Wednesday, January 26, 2005

Where can you find Pleasure, Search the World for Treasure?

Originally published on Satanosphere

Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World had the audacity to be nominated for Best Picture by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences against that other colonated masterpiece Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. Thankfully it lost.

Whether the movie was actually worthy of being nominated or not is a debate for another time. I have not seen it yet, and having a strong dislike of Russell Crowe I won't be seeing it anytime soon.

Abhorring Russell Crowe, however, does not keep me from looking into the respected series of books from which the movie was adapted.

The late Patrick O'Brian wrote twenty books in the Aubrey/Maturin series before passing away in 2000. While nautical fans across the Atlantic were thrilled for nearly half a century, America wasn't able to get a taste until the 1990s.

Charmed and Mesmerized by O'Brians skill of cadence, British regionalism and pre-Napoleonic Naval cant fans were hungry for more and curious to look into his other sea-faring works outside of the series.

Those reading The Unknown Shore after already having a taste of Aubrey/Maturin are pleasantly surprised to find a somewhat rough draft of the two heros in the form of Jack Byron (Aubrey) and Tobias Barrow (Maturin). Toby had been raised Spartan as an experiment by Mr. Elwes: His entire life was Latin and Greek with Science and Medicine. The fine arts were to follow, but human nature being what it is the experiment failed. Toby Barrow is unbelievably naive in the ways of the world, he knows nothing of social graces (which at least serves him in that he knows little to nothing of embarrassment) and the house could burn to ashes around him without any acknowledgment so long as a new species of caterpillar can be observed. His seeming lack of natural emotion, contrasted with the character of his best friend Byron, makes me think of the relationship between another Captain and his Science Officer: Kirk and Spock.

The Unknown Shore follows these two as Tobias goes on his first maritime adventure in 1740. The Wager is part of a convoy secretly sailing around Cape Horn to engage the Spanish in Battle. The ship sees more than its fair share of action and humor before even coming in sight of the New World. O'Brian's style lends mirth to situations that wouldn't automatically call for a laugh. It's the UK phenomenon where arguing is hilarious and cursing is side-splitting fun provided a Cockney or Scottish accent is used.

The one major factor that inhibits a full appreciation for this story is my lack of understanding for basic naval terms. I don't know a jib from a quartermast from a square knot from a poop deck, and I'd dare say many other readers don't either. For all the different ships mentioned and described, my Mind's Eye provides only one stock image regardless of how many numbers of sails or rows of guns are given. During the action sequences during hurricanes and chases, when I'm told that the men are hoisting the foresail or turning the yard arms they may as well be swabbing the deck for the good it does me. Fortunately Patrick O'Brian's pace keeps it from becoming tedious or laborious and the many other sequences more than makes up for it.

That is, until the ship wreck off the unexplored coast of Antarctic Chile. The few chapters devoted to this tends to drag. In a way I could defend this change in style as being symbolic to the plight of the men. They run out of supplies, they run out of food. They drop dead like flies. When they can finally have a boat ready to row towards freedom, they use all their strength on little to no food only to have to give up at the end of the day (after barely surviving yet another storm) and return to where they started. Over the months their bodies waste away and their wits become nearly non-existent. Only when the few survivors miraculously return to Christian Civilization does the original pace and humor return (lending credence to my suggestion that it was purposeful).

If you tend to laugh at Monty Python or The Young Ones or Ab/Fab even when you have no idea what it is they're saying then this may be the book for you. Even if you're the type who won't bother with a book that bores you (referring specifically to the shipwrecked portion) it's worth it alone for the chapter where they cross the Tropic of Cancer and bleed the sailors per custom.

Blood, blood in the scuppers, blood tinging the sea, blood all over the deck, blood everywhere, blood under the tropical sun. Buckets of blood. There had been four buckets full, to be exact, carefully filled and set aside until the next should be brimming and ready to join them...

There had been the usual number of faintings, and a carpenter's mate called Mitchel, perhaps the most savage and vicious man aboard, had chosen to pass away into, upon and among the buckets that Mr Eliot and Tobias had preserved, for philosophical purposes: this accounted for the shocking appearance of the deck and for the look of vexation upon the surgeons' faces...

Tobias took the larboard man, Mr Eliot the other; the patient sat and presented his arm, the surgeon turned a handkerchief tight about it, picked a vein and lanced it, while the loblolly-boy held a basin. Mr Eliot used a large horse-fleam, Tobias a thin lancet; but there was no difference in the grave, detached zeal of their appoach. Jack wondered at it: there was something inhumanly authoritative about the way Tobias seized an arm, considered it and then with the utmost equanimity cut into the living flesh.

Bloody brilliant, which is why I'll be looking into other books from O'Brian in the future.

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