Read the novels and forget everything else
hedgehogreview.com
hedgehogreview.com
>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 don't agree)
> 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).
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_...
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.
> 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.
In other words, the claim is essentially "I can imagine parts of this series appearing in one really good book".
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.
Too many good novels that weren't written by dispicable people.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
>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.
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
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.
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 think books have a firewall between the author and the characters on the page. Actors, however, are a different matter. They are the medium.
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 are using AI to form personal opinions?
<speechless>
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.
In the Sparhawk series, Faran was the likeable character.
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.
Does your friend use a smartphone?
He could be funding very bad people.
https://voiceofenvironment.com/2019/06/21/conflict-minerals-...
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".
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)
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 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.
"What if someone actually said that?" very quickly turns into people actually saying that. Arguably they already did.
I once saw a couple of guys looking at jeans, one of them picked up a pair of acid pink jeans, saying to his friend "Hey, do you think I could wear these ironically?"
It doesn't matter - If you like them then buy them, wear them. Wear them ironically, wear them seriously. At the end of the day you're still going to be a guy wearing pink jeans. Own that or don't.
Pretty short-sighted.
Because if not, I submit this comprehensive retort - “no yuo!”
So, despite his own extreme personal racism, he probably managed to shift the culture away from at least one very racially-loaded trope.
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.
One of the powers we have in this capitalist world is to decide where our money goes. If there's a decent chance it'll end up perpetuating something I find massively objectionable, it's my choice not to fund that.
Beyond that it's not just about reducing everything to good or bad, it's also about understanding the context of the works you're consuming. Sometimes the author's life, prejudices and mores seep into the work, and put a new spin on the characters and scenarios.
“I believe that almost everyone fails to completely understand how badly they need the people they can’t stand.”
— Jason K. Pargin: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3GzrYI8Tj4>
- Kermit The Frog: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRZ-IxZ46ng>
Eh, I'm not watching a video to see a quote from someone I've never heard of and have no particular reason to value.
And whatever he might have to say, I'm not reliant on the work of a specific author, which is the context here.
Nor do I buy into "you can't survive without relying on/funding some people you disagree with therefore you shouldn't seek to act consistently with your own ethics in any regard" as a philosophy.
Your loss.
> Nor do I buy into "you can't survive without relying on/funding some people you disagree with therefore you shouldn't seek to act consistently with your own ethics in any regard" as a philosophy.
But what exactly is your ethics here? Is it that nobody should rely on people who have done something bad? If it is, then how should these condemned people live? And if not, would you then happily allow other people to rely on them, without decrying those people, as well?
Seems unlikely. I'd have read an argument but I don't generally consider links-to-youtube to be an argument.
> Is it that nobody should rely on people who have done something bad?
My point is it's not impossible to make ethical choices about spending, even in a world where you don't have full control.
The idea that it is wrong to make ethical decisions about how to spend your money, time or attention, either because the system we live in makes complete consistency impossible or because of some notion that we might force people judged as bad to starve, is just so bizarre.
A thread here the other day covered several brands of "Italian" or "Australian" tomato paste in Australia that have been caught using Chinese tomatoes, which are largely from areas we know use forced labour. I don't approve of forced labour and I'm willing to pay a little more to avoid contributing to that. If enough others join me, it might make a small difference. By directing what economic activity I can to products from nations with good standards of worker rights, I hope I help keep slavery-free products viable, until such time as we get a government with a backbone.
But am I boycotting everything made in China? Could I even conceptually avoid using all Chinese products when they're literally everywhere? No, that seems very unlikely to even be possible in this day and age. But I don't consider that the inability to do that negates the choices I make where I can. Your quote makes it seem like you do think that? All or nothing? Go live in a locally made yurt and grow your own food or just give up?
> If it is, then how should these condemned people live?
Well if there's no more profit to be had in selling the output of indentured servitude, it might stop? And these "condemned" people could do something else to make a living rather than being slavers?
If a particular author was known to be (for example) funding white supremacist groups, am I supposed to feel guilt that I might not buy their book? Why? They need to eat? Maybe they could stop the funding then?
Now, where your specific red lines are is going to be variable, and where it comes to artistic output things are always blurry. But I still don't think it's wrong to ask "Where is my money going? What second order effect is this purchase having on the world?"
An author who abandoned his family and lied about large parts of his life is clearly not a good person. Whether that puts you off reading them is up to you. I still (occasionally) reread HP Lovecraft, with the knowledge he was a pretty godawful racist, even for his times, and so is some of his work. That said, buying a book of his isn't going to fund him or his views these days, as there is no identifiable estate.
Boycotts are, as I understand it, only a way for you to feel that you still are morally pure. But the counterargument is that it is impossible to be actually morally pure. When you last needed, say, a plumber, did you know how they voted before you engaged them? How does your electricity company CEO vote? How about your local grocery store cashier? If you would actually go though every single thing and person that you depend on, and boycotted every one who is a terrible person or organization, you would not be able to live.
Therefore, boycotts are doubly bad: They don’t accomplish anything, but they feel useful, and therefore they rob you of any incentive or energy to do anything actually useful, like changing relevant laws. Also, many people go at least one step further, and denounce people who simply do not participate in their pet boycotts.
And doing so certainly wouldn’t make me less likely to vote for a party promising to address the issue.
And I mean, isn’t this just how capitalism works? Buy stuff you want to see more of? Don’t buy things you don’t like. I try to buy local when I can, because I like local produce and I want the local economy to thrive. It’s just taking an active role in the feedback mechanisms that exist around us and deciding where you want to put your very small level of personal influence.
> can you name a few, or even one, consumer-level boycott in, say, the last 50 years, which actually accomplished its goal?
The Bud Light Boycott of 2023 springs immediately to mind. Not that I agree with the people doing the boycotting, or would drink bud light anyway, but it certainly made the company backpedal.
> Boycotts are, as I understand it, only a way for you to feel that you still are morally pure
Then I guess you don’t understand very much, and you certainly don’t understand my posts higher up if you think I’m demanding moral purity of myself or anyone else.
To me, this all just sounds like a justification for your own lack of conscientiousness.
Your individual boycott accomplishes absolutely nothing. Even the total number of people participating in this boycott will not change a single thing.
> The Bud Light Boycott of 2023 springs to mind. Not that I agree with the people doing the boycotting, but it certainly made the company backpedal.
Unlikely, since, from what I hear, the brand everyone switched to was owned by the same company. The most a boycott can accomplish is a public statement, no actual change. Also, this statement was a result of the publicity, not the boycott itself. The company fought publicity with publicity by making a public statement of their own.
> you certainly don’t understand my posts higher up if you think I’m demanding moral purity of myself or anyone else.
You did say that those not participating in boycotts should be held “accountable for ones choices and their effect on the world”.
> To me, this all just sounds like a justification for your own lack of conscientiousness.
No personal attacks, please.
Incorrect. I've already explained why. The simple act of making choices in capitalism has an effect on the markets you participate in.
> Unlikely
But a factually true and well documented answer to your demand, which itself was little to do with my arguments, but I produced one anyway like some sort of performing seal.
> You did say that those not participating in boycotts should be held “accountable for ones choices and their effect on the world”.
Nope, certainly did not. And you're the one obsessed with boycotts, purity, "condemned" people and other such hyperbolic statements.
> No personal attacks, please.
You first eh?
At this point I'm done with this conversation and your persistent misrepresentation of what I'm saying. Have a nice life.
But knowing about the artist can still inform views about the art.
It can’t apply to all scenarios. But that struck me as an important thing to consider. Sometimes people get out of the consequences by using the riches they accumulated by being bad.
P.S: I was writing it as a response to the my parent comment. I haven’t read C&G books and don’t know this author.
>
> “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.
Jack’s saying that since he’s a seafarer, navigating by the moon is important. It’s standard British-understatement-as-comedy trope.
Imagine that you were in a big meeting and you wanted an excuse to leave, so you whispered to your co-worker "Do you think my phone can receive messages in this room?" And he replied "Phones are the foundation of modern telecommunication infrastructure and we're in a large city, I assure you that you will promptly receive any messages that are sent to you."
Even charitably, we’d have to be super familiar with everything the author has written to understand than Heaven could mistake porcupine for concubine.
It's genuinely a great feature, especially when reading in non-native languages. (Can also translate the words then as needed)
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 :)
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 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.
I have seen statistics which state that vets more likely to commit suicide than GPs.
And the story about the young man and his dog rings true. A close friend always breaks up when he remembers how he had to put down his dog due to cancer.
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.
This bothered me in ways I cannot currently put into words.
That's what you took away from that?!
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.
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
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/lay
See 3b under its noun definition.
So: “Why, sir, in a manner of speaking: but some might say more on the porcupine-lay, the roving-line, if you understand me.”
Translates to: “Why, sir, in a manner of speaking: but some might say more on the concubine-occupation, the roving-line [of work], if you understand me.”
Then Jack, not wanting to embarrass Heaven for his malapropism, intentionaly reuses "porcupine" incorrectly.
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.
Forrester is the Andy Weir of naval warfare with sailing ships. Even the tiny technical details are well researched.
The movie is one of my all time favourites.
I really hope they make more movies about them though.
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.
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 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 feel pretty confident that I could describe to you a case (either real or hypothetical) where you would reject an artist based on their personal behavior, rather than their art. You would find it quite difficult in such a case to separate the two.
So the question is where to draw the line, and everyone answers that question differently.
I myself am far from innocent of this. For more than 20 years Polanski has been, and in many ways still is, my favourite film maker. Repulsion, Tenant, Chinatown etc. are masterpieces of cinema. But they are inherently, even on plot level (at least in the case of Chinatown) intertwined with the horror of his actions. There is no virtue signalling in my personal connection to his set of work (who would even care anyway), but for me to continue pretend I know nothing about his behaviour or that it doesn’t directly inflect upon his work would be deeply dishonest.
Polanski R is not the same thing. He drugged and raped a child and was defended for decades by people who ought to know better because of his directorial genius. I don’t dispute that genius. I just can’t watch his movies again without feeling a little sick.
All of this to say, judging Polanski for being a monster is not the same as judging PO’b for being a jerk. I reread the Aubrey-Maturin novels every four or five years and they enrich my life on every occasion. And I don’t feel even slightly bad about it.
(Disappointingly, I did lose an argument over a big family dinner several years ago when it turned it that tracklement is a neologism. Imagine my embarrassment!)
There’s artist with whom we can “forget everything else”, then there’s not. Where one draws the line, well, I suppose that up to one’s own discretion, but I would recommend offering a serious thought on where oneself draws the line.
While writing this, I dug out a Reddit thread about the book, where one of the participants (YakSlothLemon FTW!) hits us with Wagner. Well, yes, game over. I'm not a fan of that sort of (to my ears) overcooked opera, but if you like it, play it. The dirtbag isn't getting any royalties because he's good and dead.
Interesting example. There is more credible evidence of parents of “his child friends” being in it for a cash grab than actual wrong doing.
Evidence was your bar there.
Dismissing all the evidence requires wilful ignorance and kind of compartmentalisation I was talking about. You are just cherrypicking facts to fit your world view, or more likely, you let someone else to do it for you, as so many people are today. And that is a very dangerous road to take.
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.