Dean King's PATRICK O'BRIAN: A LIFE REVEALED

Throughout life, O'Brian had been a consummate outsider: an intellect who had not gone to Eton or Oxford; an elite who was not from the upper classes; a citizen of the twentieth century who was more at home in the eighteenth. O'Brian was an Irishman who was not Irish; an Englishman who lived in France; a brilliant author in a spurned genre. He had even given up his family name and abandoned his family ties.

Recently I discovered that there is, at long last, a podcast devoted to the Aubrey/Maturin novels* that are so dear to my heart, and that is called, delightfully, The Lubber's Hole. I haven't listened to any of it yet, because of course I decided I wanted to re-read the whole series again and listen to episodes as I went, but before I got to that, I remembered that long ago I hit a big sale on nonfiction ebooks that included a biography of the man himself, Patrick O'Brian.

Having now read Dean King's excellent volume, I can conclude that Mr. O'Brian (real name: Russ. And therein lies a tale best covered in the book itself) must join the likes of Harlan Ellison on my mercifully-still-small list of Authors I Admire Utterly But Am Glad I Never Got To Meet. Because, well, look at that mug, for a start. There are people who do not suffer fools gladly, and then there's this man. Who would incinerate them with a fiery glance (which, doesn't he kind of look like David Troughton playing the Duke of Wellington in the Sharpe TV adaptations?) in nanoseconds, if that were a thing human anatomy would allow. 

And, as one quickly learns in reading Patrick O'Brian: A Life Revealed, he earned that face, both by how he interacted with others even from young childhood (which was an unfortunate one in many respects; he was not born into the happiest of families, for all that he did not lack for siblings) and by how his work seemed never to get its due until relatively late in his life. But ultimately, neither he nor we would want it any other way; he would not have achieved the attention and praise he did late in life by writing what was common or popular, and we, well, there are plenty of nice authors in the world (and I am lucky enough to know many, some quite well) but there was only ever one Curmudgeon of Coullioure,** and I, for one, forgive him his brattiness as fair exchange for his books.

I love a good literary biography and have a handful of favorites in the genre (Mary V. Dearborn's The Happiest Man Alive, about Henry Miller, and Victoria Glendenning's Vita: The Life of Vita Sackville-West are two that I've read to pieces and can almost quote by heart). I believe I'll be adding this one to the list, for if nothing else, it does what even these favorites of mine don't do very much of: look in on some of Patrick O'Brian's detailed processes. We don't see them firsthand, don't get a lot of descriptions of how his prose went from inspiration to final typescript, but we do get to peek in on correspondence between O'Brian and his various editors and agents over the years in which he passionately defends his choices of verbiage, the correctness of his research, etc, all while also making great wine, plowing and tilling and planting and harvesting and immersing himself so completely in the 19th century that even his edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica was one from the Napoleonic War era, the better not to include any anachronistic knowledge or ideas in his fiction.

We also get, delightfully, quite a lot of insight into his pre-Aubrey/Maturin fiction, and his work as a professional translator of no less than Simone de Beauvoir.*** And a pretty thorough (as thorough as possible under the circumstances, anyway) account of his time in World War II as a member of British Intelligence, which, yes, the guy who wrote the single greatest fictional spy of all time (I see you, Ian Fleming fans, and John LeCarre fans, but come on), Stephen Fucking Maturin, was himself a spy! Or at least an intelligence analyst! I had no idea!

And, of course, since just this last summer I read the biography of Noor Inayat Khan, I got to entertain myself with the idea that, while it doesn't seem their actual paths crossed, their work certainly did, as she was embedded with the French resistance while he was involved somehow with that nebulous organization on behalf of the UK. Or at any rate, his work chiefly concerned France...

Above all, Patrick O'Brian: A Life Revealed is simply an enjoyable read, whether you're an established fan of the man, or just thinking about having a look at him. I, for one, am now going to embark on another Aubrey/Maturin re-read with a lot of new insight for having read this, and I'm also planning to seek out O'Brian's non-Napoleonic fiction one of these days, as well, because Dean King got me very interested. Which a biographer should, if at all possible.

*Which, you may note, I haven't covered to completion on this blog. As I approached the end of the series on my first go-through, I found I couldn't bring myself to finish it (kind of like what I've done with rationing Philip K. Dick). Each time I re-read the series, though, I go one book closer to the end. Ah, me.

**My own coinage, as far as I know. Coullioure is the region of France near the Pyrenees where he and his second wife, Mary, settled down to farm, raise grapes for wine, and write books that are among the great treasures of 20th century literature.

***And of Papillon! Which means that I'd read Patrick O'Brian decades before I first picked up Master and Commander!