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Certain subjects in our popular culture never wear out. We seem never to tire of viewing, hearing, or reading about World War II (and the Nazis), for example, or the Civil War (and Lincoln), or the West (and Indians), or -- God help us -- Elvis.
Or the Titanic. About the sinking of that ship there is a continual stream of books and television shows and various kinds of projects. Just last summer someone tried to raise a multi-ton chunk of the fabled ocean liner, though the attempt failed and, with passengers on specially charted cruise ships watching nearby, the sea reclaimed its own.
Now this publishing season has brought us two novels about the behemoth's maiden, and only, voyage. In August, Farrar, Straus & Giroux brought out Psalm at Journey's End, by Erik Fosnes Hansen, a young Norwegian. I haven't read that, but if it is anything like Beryl Bainbridge's Every Man for Himself, which I have read, it is a very good novel, indeed . . .
