Writing Arctic Disaster
Writing Arctic Disaster: Authorship and Exploration by Adriana Craciun Cambridge: Cambridge UP, $120 (hardcover); $70 (Kindle) Reviewed by Russell A. Potter In the wake of the renewed interest in the history of the Franklin expedition and those who searched for it, we are beginning to see two different -- yet complementary -- phenomena: First, a fresh effort to better understand what went wrong, and with it why the search still inspires such passionate feeling; and second, an emerging body of scholarship that points the way to a more critical consideration of the larger mythos of Franklin, and of Arctic exploration generally. Adriana Craciun's Writing Arctic Disaster is, as it were, the flagship of this second fleet, gathering together recent scholarly work and using it as the foundation for a reconsideration of the old myths and counter-myths that have, at times, trapped scholarly perspectives in an icy tomb just as unchanging and sterile as the graves of Franklin's men on B