Hurricanes: In Literature, Film, and Music
Posted by David Foster on August 27th, 2011 (All posts by David Foster)
I thought it might be fun this weekend, especially for those on the east coast, to talk about books/movies/songs in which hurricanes and similar events play a prominent role. For starters:
Admiral Hornblower in the West Indies, C S Forester. Features not only a hurricane, but a Marine bandsman who faces execution on charges of willfully playing the wrong note.
The Caine Mutiny, Herman Wouk. The troubled and inadequate captain of a WWII destroyer-minesweeper panics during a typhoon.
Big Water Rising, Tom Russell and Iris DeMent. A Mississippi River flood.
Lost and Found, The Kinks. Hurricane hits NYC.
More?
August 27th, 2011 at 11:25 am
Joseph Conrad, Typhoon. ‘Observing the steady fall of the barometer, Captain MacWhirr thought, “There’s some dirty weather knocking about.”‘
August 27th, 2011 at 11:32 am
One passage from Typhoon:
August 27th, 2011 at 12:06 pm
The Scorpions’ Rock You Like A Hurricane, on YouTube here.
August 27th, 2011 at 12:23 pm
A fine Bogart movie from 1948; “Key Largo”.
August 27th, 2011 at 4:59 pm
For a novel, “Trustee From the Toolroom,” Neville Shute’s last book. It is one of the four or five best novels about sailing I have found.
August 27th, 2011 at 5:15 pm
Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God uses the Okeechobee Hurricane that hit Florida in the late 20’s as a plot device.
August 27th, 2011 at 6:01 pm
John Ford’s 1937 Hurricane – with what must have been some complicated special effects as an entire island is washed away.
August 27th, 2011 at 8:14 pm
If you’re anywhere near the Shenandoah Valley in the next three months, come see The Tempest at the Blackfriars Playhouse in Staunton. In the first scene, you would see what a talented bunch of actors can do to portray a hurricane and shipwreck with nothing but a few ropes and a blanket or two, without even any lighting effects. (In keeping with Elizabethan practice, the lights stay on the whole time.) Highly recommended.
August 27th, 2011 at 8:27 pm
Nordoff and Hall’s Hurricane
If memory serves me correctly (it’s getting more difficult) BOTH movies are based on this book.
August 27th, 2011 at 8:36 pm
Hemingway’s “After the Storm”, short story, and, I think, recent movie.
August 28th, 2011 at 11:04 am
Pam Geller suggests Rain for hurricane cinema.
August 28th, 2011 at 3:17 pm
Jules Verne: The Mysterious Island. Civil War balloonists are blown off course by a hurricane.
August 28th, 2011 at 3:21 pm
‘The Far Side of the World’, Patrick O’Brian
August 28th, 2011 at 4:46 pm
While it doesn’t deal directly with a hurricane, Charles Dana’s “Two Years Before the Mast” has some great sailing scenes of their ship trying to return around Cape Horn and being repeatedly thwarted by storms at sea.
August 28th, 2011 at 5:42 pm
Also some good storm writing in Melville’s “White Jacket.”
August 29th, 2011 at 1:44 pm
How could I forget? In Walter Runciman’s Before the Mast — And After, there is a harrowing depiction of a tremendous gale in the Bay of Biscay that tossed a flotilla of steamships around like bathtub toys.