the evening begins, but then part with awkward handshakes...
Poor Kris Kristofferson. The former Pomona College football star, now 40, pulled a hamstring muscle while playing Shake Tiller, a good ole boy and pass-catchin' end in the movie being made from Dan Jenkins' novel Semi-Tough. Burt Reynolds, a onetime running back for Florida State, is cast as Shake's pal, the hard-drinking, womanizing hero, Billy Clyde Puckett. During the filming in Dallas Reynolds was constantly surrounded by groupies. What to do? Taking a tip from Puckett, he claims he "got 'em upstairs as quick as possible...