[In the plane] We hurried past the great bay at the northern end of Santo, down the eastern side of the island, well clear of its gaunt, still unexplored mountains. The morning sun was low when we passed the central part of Santo, and I can still recall the eerie effect of horizontal shadows upon the thickest jungle in the South Pacific. A hard, forbidding green mat hid every feature of the island, but from time to time solitary trees, burdened with parasites, thrust their tops high above the mat. It was these trees, catching the early sunlight, that made the island grotesque, crawling, and infinitely lonely. Planes had crashed into this green sea of Espiritu and had never been seen again. Ten minutes after the smoke cleared, a burnt plane was invisible. — James A. Michener evokes H.P. Lovecraft in the short-story “Wine for the Mess at Segi” from Tales of the South Pacific (1947)
Tag Archives: islands
Mullennial Mysterium
Mull (island) Arg. Malaios c. 150. Pre-Celtic island name. (The Oxford Dictionary of British Place Names)
Elsewhere other-engageable:
• Place of Glades — a review of The Oxford Dictionary of British Place Names, A.D. Mills (1991)
Performativizing Papyrocentricity #52
Papyrocentric Performativity Presents:
• Reds in the Head – The War of the Worlds, H.G. Wells (1898)
• Canine the Barbarian – The Call of the Wild, White Fang, and Other Stories, Jack London (Penguin American Library 1981)
• Star-Stuff – The Universe in 100 Key Discoveries, Giles Sparrow (Quercus 2012)
• An Island of Her Own – The Phantom Atlas: The Greatest Myths, Lies and Blunders on Maps, Edward Brooke-Hitching (Simon & Schuster 2016)
Or Read a Review at Random: RaRaR