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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.
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 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.
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.
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.
>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".
> he pointed out that by insisting on maintaining ignorance, I could be funding a very bad person.
I don't consider that to be something worth worrying about. On the contrary, I find the obsession that some have with moral purity and not ever supporting the wrong type of person to be a serious mark of immaturity. Every person, without exception, is a collection of both good and bad traits. I believe that the adult thing to do is to encourage and reward the good, while discouraging and punishing the bad. When I support an artist's work, I do not thereby endorse everything that person does. I think that the desire to reduce everyone to "good guy" or "bad guy" (and acting towards them accordingly) is literally the sort of thing one would expect from a child, not an adult who has learned to have some nuance in thinking.
> he pointed out that by insisting on maintaining ignorance, I could be funding a very bad person
Does your friend use a smartphone?
He could be funding very bad people.
https://voiceofenvironment.com/2019/06/21/conflict-minerals-...
> O’Brian’s ear for dialogue produced some of his finest comedy. From The 13 Gun Salute (1989):
>
> “A lovely young woman indeed, Heaven,” said Jack. “Mrs Heaven, if I do not mistake?”
> “Why, sir, in a manner of speaking: but some might say more on the porcupine-lay, the roving-line, if you understand me.”
> “There is a great deal to be said for porcupines, Heaven: Solomon had a thousand, and Solomon knew what o’clock it was.”
>
> Or from The Yellow Admiral (1996):
>
> Stephen nodded, and with a curiously knowing look, his head on one side, he asked, > “Can you foretell the dark of the moon with reasonable accuracy?”
> “I believe so,” said Jack. “Her motions are of some importance in navigation you know, and we learn them quite early.”
I didn't get either of these jokes.
I got the second one.
Jack’s saying that since he’s a seafarer, navigating by the moon is important. It’s standard British-understatement-as-comedy trope.
"Porcupine" confused with "concubine".
Excellent books, full of understated spectacle and really excellent wordplay. If you get into them you may want to pick up "A Sea of Words" as a guide to some of the more esoteric terminology. Pretty much guaranteed you'll be stumped quite a few times in every book.
One of the great things about reading on the Kindle is that you can just highlight the esoteric words and the dictionary will explain it to you. Or you can use wikipedia if you need more info.
It's genuinely a great feature, especially when reading in non-native languages. (Can also translate the words then as needed)
> full of understated spectacle
The scenes with shipwrecks always stood out to me. One ship was lost during a storm with all hands, and he simply ended the chapter with something like "My god, 600 men..."
> really excellent wordplay.
I am a rather simple man, like Jack. One of my favorites remains:
“Two weevils crept from the crumbs.
‘You see those weevils, Stephen?’ said Jack solemnly. ‘I do.’
‘Which would you choose?’
‘There is not a scrap of difference. Arcades ambo. They are the same species of curculio, and there is nothing to choose between them.’
‘But suppose you had to choose?’
‘Then I should choose the right-hand weevil; it has a perceptible advantage in both length and breadth.’
‘There I have you,’ cried Jack. ‘You are bit – you are completely dished. Don’t you know that in the Navy you must always choose the lesser of two weevils? Oh ha, ha, ha, ha!”
-
I've found myself cracking up with Jack so many times. A truly excellent series that I'm actually currently re-reading :)
I had a similar author shock when I learned James Herriot’s books were not the autobiographies I thought they were but instead were the fictionalized compilations of stories from multiple veterinarians. I had such a great time reading the books as a young man and was dismayed to learn they weren’t authentic. I appreciated learning the truth but wondered if perhaps believing the lie would’ve been better for something relatively unimportant.
A practising vet introduced me to Herriot. He told me they were like PG Wodehouse but with animals.
Surely the enjoyment they provided was that counts: why stress out over "authenticity."
(Banksy comes to mind for some reason: he vandalises property over various causes and no one questions his authenticity. Does anyone think he's suffered like the caricatures he depicts?)
I dunno. In the case of Herriot, whose books I utterly love, I only half believed in my teenage years they were truly autobiographical (too funny, too neat to be true), and I wasn't surprised when I found they weren't. Well, they have some tidbits from his actual life, but yeah, a blend of multiple stories, some from others, some made up.
I still believe they are undiminished as books and enjoy them from time to time.
Some things hit harder when you know stuff from his real life, for example those stories about depressed people (I remember the story of the young man who takes his own life when his dog dies, and how cheerful he seemed) and then I read the real Herriot suffered from depression. So I guess he was somewhat writing about himself?
Also, somewhat contradicting what I said above, the stories might be fictional but they ring true of the English countryside and the farmers of the transitional time Herriot describes. That the stories aren't literally true doesn't detract from that. It's a bit like what American author Tim O'Brien explores in his writings, that verosimilitude can be as important, if not more, than actual truth.
Forgetting the infelicities of Patrick Russ is reasonable because he's both dead and his estate isn't (to my knowledge) funneling money from the sale of his books to odious causes. Would that I could say the same about other authors.
Sometime in the mid-90s, after I'd read M&C and the two following books, I heard Patrick O’Brian interviewed on the radio as I was driving to work in Sunnyvale. The interview included about 20 minutes of his reading from M&C.
After listening to him read for about 30 seconds, I pulled onto the shoulder of 101 around Ames lab, shut down my car and just listened to him. I'd never before heard someone give voice to the English language in what sounded to me as such a profoundly perfect form. I remember thinking that I'd love to have heard him read Shakespeare.
I appreciate the post. I had no idea he was such a flawed person, and it's illuminating to learn that. But it doesn't affect my happy memory of hearing my native tongue (if I may claim that, even though I'm American) employed with such superlative skill.
Maybe I should look into training an AI in the audio style of Patrick O’Brian and have it read Shakespeare for me.
> Maybe I should look into training an AI in the audio style of Patrick O’Brian and have it read Shakespeare for me.
This bothered me in ways I cannot currently put into words.
> Maybe I should look into training an AI in the audio style of Patrick O’Brian and have it read Shakespeare for me.
That's what you took away from that?!
That can be difficult, depending on who the "author" may be.
I still love Apple, even though Steve Jobs was a ... shall we say ... complicated ... man; but I have a problem, watching certain movies or TV shows, because the actors or producers got up to some unsavory hijinks.
Pretty much every single person whose name is commonly known or read about in history books is complicated in that way. Some clearly have no saving graces but most have some mix of admirable and unsavory qualities, especially if you judge them in their own time.
I read the books, and enjoyed them in the early 2000s. I was quite amused to see the article on O'Brian in Yachting World in 2004 when I was halfway through the series. I don't have a link to the yachting world article, but the BBC article seems to be a reasonable summary of what I think I remember reading in yachting world: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/3570988.stm
I think the yachting world and BBC article were following up on Tom Perkins original story published in latitude38: https://www.latitude38.com/features/O%27Brian.htm
Despite reading the entire series twice, I never understood the porcupine line. Can someone ELI5?
It’s Jack talking through his hat again. I think he’s trying to determine if a woman is married or not and when it turns out they having a roving eye, he conflates “porcupine” (no idea what a porcupine-lay might be) with “concubine”.
I've rarely read anything that had so many words I had never heard of!
I started reading the first book (and since stopped as I wasn't ready for the detailed nautical terminology), but one thing really jarred me was, in this section of very dry terminology when setting up a ship for sail, the use of the 'olde' terminology for 'cut splice'.
It's great that he uses the time specific terminology, but it threw me because I really wasn't expecting that word at that time.
It's become my favourite knot to reference though, because I'm still a child.
If you enjoyed that experience, read The Book of the New Sun, by Gene Wolfe (5 books, 1-2 and 3-4 commonly printed as combined volumes: Shadow & Claw, Sword & Citadel, The Urth of the New Sun). I re-read them this spring, and they remain among the top ~3 series I've ever (re-)read.
I liked Master and Commander, I still prefer C.S. Forrester’s “Hornblower” books.
Forrester is the Andy Weir of naval warfare with sailing ships. Even the tiny technical details are well researched.
I'm slowly collecting this set of novels from various second-hand book shops, and I'm looking forward to reading them in order, most likely some time in retirement. I'm happy not to know anything about the author, reading is all about the suspension of disbelief, so I will continue to let myself have that outlet.
The movie is one of my all time favourites.
I thought the movie was pretty good, but I really wished I enjoyed it more. I think the casting of Jack and Stephen both really didn't work for me.
I really hope they make more movies about them though.
I had no idea floccinaucihipilification was a real word. I saw it in a fake spelling bee for a commercial decades ago and assumed it was just a comically long fake word.
It was invented as a comically long fake word, but gained enough currency to be used in real writing, though in a tongue-in-cheek way.
It's a Latin calque. I'm sure the spelling should be floccipaucinihil... from pauci, few and nihil, nothing - you and the reviewer have used spellings that differ from this and from each other, but I doubt O'Brian did.
Was hoping this would be an essay saying they started reading novels - ideally classics - and ignoring all other forms of "media".
I'm afraid the examples of 'his finest comedy' are so 'dry' I'm missing it completely. My loss I guess.
You're not the only one.
I have read somewhere that there is a whole separate book that explains the nautical terminology used in the books, which was recommended as a reference to keep by ones side whilst reading the books. I wonder if it also applies to porcupine-lay or roving line.
I just ran it past an LLM and it provided a decent explanation. Also see @tclancy's reply to @jvandonsel: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49149969
I want to know, or care, about zero details about an artist, except their name, (so that I can find their other works). period.
I don't get this examination of the character of the man, an extremely private man, behind the books. I don't think he ever held himself as an example to people. He didn't claim to be a role model. He stayed private, so private that every time we see an article like that we just get the same tiny snippets. We have little idea what he was really like and frankly i have little interest. Great books, the end
[removed] made the mistake of assuming the contents of the article before reading it. My comment does not apply.
To comfortably indulge in all that, inherit old money.
Well after that article and these comments, I need to burn a lot of books, art and music that I once loved.
I used to love Millais' 'Ophelia', but he now seems arrogant and even bedded his patrons wife. The scandal. On the fire.
I used to love the Rolling Stones, but it seems they took drugs and held concerts organised by an organised crime group. On the fire.
Master and Commander was one of the most touching and uplifting reads of my life, all at a tragic time for me. But he left his wife, didn't like talking about his past and wrote under a book de plume, it seems. On the fire.
I loved Oscar Wilde's work, but the rogue was a jail bird, and very arrogant. On the fire
Can we compile an approved list of quality works from faultless individuals? I don't want to be sullied by their human faults...AI slop to the rescue
I find it difficult to understand the immaturity of not being able to separate the art and artist. It’s really not difficult. I think some of it is performative for signaling to one’s peers that they are on the “right side” of some issue or imagined virtue.
Good reminder.
As a percentage, most of my 'reading' has been outputs of frontier AI models. Need to increase my ratio of consuming human-written and human-produced text. Sometimes I fear drifting away from the 'core reality' of everyday life here in the US Midwest given how much I use AI.