June 23, 1997

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COVER

A SENSE OF PLACE

Call him Gaffer. It’s Newfoundland for young boy. Like Ishmael in Moby Dick, the eponymous hero of Kevin Major’s powerful new novel, to be launched aboard the sailing ship Matthew on July 3, has no last name. When we meet him, he is an outport teenager, tormented by the death of his father in the 1982 Ocean Ranger oil rig disaster. By SANDRA GWYN13 min

BETWEEN COVERS

Dog-eared days

Stéphane Mallarmé, the 19th-century French symbolist recently voted Poet Most Likely To Be Mistaken for a Breakfast Condiment, once wrote: “ ... et l’hiver resterait la saison créatrice intellectuelle ” (“winter will always be the season of intellectual creativity”). By BILL RICHARDSON8 min