At its best, McMurtry's work is on the level of Patrick O'Brian's: both have produced books in which emotional complexity, beautiful writing and the enormous adventure of history vie for the reader's attention.
It takes a fictionalized or invented excursion to buy a pencil in the winter dusk of London as an excuse to explore darkness, wandering, invention, the annihilation of identity, the enormous adventure that transpires in the mind while the body travels a quotidian course.
Miss May, on the other hand, speaks of having money as "an enormous kind of adventure".
"Above all," it ends, "I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal, on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been an enormous privilege and adventure".
Having taken inspiration from David Hume, one of his favourite philosophers, Professor Sacks said he felt "intensely alive" and described his life as "an enormous privilege and adventure".
He ended by noting, "Above all, I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal, on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been an enormous privilege and adventure".
But my predominant feeling is one of gratitude … Above all, I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal, on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been an enormous privilege and adventure".
I have loved and been loved … above all, I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal, on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been an enormous privilege and adventure".
I have loved and been loved; I have been given much and I have given something in return; I have read and traveled and thought and written...Above all, I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal, on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been an enormous privilege and adventure.
The book's legacy — and the legacy of Napoleon's Egyptian adventure — was enormous, prompting the half-century of Egyptomania that swept Europe.
In all cases, the stories told by those who returned (and, more grimly, the fates, known or unknown, of those who did not) helped create an enormous appetite for polar adventure.
