https://smokeandmirrors.cityofsmoke.com Essays on Theater and the Arts Sun, 31 Oct 2010 19:44:49 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.4.33 https://smokeandmirrors.cityofsmoke.com/archives/20 https://smokeandmirrors.cityofsmoke.com/archives/20#respond Tue, 21 Nov 2000 18:24:18 +0000 http://smokeandmirrors.cityofsmoke.com/?p=20 The Essex disaster is the subject of Nathaniel Philbrick's In the Heart of the Sea: the Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex, up for a National Book Award this week. I gather that Philbrick's competition in the category of nonfiction is the great literary critic Jacques Barzun. All the same, it will be a shame if In the Heart of the Sea doesn't win. Not only is it a thumping good read, more so even than your average first-rate humdinger of a sea-disaster story; it's also an interesting piece of cultural criticism. In Philbrick's book, everything one has never really understood about Moby Dick---why Ahab was kicking up such a rumpus Continue reading]]> https://smokeandmirrors.cityofsmoke.com/archives/20/feed 0