Comment by magicmicah85 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by magicmicah85 | Hacker News Reader

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.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/nov/28/fiction.film

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.

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.

What am amazing premise for a story, thanks for the tip!

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.

> 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.

Silk was always a bad person, but had the best dialog.

In the Sparhawk series, Faran was the likeable character.

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.

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