Read the novels and forget everything else
hedgehogreview.com141 points by samclemens 6 days ago
141 points by samclemens 6 days ago
He is a completely flawed man. The books are borderline flawless (will admit when I reread them now I skip the last 2 or 3 because he clearly felt the creep of time and started killing off characters I loved deeply).
>O’Brian as “an artificer” whose work lacked the “frisson” one finds “in the presence of creative greatness”
Absolutely zero idea what that even means. The books are wonderful as escapist superhero stuff, as an entry into British history and as a study of human relationships. "Jane Austen on the high seas" isn't far from the truth. The books track an incredible friendship, a couple of hard-won marriages and the meaning of work. A lot of what I learned/ think about the management of multi-person projects is influenced by Jack Aubrey: you don't necessarily have to be right, but you have to decide if you're going to lead. And trying to manage a team larger than can fit in a longboat is a hard road to choose.
The article skips my favorite funny line, "Your friend has a singular genius for striking the wrong note."
I think the article is not doing a good job quoting the person who said that. You can more here and most of what she says is actually in appreciation of the work itself.
> It might well be argued that if the 20 volumes of the Aubrey-Maturin cycle were to be telescoped into one book, it really would rival War and Peace as a supremely grand historical novel. O'Brian's attention to detail is astonishing, his invention never flags, his characters are rounded, his plots are compelling and he is often wonderfully merry. His saga ranges the world through many years of history, and his prose can be beautiful.
Cutting twenty volumes down into a single, good, book would be a pretty superhuman feat of editing though and certainly not something that can be counted on to happen easily or at all.
In other words, the claim is essentially "I can imagine parts of this series appearing in one really good book".
I think the quoted sentence is basically saying his work is workman like and doesn't cause the chills that reading something truly great does.
(I don't agree)
I think she's betraying that her knowledge of his personal character colors her interpretation and experience of his work:
> Why, then, does his work not give me the ultimate frisson I get when I feel I am in the presence of creative greatness, and which constantly moves me as I read the pages of Leo Tolstoy? I think it is because in Tolstoy I know I am confronting fundamental truths, expressed in fiction that has grown organically out of human life, out of history, and out of the author's heart. In O'Brian, on the contrary, I am reading the work of an artificer, a contriver of genius and, well, a liar.
From https://www.theguardian.com/books/2000/sep/03/biography (link posted elsewhere, though not before I had to resort to using ChatGPT to dredge it up).
It’s that last line though. All three sound like uncharitable descriptions of the literal job of a fiction author. And all three have implied or explicit negative connotations.
I also recognized Jack’s incredible management skills! He knows exactly how to get the best work out of people and especially how to correct them without making them feel inferior or resentful.
This element of Jack very much comes from his admiration of Nelson. If you are interested in management at all, Nelson's style of leadership was ground-breaking.
Whereas Jack's feats trials and tribulations very much come from Cochrane. Almost verbatim.
Nelson and Cochrane were true heroes, the finest. Ant yet both had very visible flaws of character. I personally admire their achievements more than we criticise their faults...
I see Jack as his own unique character though. He doesn't quite have the talent for making enemies that Cochrane did.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Cochrane,_10th_Earl_of_...
Well Jack is great, but surely not in the same level. Nelson could do it all with one arm behind his back.
Can you recommend anything to read about Nelson that touches on his management?
It is difficult, a lot of it was very subtle, and I don't know a book that deals with it specifically. You would have to read one of the biographies, but to see how different it was to the normal conduct of an admiral would require you to read a little more widely.
I feel like I should write an article now.
Aspects that impressed me, off the top of my head.
1) constantly explaining his general strategy, so that one the fog of war decended Captains could act without orders
2) Giving Captains confidence to employ ingenuity. At the Nile a Captain saw an opportunity to break through the French line and attack from both sides. Many other Admirals demanded strict obedience
3) Praising all Captains rather than just his favourites in despatches. Being praised could make an officers career, conversley not being mentioned could really hurt.
4) Looked after his men. Sending constant orders on things like quality food. He was very soft on flogging. The men loved him. He was known for talking with his lower deck crew on familiar terms, which was unheard of in his day.
5) Took on risk himself. By the time of Trafalgar he had lost an eye and an arm. He led from the front.
6) Was supremely good at his craft. This engendered respect. Sailing a ship was incredibly technical.
I hope that gives you a flavour. The country loved him, and had amazing faith in him. When he left for Trafalgar the army had to be called out to try and contain the crowds!
One of his last words (there were quite a few) were 'thank god I did my duty'. Imagine that being in your mind when you know you are dying. That tells you a lot about his dedication.
And what he has in someone like Pullings as the details/ implementation man for Jack’s C-suite visions.
I loved the Peter Weir adaptation and was always hopeful there would be more, particularly with that ending leaving it open like that. I picked up the first book recently so that I could read through it on vacation. I do tend to agree with Jan Morris in that only people who knew the author have reason to care about his personal life. Of course there are limits, and given the author has been dead for 26 years and the events he is accused of happened 70+ years ago, O'Brian can no longer atone for his past misdeeds. I'm not certain if knowing that O'Brian was a horrible family man will change my enjoyment of the first book, but that remains to be seen. I may not even get through reading it due to other factors, anyway.
I was curious if his family ever wrote about him and his son Richard Russ did in below article. I think this gives a good insight into how his son felt about his father, and particularly how his mother felt until her death.
I think the best heuristic for separating artist from their work is: How much does the artist try to put their own personality into it?
Woody Allen films are very much soaked through with Woody Allen. I don't get the sense that O'Brian's books are to the same degree.
You have to question what of the person filtered through to their works.
As a teen I voraciously read my way through the Belgariad, and later the Malloreon, Elenium and the Tamuli.
Shocked to learn that Eddings and his wife were both convicted and jailed for child abuse prior to writing those novels.
I still like those books, and, for some reason, that didn't affect me. Other people, however, have. Science fiction/fantasy has a long, turgid history of weird and unsavory authors. I tend to ignore that.
I think books have a firewall between the author and the characters on the page. Actors, however, are a different matter. They are the medium.
I've always enjoyed H P Lovecraft and was disappointed to learn about his racism and xenophobia. AI tells me its was way beyond what was normal at the time.
The AI is incorrect. Lovecraft's views largely reflected the white societal norm, particularly the "scientific racism" of time, and they softened considerably near the end of his life. His letters from the time mention that several of his earlier depictions of race were unfair. If he hadn't died so young I suspect we would have seen a very significant shift in his views.
And, for me, it recontextualizes a lot of his writing knowing his racism. Who he thought "the other" was and how they appeared in his work is colored by who he thought the other was in real life.
Related, I read Lovecraft for the first time a while back and the xenophobia was so overt it was almost humorous.
The story was basically a police detective uncovering ritual cult activity by immigrants (from some unspecified place) in a NY slum. And the narrator (the detective) goes on and on about these strange foreigners and their dark skin, weird languages, heathen religions, etc.
But it only occurred to me after finishing that, though the reader is told from the start that weird cult stuff will ensue, the detective doesn't actually find anything nefarious until pretty late in the story. So with the story's timeline it's mostly just a cop being suspicious of foreigners for being foreign, until many months later he suddenly discovers unspeakable horrors of etc. etc.
You may be interested in the novella "The Ballad of Black Tom", which is a re-telling of "The Horror at Red Hook" from the perspective of the immigrants in the New York slum, and why they decide that maybe dealing with eldritch horrors is a better alternative than trying to reason with this detective that keeps on hassling them for no reason.
> AI tells me
You are using AI to form personal opinions?
<speechless>
The AI provided me links and a summary to Wikipedia and Blogs and Reddit posts. No different than any other google search would reveal.
I stopped after Malloreon more because my interests changed. Finding out their history hasn’t changed anything for me. But Marion Zimmerman Bradley for some reason has and I have no desire to read any of her books ever again.
I stopped reading Eddings because after a while I realized that all of these fun, bantering characters I so enjoyed were (except for Garion, mostly) truly awful people and that I didn't want to spend any more time with them. That was after I'd re-read them many times, and long before any revelations about the author. (Really, Polgara? Your reaction to being balked is to smash everything in sight? You haven't matured at all in your vastly long life?)
As for MZB, I agree completely. No desire at all.
WRT to O'Brian, though--it's clear, as the OP notes, that he knew his faults, recognizes them in his characters, particularly Maturin, and shows them for what they are. To put it another way, his faults don't "poison" his books from within.
I read Atlas Shrugged recently. I went in not knowing anything about the book or author. I liked it for maybe half way through and despised it by the end. Reading about the author after finishing the book, it had a lot of her personality in it.
I haven't read Master and Commander and likely never will after reading this article. I couldn't get over the bad taste in my mouth I don't think. Fortunate for you to have read the book before the article.
Too many good novels that weren't written by dispicable people.
I think it's a mistake to dismiss them just for that reason. He's been dead for 26 years, and you can get the books second-hand, so it's easy to acquire them while ensuring no money goes to him or his estate if that's what you're worried about. They're an absolutely fantastic set of novels, full of joy and adventure and excitement and humor and astonishing erudition.. Tom Stoppard admired him (as mentioned in the article) and Thomas Pynchon even wrote him into a brief scene in Mason & Dixon.
If I can find more media than I could ever possibly consume that a) I'll love to death, b) has a fan community who loves it with me, and c) is written by authors I don't viscerally reject, why would I ever compromise on those?
Vanishingly few works are so good, so life altering, that I'd need to set aside my qualms with the author to read them. Like, I'm sure master and commander is a fine series of books. I'm sure it's many people's favorite series. There's no lack of historical fiction out there though. And more of it is being written every day. It's not dismissing the work, but it's more like making it a low priority. Once I've consumed all the high priority media ahead of it, I'll read it, it's just.... the amount of high priority media is effectively infinite.
None of his personal failures leak through into his books. It's not like reading someone who injects their abhorrent philosophy or ideology into their book and you're worried it will rub off on you. Imagine if you found out tomorrow that the author of your favorite book ever was an awful person - I don't see why that would change how you feel about the book.
Anyway - yes there is a ton of content out there, more than enough for 100 lifetimes. If you have two hours and eighteen minutes the movie Master And Command: Far Side of the World does the source material good justice and is an excellent film in its own right. It's quite true to the books so it is probably a good predictor of whether you'd enjoy the books.
>c) is written by authors I don't viscerally reject, why would I ever compromise on those?
just curious, but how much research do you put into the background of any author to determine if their moral status matches with your requirements?
Really, the article referenced a few snippets of information, none of which is new. Its like the press only knew 5 things about him and they were all bad, so keep going.
I can't bring myself to be so judgemental. He once lost his temper in a restaurant, he left his wife (and maybe she was lovely, maybe she did something terrible), he wrote under an assumed name (and the point?). Which one triggered you? Is hardly a character assassination. His son from his first marriage was estranged, as if that is unique.
Do yourself a favour, if you like the arts, I seriously recommend not finding out what the artists are really like at home. I think you will find many are not the people they appear to be.
I greatly enjoy the pastime of understanding the various takes on the personal lives of artists. Many are quite pleasant humans. I read novels on the subject. "the private lives of the impressionists" by Sue Roe is a fantastic read. I came out of it with a passion for Renoir.
To answer your direct question, I find abandoning a fatally-ill child to be the straw that broke the camel's back. Take a look at the quote from the article in the top comment. He admits himself that the journalism is only the surface of his awful character.
But you don't know the circumstances? Just a statement, and one that may not be true. I've seen good people have a complete breakdown over a sick child. Maybe his wife asked him to go? Who knows.
>He admits himself that the journalism is only the surface of his awful character.
And we are to take it literally? That sounds like English self-deprecation to me.
>I read novels on the subject
If I write a novel that shows Patrick O'brien as a tortured genius whose family didn't understand him, and drove him away, presumably you would change your mind on him too?
Did the novel talk about Renoir's antisemitism? His misogyny towards female painters? His stubborness? His nostalgia for Bourbon France? His treatment of models?
See it's pretty easy to do a character assassination.
He's quoted as saying the truth is worse than the journalism, and you're brushing off the worst part as "may not be true".
It's relevant to the discussion that I care a lot about their romantic relationships ending amicably. It's not the least bit unusual for this to not be the case, and very much open to interpretation regarding their character, but I do care about it personally.
The flaws of Renoir bother me less. I think you or your source are off about his misogyny toward female painters. In fact, I enjoy his story for the very reason of his treatment of the women he was involved with romantically. Perhaps you're confusing him with Manet or Monet, both of whom were bad on that front (Manet guilty of being a womanizer as well). Regardless, even if he was, he was the least misogynistic of the original bunch (Manet, Monet, Pizarro, Degas, etc.), which is good enough for me.
[edit] congrats by the way, you've convinced me that my general outlook on the subject was flawed
I think it's not to absurd to view these books as his channel to redemption.
>And then it all went bad. The Daily Telegraph, following up on biographical discrepancy in a BBC documentary, uncovered proof that Patrick O’Brian…was not Patrick O’Brian.
About 15 years ago, I decided to know as little as possible about the musicians/artists/writers whose work I was consuming, because I didn't want my enjoyment of their work to be influenced or spoiled by what I knew about them (even superficial things, e.g., how they looked).
I remember mentioning that to a co-worker, when discussing a band I had just learned about and enjoyed, and he pointed out that by insisting on maintaining ignorance, I could be funding a very bad person. I figured if the person was bad enough, the information would get to me somehow.
The "human connection to the artist" is believed to be important by some, but I disagree. People tend to create an image of a musician and are too often disappointed because, for example, they disapprove of the musician's lifestyle (the expression sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll exists for a reason), or because of disagreement with the social or political causes the musicians support. Occasionally, fans follow an artist for their commitment to their art later to discover they sell out, like their style changes to pursue mass appeal, or they sell their work to become a jingle for sugar pops or similar.
I think it is best to appreciate an artist's creation and leave it at that. To quote a film, I think it is best to "separate the art from the artist".
I don't, especially when the artist flows into the art.
Take H.P. Lovecraft. Very big name in supernatural horror, created Great Cthulu and various other tropes that survive and are influential to today. Famously misogynistic and racist. Particularly on the racism side it's not really even fair to say he was 'of his time', it seems to go beyond that.
And it's all there in the fiction. Fear of the other, racist tropes about clothing and appearance and mistrust of women. The works are pretty amazing, he spins an atmosphere so well. His ideas of horrors beyond time and space are well realised (with a lot of emphasis on what is not seen) and his dreamy fantasy sequences really work and draw me into a dreamlike state. But they're all run through with racist stereotypes about people (or demons) with darker skin or racialised features.
Does this mean no Cthulu for anyone? I don't believe that's a good answer either, but I also don't believe one should consume the art in ignorance.
(And I very much enjoyed reading Lovecraft Country a few years back)
The interesting thing about Lovecraft is that, despite all those racist tropes you mentioned, he actually tried to make horror that wasn't about fear of falling down the evolutionary ladder. This idea was absolutely everywhere for at least 100 years, and Lovecraft definitely perpetuated it sometimes. But he did actually try to find horror in completely different ideas.
So, despite his own extreme personal racism, he probably managed to shift the culture away from at least one very racially-loaded trope.
Some authors are indeed very hard to separate from their work, and Lovecraft is one of them.
I still enjoy reading him, but I always struggle reading his passages about mongrels, halfbreeds or dark skinned people being evil or deceitful, because that's what he truly believed. So yes, it flowed into what he wrote.
A much less odious -- and better! -- writer who I also had trouble with was Jack London, who also wrote some racist descriptions of blacks and Native Americans, doubly troubling because he was a socialist.
I drink it all in. It enhances the art for me while making sure I sharpen my own ethics (“don’t ever wanna believe the B.S. this person did.”)
I couldn't really stand Lovecraft's style, but I'm with you. I'd read it like I read an ironic racist comment on 4chan and chuckle to myself.
I get what you're saying. The problem is that I cannot stand ironic (or otherwise) racists comments on 4chan, so reading it like that wouldn't be a saving grace for Lovecraft. I actually find 4chan more grating.
I appreciate Lovecraft, especially for the influence it had on other writers, on comics, tabletop and video games; and some of this stories are pretty good (e.g. The Color Out of Space, The Outsider). But it's really hard to swallow his racism and xenophobia, especially since as mentioned by others, it cannot simply be excused by saying he was "a man of his time". He was xenophobic even for his time.
I guess you have to have the right outlook for it. An ironic comment is (supposed to be) funny because it makes you think "haha, what if someone actually said that?" In Lovecraft's case there's no irony to it, so I think it helps to try to empathize with him. Why is he like this? He's not just some monster that hates/fears people for no reason. There must be a reason, and it's probably either his upbringing or his lifestyle. At that point, at least for me, it can no longer evoke disgust, and it just causes either pity or laughter, like listening to a flat-earther.
The problem with "ironic" racism in places like 4chan is that it gives cover to, and breeds, very real open racism.
"What if someone actually said that?" very quickly turns into people actually saying that. Arguably they already did.