November 8, 2003
CATCH THE WAVE:
A Master and the World He Commands: Pondering Patrick O'Brian and his nautical novels, before Russell Crowe takes over. (MAX HASTINGS, November 7, 2003, Wall Street Journal)
Though O'Brian was English, the U.S. made him a literary star. At his home in southern France, he had been writing worthy, unprofitable novels and biographies since the 1940s. He published a half-dozen titles in the Aubrey-Maturin sequence--the first appeared in 1970--before a couple of big American reviews gave him lift-off. Thereafter the sequence became major best-sellers. Even the French, vanquished villains of the stories, learned to like them. Along the way, the British caught up.Now, thanks to Russell Crowe and a Hollywood spectacular, a new generation seems likely to embrace the books three years after the
novelist's death. It would be mistaken to suppose that everybody loves them. My friend John Keegan, the military historian, remains faithful to C.S. Forester's naval tales. "Nothing ever happens in them!" he complained of O'Brian's books.I can see what he meant. The action in O'Brian is far slower than in Forester. Yet herein lies some of the former's power. They move at the pace of their age, not ours. O'Brian's works reveal a mastery of the early 19th century's culture, nautical skills, language, politics, medicine, music and mind-set. Forester was a brilliant storyteller, but his Hornblower books merely dressed 20th-century characters in buckles and breeches.
It was Richard Snow--writing in the NY Times, -ESSAY: An Author I'd Walk the Plank For--who really fired O'Brian's popularity here in the States, and a very good thing it was. I'm with Sir John Keegan, a Hornblower fan first, but the Aubrey-Maturin books are remarkable in the way they seem they could have been written contemporaneously to the events they describe (well, the events actually tend to be few and far between).
ITV recently did a terrific set of Hornblower films, featuring the dreamy Ioan Gruffudd. One can only hope the new Peter Weir film version of Aubrey and Maturin is as good.
Posted by Orrin Judd at November 8, 2003 7:44 AMThere were a couple of years there in which the O'Brian books were the only fiction I read. I've read the whole sequence three or four times and certain selected books (they are not all equal) more than that. My only hope for the movie is that it is sufficiently different from the books, and it seems to be very different, that I'll be able to treat it as unrelated.
The Hornblower books are a series of sea adventures. The Aubrey/Maturin books are a single work, a Regency comedy of manners much of which happens to take place at sea. (I also have a theory that the books are best approached as science fiction that I won't bore you all with.)
Posted by: David Cohen at November 8, 2003 8:00 AMI for one would like to hear your science fiction theory. I finished reading the whole series for the first time just a few months ago and loved them.
Posted by: Kay at November 8, 2003 10:35 AMThe short form is that, if you approach the books as stories of an alien civilization using alien technology, then a lot of the otherwise annoying "at four bells grackle the cables and send hawsers to the foretop, then shake out a reef in the fore tops'l stays'l" just rolls off your back and lets you concentrate on the marvelous writing.
I just opened one of the books at random:
Martin had no useful suggestion to offer and they sat on in silence watching the sun until it sank behind the far headland; then they turned with one accord to gaze at the ship, which was going through one of the strangest manoeuvres known to seafaring man. Getting boats over the side, first hoisting them up from the skid-beams, heaving them outboard, and then lowering them down by tackles on the fore and main yardarms had always been a laborous business, acompanied time out of mind by a great deal of shouting, rumbling and splashing, compounded in this case by the Shelmerstonians' habit of yeo-heave-hoeing loud and clear whenever they clapped on to a fall. On a quiet night, with the air drifting landwards, it was possible that even from far out in the offing this din might wreck the most carefuly prepared and otherwise silent raid, and Jack Aubrey was trying to make the operation noiseless; but it went strangely against the grain, against all known habits and customs, and it rendered the hands slow, nervous and awkward -- so awkward indeed that the stern of the launch came down with a horrid splash while its bows were still a fathom from the sea, and the captain's enourmous roar of "Forward, there. Let go that goddam fall," filled the cove until it was drowned by an even greater howl of laughter, at first choking and repressed, then spreading uncontrollably, so that all hands staggered again.The Letter of Marque, at 157 (WW Norton & Company, New York, 1988).
Have I mentioned that the series is also profoundly conservative?
Posted by: David Cohen at November 8, 2003 11:35 AMDavid:
Why not write up your theory and we'll put it on the front page or in the reviews or both?
Posted by: oj at November 8, 2003 11:52 AMBy the way, "the dreamy Ioan Gruffudd"?
Posted by: David Cohen at November 8, 2003 12:05 PMIf he doesn't make your thighs sweat, you don't have a pulse.
Posted by: oj at November 8, 2003 12:17 PMPay no attention as I back slowly out the door.
Posted by: David Cohen at November 8, 2003 12:29 PM"Never let 'em see you sweat...."
Posted by: oj at November 8, 2003 12:36 PMDavid:
Everything you said about the Aubrey/Maturin series.
I have never read books so successful at putting the reader in the time and place as these.
Jeff Guinn
Posted by: at November 8, 2003 9:08 PMYou guys have it exactly right. I've been listening to the Books on Tape (unabridged) recordings (pretty far along, just started The Truelove).
Reader Richard Brown is perfect.
Posted by: old maltese at November 9, 2003 2:45 PM