October 4, 1994
The illustrations in THE PATRICK O'BRIAN CALENDAR 1995 from W.W. Norton are very handsome in a distinguished nautical way and will gladden the heart of most O'Brian aficionados. There are 8 paintings of sailing ships by Geoff Hunt, 3 pictures of odd botanical specimens from the Natural History Museum in London, and one beautiful reproduction of the Nile Medal, with a 2-page description of the Battle of the Nile written by POB.
There is one glaring omission, though. I have to wonder why there are no illustrations of Aubrey or Maturin, O'Brian's signature characters. This calendar is all sailing ships and beetles. I found it a bit disappointing--I'd have liked to see a couple of closeups of Aubrey and Maturin.
I must admit, however, that the dust jackets of the Aubrey/Maturin novels are equally impersonal. If you like the cover art of the books you already have, you'll like this calendar.
Spring 1994
THE WINE-DARK SEA, by Patrick O'Brian (W.W. Norton)
Patrick O'Brian's THE WINE-DARK SEA is the sixteenth in the series of novels set in the Napoleonic era that chronicle the adventures of Captain Jack Aubrey of the Royal Navy and his "particular friend," Dr. Stephen Maturin, surgeon, natural philosopher, advocate of Catalan independence, and agent for British naval intelligence. I had never read any of O'Brian's books until this year. At first I resisted the wave of publicity that greeted THE WINE-DARK SEA, feeling in an unexamined way that a novel set in the world of "wooden ships and iron men" was likely to be nothing more than a cut-rate derivative of C.S. Forester's Hornblower novels (which I dearly loved). As anyone acquainted with O'Brian's work knows, I was very wrong.
The Aubrey and Maturin novels stand on a level of their own. If anything, they are a greater accomplishment than the Hornblower novels. They mine the same romantic vein of seagoing adventure in exotic waters, beautiful passengers, politico-military intrigue, daring single-ship encounters, and glorious prizes, but O'Brian's is a more gifted, a more polyphonic voice than Forester's. I would hazard that O'Brian will speak more directly to many modern readers than Forester, whose style, although beautiful, is a bit too simple and unaffected for many modern tastes, raised, IMHO, to turn to film and video for pure story telling, and to the novel for insight into the minutiae of character. To put it another way: O'Brian is on a par with Updike.
I read most of the preceding novels in the series before reading THE WINE-DARK SEA. (BTW, apropos of the perennial discussion in r.a.sf.written: I read the novels out of order. I read the first one first, to decide whether I liked the series, and liked it so much that I was unwilling to wait for the volumes to cycle back into the Ann Arbor Public Library.) With that perspective, I must say that THE WINE-DARK SEA is not the best of the series. It shows a few of the signs of an aging formula: familiar characters persisting in familiar settings, despite internal logic that it would be time for them to move on; extreme situations recurring a little too often for credibility; and a hint of St. Elsewhere's Syndrome, in which the creator turns against and torments his creations. That being said, however, THE WINE-DARK SEA is still an outstanding novel by a great novelist. I recommend, however, that you begin with O'Brian's earlier novels--MASTER AND COMMANDER and POST CAPTAIN are first and second in the sequence.
Editor's Recommendations, Summer 1996In this inaugural edition of IBIC's Featured Books, I'd like to draw your attention to several titles which have helped to shape my life and thinking.
|
Comprehensive Table of Contents | Help
Copyright © 1996 Internet Book Information Center, Inc.
Send a Letter to the Editor