12/17/2023 0 Comments Poseidon adventuresThe Poseidon Adventure features one of the highest of high concepts: an ocean liner capsizes, and a small band of survivors must make it topside by climbing through an upside down ship before it sinks. While there are many tales to quicken the blood, even in a crowded field, Paul Gallico’s novel makes a lasting impression. In my humble opinion, there is little to compare to the drama played out on the stage of a distressed vessel’s desperately tilting decks. Whether its fiction or non, if there is a big wave, a breached hull, a race to the lifeboats as the water rises belowdecks, I am there. The ceiling of the companion-way which had paralleled the angle of descent now presented the only means of ascent, a slippery and precipitous slope of painted steel with lighting panels inset and flush, an unmanageable surface offering no grip or handhold of any kind.”ĭo you want my absolute, undivided attention?įrom the time I was five, and Robert Ballard found the still-dignified remains of the RMS Titanic on the Atlantic seabed, I have been obsessed with shipwrecks and sea stories. It had become simply a part of that nightmare in which chairs and tables hung from the roof and lights were thrown up from the glass floor.The steps now hung upside-down from the ceiling and the complete uselessness of their former functional capacity was almost as appalling a shock to their minds as the catastrophe itself.The handrails of polished mahogany and the brassbound vinyl-covered steps, instead of providing an easy rise to which they were accustomed, jutted out in an overhang above their heads. “In the chaos of the dining saloon they had not even been aware of the nature of what remained of the grand staircase, emerging at its widest point from the pool of oily water, its golden handrails and carpeted steps curving upwards to the ceiling where it looked so utterly different that none of them any longer recognized it for what it was. He died in Antibes on 15th July, 1976, just short of his 79th birthday. He was married four times, and had several children. He was a first-class fencer, and a keen deep-sea fisherman. He has lived all over the place, including England, Mexico, Lichtenstein and Monaco, and he lived in Antibes for the last years of his life. Apart from a short spell as a war correspondent between 19, he was a full-time freelance writer for the rest of his life. In 1941, the Snow Goose changed all that, and he became, if not a best-selling author by today's standards, a writer who was always in demand. Though his name was well-known in the United States, he was an unknown in the rest of the world. His first major book was Farewell to Sport, which as the title indicates, was his farewell to sports writing. So he retired from sports writing, and went to live in Europe, to devote himself to writing. In 1936, he sold a short story to the movies for $5000, which gave him a stake. But he had always wanted to be a fiction writer, and was writing short stories and sports articles for magazines like Vanity Fair and the Saturday Evening Post. During this part of his life, he was one of the most well-known sporting writers in America, and a minor celebrity. He also invented and organised the Golden Gloves amateur boxing competition. He became Sports Editor of the Daily News in 1923, and was given a daily sports column. But he had his story, and from there his sports-writing career never looked back. The results were spectacular Gallico was knocked out within two minutes. He was removed from this job as his "reviews were too Smart Alecky" (according to Confessions of a Story Teller), and took refuge in the sports department.ĭuring his stint there, he was sent to cover the training camp of Jack Dempsey, and decided to ask Dempsey if he could spar with him, to get an idea of what it was like to be hit by the world heavyweight champion. He then worked for the National Board of Motion Picture Review, and after six months took a job as the motion picture critic for the New York Daily News. He graduated in 1921 with a Bachelor of Science degree, having lost a year and a half due to World War I. He went to school in the public schools of New York, and in 1916 went to Columbia University. His father was an Italian, and his mother came from Austria they emigrated to New York in 1895. Paul William Gallico was born in New York City, on 26th July, 1897.
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