Word: kavanagh
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Patrick Kavanagh...
Only a cerebral Gumby would remain unsculpted by the mental body-building required to translate James Joyce's Ulysses into Mandarin Chinese. In spite of extensive time spent in Beijing doing just that, Patrick Kavanagh's latest project, his first novel, is not so stylistically influenced as one might think. Rather than plunging into boggy streams of consciousness, Kavanagh emulates Joyce's focus on style more than his actual stylistic techniques, resulting in an ornately wrought work with a commanding sense of place and experience...
Where the strength of Kavanagh's style is most evident in its ability to grapplewith this ambiguity--to name duplicity withsharp-shooter accuracy that gives weight to eachside and validity to contradiction. Refined by avocabulary that sends the reader scurrying for thedictionary both in attempt to reacquaint herselfwith nautical anatomy and with words of ratherstartling specificity, Gaff Topsails is notalways an easy book to read. Although Kavanagh'sintimate knowledge makes for description asaccurate and illuminating as his vocabulary,imbuing this description with creative imaginationdemands a heavy toll in effort. There is a chapterdevoted exclusively to the geological history ofthe Newfoundland...
...Although Kavanagh's ability to portray the samesubject from many perspectives is practicedthroughout the book, as each characters react tothe weather, the turn of the sea and the creakingiceberg in a different way, his skill is mosthoned in his discussion of the novel's mostpervasive subject; the Roman Catholic Church...
...cannot be compared with any other human endeavor. Civilians must accept the idea that those in command must be held to a high and strict standard. Since an officer's word must go unquestioned, lying under oath, as Flinn did, is a most grievous violation of trust. JOHN V. KAVANAGH Chevy Chase...