vacation reading

On this trip, I’ve brought along an omnibus edition to read, The Young Hornblower, consisting of the first three Horatio Hornblower books (Mr. Midshipman Hornblower, Lieutenant Hornblower, Hornblower and the ‘Hotspur’). They’re diverting enough, but there’s an odd temporal disconnect. The books describe life in the Navy during the Napoleonic Wars, but they were written in the 1950s or so and use the language of C.S. Forrester’s youth, pre-WWI. All of the sailing terms and maneuvers are correct for the time as far as I can tell (which is to say, not very) but Hornblower thinks in the language of an Edwardian.

I’m enjoying the books, but from a learning perspective the main effect so far is not to illuminate the time under discussion but to make it plain how Patrick O’Brian might have conceived his own series. “This is absurd,” he thinks, “Much more sensible to write the books consistently, in the language of the time in which they’re set.” Only that separates Captain Aubrey by two hundred years from his readers, and so he conceives Stephen Maturi as a foil, a character entirly ignorant of Navy ways who can serve as proxy for the reader’s ignorance. et Maturing, to, must be of his time for the whole thing to hang together, and as O’Brian fleshes him out the demands of his positions and his passions, and the resolution between the two, eventually forces him to become a far more complex character than his friend Aubrey. Aubrey imself is a far more simple character than Hornblower, and the more belivable for it, but it’s the foil of Maturin that reflects him in ways that are capable of forming a bond with a modern reader.

Among the many benfits of getting to meet Maria in person after knowing her for years was a literary one. Amazon UK has been postponing shipping Peg Kerr’s Emerald House Rising to me for some time. Maria, who had finally found a copy after several tries, offered to loan me her copy if I’d promise to mail it back. Of course I promised; it’s not easy for me to get to the post office, but definitely worth it with a lure like that. The book has an underlying theme of doing what you think is right, no matter what you think others expect. I finished it wondering how often authors write the message they themselves need to hear; Peg strikes me as one of those who too often put everyone else’s needs before her own. I may have been a little smug, even, thinking that as much as I, assertive I, appreciated the reinforcement it’s surely not something I need reiterated. Then Rudder and I had a, er, discussion that night in which he told me that from his point of view, I often give up what I want for what I think he wants, even when he doesn’t really have a strong preference. Girl-socialization: it’s a powerful and sneaky thing.

During the trip we bought a couple of books at the Fram Museum, one Amundsen’s account trip to the South Pole and one on Shackleton’s incredible escape from Antarctica, written by one of the men who went with him the whole way. I expect to enjoy the latter more just based on writing style, though I do think Amundsen is not as charmless as he’s often portrayed. (Scott’s competing expedition was so incredibly heroic, if completely boneheaded stupid in many respects, that he gets all the glory. It’s true that there are few braver words ever uttered than “I am just going outside and may be some time.”) Antarctic exploration stories in general have a whole different level of impact since we saw the place, even though we just tasted the tip of it, traveling along the Antarctic Peninsula. (One thing we’d love to do while we’re in Asia, if we can swing the time and money, is to go back, this time leaving from Tasmania or the tip of South Africa and going to the Ross Ice Shelf.)