April 4, 2005
BEAT TO QUARTERS:
REVIEW: of The Wine-Dark Sea (Elliott Abrams, National Review)
The O'Brian craze started in 1991. The last bad old review came in the New York Times in 1990, when its mystery/thriller reviewer, Newgate Callendar, referred to Mr. O'Brian's "long-winded, even turgid prose." It has been smooth sailing since then, however, and a front-page piece in the Times Book Review in January 1991 called Mr. O'Brian's books "the best historical novels ever written." It would perhaps be unkind to suggest that the Times reviewer was unfamiliar with War and Peace, but that is the league into which some reviewers are throwing Mr. O'Brian. How anyone can think these stories to be fiction of the very first rank remains inexplicable.Taken on their own terms, however, they are marvelous novels. Their most singular quality is the extraordinary, meticulous detail about life on a ship. Mr. O'Brian reports on the diseases and accidents by which men were plagued. Limbs are amputated liberally. Evenings with the ladies in port are duly followed by venereal disease. Lack of fresh water means that clothes must be cleaned in sea water, and undergarments chafe like sandpaper. The lack of privacy is oppressive. Then there are the ships themselves. The setting of sails for various weather patterns is described with absolute accuracy, and to a degree of detail that some readers may find tedious. For the uninitiated, each volume includes a diagram of a ship of the line showing everything from main topgallant to mizzen staysail.
All the stories are about the same two characters. Aubrey is a bluff seaman, while Maturin is an intellectual--a physician and naturalist. (Indeed, the books also show a brilliant eye for the flora and fauna of captivating locales.) Mr. O'Brian portrays something of the inner life of each man, and this is an achievement in the case of the less introspective Aubrey. They reflect on life and love, loneliness and courage, religion and politics. In this 16th novel in the series, both have begun to age. While being led through the Andes, Maturin reflects that whenever his guide "found that he had drawn more than a few yards ahead he paused to cough or blow his nose; and this was the first time Stephen had ever known consideration for his age to cause a young man to check his pace." (It is worth noting that to clear his mind and help his body, Maturin emulates the natives in chewing a ball of coca leaves.) And of Aubrey, steering his ship through frigid waters from the crow's nest, we learn that "several times the high-perched Jack Aubrey trembled . . . --literally trembled with extreme cold, weariness, and the grave tension of guiding his ship through this potentially mortal maze: he was no longer a young man."
There are few other key figures, though some very deft portraits appear in each volume: usually, crew members drawn briefly but with enormous skill. Like most sea stories, these are tales of men's lives, and women appear only very occasionally. In The Wine-Dark Sea, they are nearly absent. Aubrey and Maturin share the stage, but in these stories the focus is on what they do, not what they think.
These are not psychological studies, and it is not the examination of character that makes them popular. Nor is it some trendy reading of today's politics into the early nineteenth century. Indeed, such politics as is put into Aubrey's and Maturin's mouths is deeply conservative. When we encounter a French revolutionary called Monsieur Dutourd, Aubrey comments: "I disliked him from the start--disliked everything I heard of him. Enthusiasm, democracy, universal benevolence--a pretty state of affairs."
Lest this be thought Mr. O'Brian's caricature of conservative sentiments, Maturin later reflects on Rousseau and the French Revolution: "The confident system of his youth--universal reform, universal changes, universal happiness and freedom--had ended in something very like universal tyranny and oppression. The ancient generations were not to be despised; and the seaman's firm belief that Friday was unlucky was perhaps less foolish than the philosophe's conviction that all the days of the week could be rendered happy by the application of an enlightened system of laws." Not only the characters' views but Mr. O'Brian's own reject the enthusiasms of the day. Mr. O'brian has said of himself and his writing, "Obviously I have lived very much out of the world: I know little of present-day Dublin or London or Paris, even less of post-modernity, post-structuralism, hard rock or rap, and I cannot write with much conviction about the contemporary scene."
What Mr. O'Brian can write is adventure stories. Consider the plot line of The Wine-Dark Sea. No mystery here, for the very first page of the novel tells us that the ship Surprise, commanded by Jack Aubrey, "had set out on her voyage with the purpose of carrying her surgeon, Stephen Maturin, to South America, there to enter into contact with those leading inhabitants who wished to make Chile and Peru independent of Spain; for Maturin, as well as being a doctor of medicine, was an intelligence agent." From this plot line follow dangerous schemes and narrow escapes, sea chases and battles, a trek across the Andes, a ship hit by lightning and nearly destroyed.
It is all reminiscent of C. S. Forester's Horatio Hornblower series, which similarly is set during the Napoleonic wars and presents a series of adventure tales tracing the career of a British sea captain. There are important differences, though: while we first meet Aubrey and Maturin as fully formed adults, we meet Hornblower as a sea-sick young midshipman aged 17 and follow him through a Nelson-like career. We find Aubrey and Maturin engaging, but we come to love Hornblower. The heart of O'brian's books is plot; the heart of Forester's is Hornblower.
That the Aubrey/Maturin is obviously inferior to the Hornblower books does not diminish them in the least. Posted by Orrin Judd at April 4, 2005 2:19 PM
You, sirrah, are wrong. Hornblower is an insufferably pompous ass, one whose contrived "adventures" are barely worth reading.
(I shall send my seconds to call upon yours, if you so desire.)
Posted by: H.D. Miller at April 4, 2005 2:52 PMI think there's a typo. Inferious should read superior.
There really is no question. The Hornblower novels are great adolescent fare.
O'Brian's are the adult version.
Posted by: Jim in Chicago at April 4, 2005 2:53 PMIt is sad, though not uncommon, to see a critic let his homoerotic obsessions get the better of his critical judgment.
The Hornblower books are boy's books, and well-suited to that adolescent love of adventure and triumph we remember so well. The Aubrey/Maturin books are meant for adults, and the heroes are thusly shaped: they grow, they change, they suffer reverses and achieve great triumphs. Aubrey and Maturin, indeed, are crafted to have an intriguing lack of insight into their own selves while the characters are so finely drawn that we know them better than we know ourselves.
Hornblower sails from here to there, suffers some self-doubt, and then wins through in the end. Book after book. After book. Forrester's divertisements are well worth reading, but O'Brian's great work is funnier, more human, deeper and more profound than Forrester ever tried to be.
Posted by: David Cohen at April 4, 2005 3:02 PMoj, you are a contrarian of the first order. I tired of Hornblower two-thirds of the way into the series, but have read all 20 Aubrey-Maturin titles twice. You mention in the review, that Hornblower is especially suitable for young readers and that is an important distinction. O'Brian's novels are much deeper and more complex without sacrificing the action and adventure. H.D. I would be honored to act as you second in the above matter.
Posted by: Pat H at April 4, 2005 3:07 PMSee also the novels of Dewey Lambdin and Alexander Kent (Douglas Reeman).
Posted by: jefferson park at April 4, 2005 3:16 PMDe Gustibus, etc., of course, but let me suggest that Alexander Kent surpasses both O'Brian and Forrester. Kent was an actual RN veteran, whose duties included a long tour as curator of the HMS Victory museum, walking Nelson's decks, day to day.
Posted by: Lou Gots at April 4, 2005 3:19 PMDe Gustibus, etc., of course, but let me suggest that Alexander Kent surpasses both O'Brian and Forrester. Kent was an actual RN veteran, whose duties included a long tour as curator of the HMS Victory museum, walking Nelson's decks, day to day.
Posted by: Lou Gots at April 4, 2005 3:20 PMAlexander Kent is the same guy as Douglas Reeman? I've read both, but never made the connection. I rather liked Kent's Sloop of War, but I put the Reeman books (Last Raider, His Majesty's U-Boat, The Destroyers) into the good-but-not-great category. (You want ripsnorting WW2 sea stories? I recommend Nicholas Monserrat's The Cruel Sea and Adm. William Mack's South to Java over any of the Reeman books.
Posted by: Mike Morley at April 4, 2005 4:24 PMIt is impossible for me to appreciate novels where the heroes are thuggish imperialists on the same side as Metternich and the Tsar fighting the modernizing and liberating drive of Napoleon in Europe. The people wouldn't let the old aristocrats put the genie of freedom back in the bottle at the Congress of Vienna.
Posted by: bart at April 4, 2005 4:53 PMoj,
David:I win
The "conventional wisdom is always wrong" theorum, again? Why isn't it invoked when we all agree with you?
Posted by: Pat H at April 4, 2005 4:56 PMOrrin,
If Horrie's your man, another boy-to-man series set at sea in Napoleon's time is Kydd by Julian Stockwin. Great stuff for boys of all ages.
Now, if you will excuse me, I will prepare some Millers in Onion Sauce for dinner and check my investments in The Funds.
Ed
Posted by: Ed Bush at April 4, 2005 5:02 PMPat:
No, David referring to the Torquemada post had said I couldn't get him to rise to my bait. In point of fact, Allan Mallinson's novels are better than either of these.
Posted by: oj at April 4, 2005 5:08 PMOne thing that fascinates me is the way O'Brian has overcome some of the problems inherent in the historical novel. It is an absolute sin, in my book, to pander to the reader by having the protagonists think like we do now. Yet the spirit of earlier times tends to be quite obnoxious to us. (Not to ultra-right-wingers like me, but to lilly-livered liberal landlubbers.)
Consider how O'Brian deals with the subject of slavery. In Aubrey's time being anti-slavery was still very avant-garde, and it is very realistic and in-character for Jack Aubrey to consider slavery part of the natural order of things. But Stephen Maturin is an intellectual, and a passionate believer in liberty, (though now disenchanted with the French experiment) and so his intense hatred of slavery is appropriate, and does no violence to the story. Together they allow O'Brian to capture the time without driving away tender-hearted readers.
I love Hornblower, but he's in too many ways a man of the 20th Century. He likes a daily shower, and doesn't believe in bleeding the sick. Maturin will bleed a whole ships company if necessary, with the blood hauled away in buckets-full--and everybody feels much better afterward!
Posted by: John Weidner at April 4, 2005 5:41 PMI recently completed Mallinson's A Close Run Thing and I now have 3 more of his titles waiting their turn in the ever growing backlog. It read like an Aubrey/Richard Sharpe synthesis and was quite good.
Posted by: Pat H at April 4, 2005 5:55 PMOj sets a trap for David and we all fall in.
How bout those Tigers?!
Posted by: Jim in Chicago at April 4, 2005 6:05 PMObviously, I was refusing to raise to the bait on the Torquemada thread, alone. If I refused to comment on every post OJ puts up to get my goat, I couldn't comment at ... Hey!
Bart: If you're only going to root for the liberal democrats, who only ally themselves with liberal democrats, you're not going to be rooting much. For what it's worth, the A/M books are fairly contemptuous of the Russians, who kept switching sides.
Posted by: David Cohen at April 4, 2005 9:50 PMDavid,
I don't root much. But I am aware of French history and how the conditions of our ancestors improved markedly under Napoleon's Empire. OTOH, I love the novels of Louis L'Amour.
The appeal of Gone With the Wind, which sings the praises of thuggish Southern slaveowners and trumpets the glories of slavery, escapes me just as much as these dopey sea stories of the glories of Perfidious Albion.
Posted by: bart at April 5, 2005 7:13 AMThe Hornblower books are great. The few Aubrey books I've read are mediocre.
David said "Aubrey/Maturin books are meant for adults, and the heroes are thusly shaped: they grow, they change, they suffer reverses and achieve great triumphs". That can describe Hornblower as well, his wife dies and his best friend is killed for instance.
Posted by: Bob at April 5, 2005 10:11 AM