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Dizzying Friends and Days |
| Section: BOOK WORLD / REVIEWS |
| Author: William H. Pritchard |
| Publication:
The World & I Online |
| Issue Date: 2/1/2007 |
| Size: 1,178 Words, 7,358 Characters |
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Robert Stone's engaging memoir begins in 1958 when he finds himself at the helm of a naval transport ship on an Antarctic expedition, tracking electrical activity on the surface of the sun.
Suddenly he sights an unidentified mass, changing its shape and direction and impressing the helmsman as something monstrous, "a living thing, huge and strong, unrecognizable." A scientist aboard the ship has a look and identifies the mass as an enormous colony of migrating Adelie penguins that Stone describes thus:
"Their Chaplin-like gait and myopic, clueless stares deprive them of the dignity of which all creatures in their natural state should be entitled. Even the desperate defense of their nests and eggs has an absurd quality." ...
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...to the palace of wisdom, said William Blake, patron poet-saint of many romantic folk in those years.
In Prime Green the palace is never reached, the "wisdom" attained only a rueful and reluctant one. But the road of excess Robert Stone has explored in his fiction is vividly on display in this book of affectionate if cautionary remembrance.
Copyright © 2007 The Washington Times, LLC.
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Publication Details
(The World & I Online) |
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The World & I Online is a
comprehensive academic resource that encompasses a broad range of
articles by scholars and experts in the areas of Global Studies,
Liberal Arts, Fine & Applied Arts, General Science, and Spanish.
Originally published monthly in print as The World & I, our site
includes the complete contents since 1986 and continues to publish
a new issue online each month. |
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