Arts & Letters

I’ve read enough novels influenced by this series, particularly ones billed as “Horatio Hornblower in Spaaaace”, that I figured I should at least give the first book a shot. Beat to Quarters (aka The Happy Return – a rare instance of the original British title being worse than the American one) was C.S. Forester’s introduction to the character and the first novel published, but as he fleshed out the series, he delved backwards into Hornblower’s history as well, such that this is actually the sixth novel in terms of the series internal chronology.

The novel opens with Captain Hornblower being ordered by British Admiralty to South America in order to form an alliance with rebels (led by a madman who fancies himself as a god) against the Spanish colonial government. Along the way, he encounters a larger Spanish warship, is obliged to take on Lady Barbara Wellesley (the sister of the Duke of Wellington) as a distracting passenger, and must deal with the shifting allegiances of the Spanish government.

Forester was clearly an influence on other writers operating in a similar milieu. When it comes to my little Salty Sea-Dog project, Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin series was clearly seen as an heir to Forester’s Hornblower series, has many similarities, and as such, makes for a good point of comparison. Which is to say, Forester’s approach is significantly better than O’Brian’s.

Superficially, these books are quite similar. British naval tales set during the Napoleonic Wars with elements of restrained British romance sprinkled throughout, I must say that Forester’s take on this demonstrates a much better sense of storytelling and page turning ability. O’Brian’s books are quite episodic in nature, and Forester also has a bit of this, but does so in a much more fluid manner, with one episode leading to the next, building in tension and scope as we go along, eventually reaching a suitable climax. O’Brian’s tales felt perfunctory and anticlimactic to me, while Forester provides a better sense of pacing and escalation of stakes.

Forester clearly knows his seafaring stuff, but does not feel obligated to overburden the story with jargon in the way that O’Brian tends to do. His prose is direct and clear, and while the whole affair retains a typically British stiff upper lip, the characters are relatable and their travails lively. Despite what I’ve always thought of as a silly name, Horatio Hornblower himself is a bit gruff in this first entry in the series, but he softens a bit as you get into his head and see why he makes the decisions that he does (even as he’s filled with self-doubt, something I typically don’t love in a story like this, he’s ultimately quite competent and decisive). He’s certainly faced with a series of difficult dilemmas throughout, and there is one big sequence of naval warfare that is extremely well executed (again, Forester balances the technical aspects of the battle with a page-turning, character-based approach that flows more readily than O’Brian’s jargon-heavy exposition).

I’m definitely interested in continuing the series, always a good sign, and indeed, I might even revisit some of the aforementioned SF renditions of this sort of thing. I’ve already read all the Vorkosigan books, but I might have to check out more of the Honor Harrington series (or watch some Star Trek or pick up another book series, there are a lot of options…) There’s also a decently regarded 1951 film adaptation of this first novel, under the title Captain Horatio Hornblower, starring Gregory Peck and directed by the fittingly eyepatched Raoul Walsh that I shall have to check out at some point (apparently there was a TV series as well, but that does not appear to be widely available).

So ends my Salty Sea-Dog Era of reading, though it will live on as I make my way through more of the Horatio Hornblower books (I already have the next one sitting on the shelf, so this is not an idle threat). Altogether a worthy exercise, and it’s funny, I just picked up a collection of Edgar Allen Poe stories to kick off my Six Weeks of Halloween reading and the first story is, fittingly, a salty sea-dog story. So perhaps there are more salty sea-dogs in my future than I originally thought.

A few months ago, I embarked upon my Salty Sea-Dog Era of reading, have been reviewing the progress thus far, and so we come to Moby-Dick. Herman Melville’s sublime, layered exploration of obsession and vengeance may be the most famous American novel ever written, and as such, the prospect of reviewing something people have themselves been obsessing about for well over a century is somewhat daunting. In an early review, London publication Morning Advertiser‘s anonymous reviewer opined: “To convey an adequate idea of a book of such various merits… is impossible in the scope of a review.” There is little to be said about Moby-Dick that has not already been explored ad nauseum, but I spent a couple months reading the damn thing, so I should probably record some thoughts, if only for posterity.

I used the words obsession and vengeance above as a shorthand for the themes of Moby-Dick, and indeed, they are quite prominently featured in the text, but the thing about Moby-Dick is that it’s notoriously difficult to pin down. Like the sea that Melville aptly describes throughout the novel, there are numerous thematic undercurrents and tidal forces at work underneath the surface levels of the novel.

Take obsession, one of the more obvious and famous themes of the book, usually attributed to captain Ahab’s mad quest for revenge on the white whale that took his leg on a previous voyage. It’s certainly presented early on, but quickly takes a back seat to another form of obsession; that of Melville’s interest in whales and whaling. We’re frequently presented with an almost non-fictional survey of knowledge about whales, ranging from an analysis of historical artwork used to depict whales, to a catalog of mythological references to whales (including from Greek, Roman, Hebrew, and Hindu literature, with obvious focus on the story of Jonah), to various culinary considerations (including this bit of irony in Chapter 65: “Stubb, he eats the whale by its own light, does he? and that is adding insult to injury, is it?”), to biological taxonomies of whales, to countless other digressions on the art of whale hunting. Only a man in the grip of obsession could compile and write such a thing.

So it goes with other various themes. Ahab’s fruitless thirst for vengeance is infamous, but while it is brought up early on, it only becomes truly prominent during the final sequence of the novel. Melville, though, is clearly concerned with epistemology and perception; with the difficulty of observation and knowledge. This is demonstrated through his aforementioned digressions on non-fictional topics, many of which may seem a bit quaint to modern audiences. We’ve grown up with exquisite underwater photography of all manner of sea life, not just whales and sharks, so it’s easy to underestimate how difficult it was to piece this sort of thing together in 1851, when Melville was talking about old paintings as the primary source of what a whale looks like. Also interesting are Melville’s love of seafaring, defense of whaling, and justifications of its excess. Whole chapters are devoted to such, and surely caused an escalation in the hot take industrial complex of its day. I could spend years cataloguing the themes of Moby-Dick, probing and teasing out theories on religion, race, philosophy, and the like (this sort of inspired study in its readers being, in itself, yet another layer of the theme of obsession).

As you might gather from the above, this is not exactly an easy-going read. The overarching story itself is quite simple, but the language and style are complex and frustratingly beautiful at times. There’s an almost poetic, dreamlike quality to the whole affair that is difficult to pin down, and can lend itself to an trance-like reading state. You read a page or two, realize that you have no idea what’s going on, but then when you go back and reread the page, you find that you’ve absorbed it in some ways, but not in others. It’s a very odd and challenging read in that way, and I must admit that I’m sure some of this went over my head.

Another stray thought about the numerous digressions in this book: I don’t want to hear anyone complain about Science Fiction’s propensity towards info-dumps ever again. Sure, most SF writers don’t have the facility with language and stylistic prose that Melville does, but if this book can spend hundreds of pages going off on non-fictional tangents and yet still be one of the canonical candidates for Great American Novel, so can Science Fiction. If Nostromo represents literary fiction’s propensity towards worldbuilding (a la high-fantasy epics like Lord of the Rings), then Moby-Dick represents literary fiction’s propensity towards info-dumps and tangents (a la science fiction epics like Dune or Neal Stephenson’s entire bibliography).

One final note on editions. As a book in the public domain, Moby-Dick is available in numerous different editions, including plenty of free digital copies. I looked around and settled on the Third Norton Critical Edition, mostly because it contains a huge amount of supplementary material. And the material is great! Like Melville’s obsessive study of all things whaling, people have been hunting down supplementary materials like Melville’s correspondence, biographical material, and even old reviews from nearly forgotten publications. New material is still being discovered to this day (or, at least, until 2018, when this edition was published), and while my “obsession” with has not reached the fervor with which those who compiled this information have, I did sample some of it, and it’s quite interesting. That being said, this book is almost certainly not the greatest. In particular, the paper it’s printed on is way too thin, making it difficult to handle and more importantly, some of the ink bleeds through to the other side, making it difficult to read. As already mentioned, there are countless other editions that are invariably cheaper than this one, so if you are going to read Moby-Dick, I suggest maybe seeking them out. If you become obsessed and want an exhaustive resource of supplementary material, then maybe jump on that Norton edition.

A few months ago, I embarked upon my Salty Sea-Dog Era of reading and now we review progress. I’ve already covered Joseph Conrad’s Nostromo at a level of detail that I probably won’t reach in this post, but I will be covering several books, so there is that. Let’s get to it:

Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson – There are books that are archetypal to certain genres or sub-genres. Books with outsized influence on all that come after it. They may not be the first to cover a certain topic, but they are always in the conversation whenever someone tackles the subject. Such is the case for Treasure Island and Pirate adventure stories.

All the tropes we know and love are here: treasure maps where X marks the spot, peg legs, eye patches, and parrots on shoulders as standard pirate accessories, the “black spot” as a death sentence that pirates hand out to traitors, copious amounts of rum, mutiny, lovable rogues, euphemisms for pirating (namely “gentlemen of fortune”), shipwrecks, marooned survivors, and oodles of nautical slang (“Shiver my timbers!”). Heck, even the title “Treasure Island” is a trope.

The novel is shorter and more accessible than I thought it would be, a sorta 19th century YA novel complete with plucky teen protagonist Jim Hawkins who undergoes a bit of a coming of age through the whole ordeal. And it is quite an ordeal, most of the crew dying once the treachery begins, and Hawkins finds himself in real danger often. Stevenson’s prose is mostly straightforward, occasionally veering into a sort of baroque patois for the pirates, but there are plenty of classic lines that originate right here and it all comes together in a thrilling way. It’s hard to hear Long John Silver intoning “Them that die’ll be the lucky ones.” before battle and not get worked up, is what I mean. It’s a book I probably should have read 30 years ago, but it still plays pretty well even now.

Master and Commander and Post Captain by Patrick O’Brian – The first two entries of the 20-novel Aubrey-Maturin series, set mostly in the era of the Napoleonic Wars. The series centers on the (sometimes contentious) friendship between Captain Jack Aubrey of the Royal Navy and his ship’s surgeon Stephen Maturin, a physician, natural philosopher, and intelligence agent.

I can see why the series has gained such popularity, but I must admit to being a bit underwhelmed by a few factors that just rarely play well for me. For instance, the novels are largely episodic in nature (and I mean this within each novel – obviously a 20 book series is episodic by its very nature), meaning that the overarching story is haltingly progressed in an oddly paced way. There’s plenty of connective tissue, to be sure, but this sort of approach rarely works for me.

O’Brian’s prose is a little more imposing here than I usually care for as well. He’s obviously well versed in nautical concepts and terminology and the character of Maturin, unfamiliar with the high seas, presents a sort of audience surrogate that allows explanations for ideas we might not be familiar with. More surprising is the influence of Jane Austen on O’Brian’s writing (particularly in Post Captain). I was not expecting Austen-style social commentary, irony, and even romance in these novels, but it’s all there.

Again, the episodic nature of the stories does tend to harm the pacing, and there are several episodes that tend to undercut the overarching sense of storytelling that I usually look for in these types of books. I don’t need protagonists to be superheroes, but ending the first book with Captain Aubrey’s ship being captured by the French and subsequently released to face court martial is… not quite the rousing ending I was hoping for. I suppose I should note that I listened to these in audio-book form (I read the other books in this post in dead tree format) and that the narrator was, in some ways, excellent, but I also found myself spacing out from time to time. Obviously, these are all “me” problems, as the series has quite a following and I suspect later installments would improve upon these first two, but I must admit, I’m not particularly inclined to continue the series myself.

Stay tuned, Moby Dick and Beat to Quarters (the first Horatio Hornblower novel) are next up…

The first book I read as part of my salty-sea dog era was Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard, by Joseph Conrad. Published in 1904, it did not receive much in the way of critical or commercial success, and to this day, it is far from Conrad’s most read or famous work (which I guess would be Heart of Darkness). In the fullness of time, its reputation has only grown and its themes surrounding imperialism, revolution, and the corruption of greed remain relevant to this day.

Set in a fictional South American country, this novel tells the story of a silver mine that gets thrust into disarray during one of the periodic revolutions that plague the country. The infamous difficulty of the novel is not so much due to the plot, but the setting and background. The majority of the novel is comprised of flashbacks and detailed histories of the fictional country, it’s geography, the various periods of rule ranging from colonial exploitation to post-colonial misrule and various rebellions and revolutions. The backstory and motivations of the numerous characters are also related through lengthy flashbacks.

As a result of this extreme reliance on flashback, the pacing of the novel, especially in the early goings, is choppy and sometimes jarring. That being said, this was a conscious choice, and there are stylistic benefits of the approach as well. The insistence and influence of the past upon the present is well established by this approach, and the ambitious, multi-faceted view of an entire society in the grip of revolution would not be possible without the diverse origins of each component of the conflict. The plot actually resembles a simplistic adventure story, but this is given weight by the thematic depth of its tragedy.

“… We shall run the world’s business whether the world likes it or not. The world can’t help it – and neither can we, I guess.”

Nostromo, Page 63

At this point, I must admit that there are elements of pessimism, fatalism, and near-nihilism in this novel that would, in most cases, cause me to roll my eyes. However, there are some mitigating factors that propel this book beyond my usual complaints. One is Conrad’s humanism, which is on ample display in Nostromo. This is the sort of novel that seems to provoke criticism from all ideological corners. It does not paint a pretty picture of imperialism, colonialism, religion, capitalism, or Marxism (nor probably several other ideologies or dogmatic enterprises that I’m missing), but it does affirm the power of love, the sanctity of family, the importance of the individual, and the need for empathy, sympathy, and understanding. He puts individual relationships above politics, which has the potential to annoy those of all political stripes. And since everyone has some inherent political stripe… you get the picture. Of course, I am not above the fray on this (witness my aforementioned eye-rolling!), but I can appreciate the level of detail and thought that have gone into this and which deserves a corresponding amount of consideration in response.

The other major mitigating factor, and the thing that endears me the most to this novel, is that I couldn’t help myself from thing about how similar this novel is to… The Lord of the Rings. Early on in reading one of the flashbacks in Nostromo, I couldn’t help but chuckle as I thought of similar digressions in Tolkien’s infamous high-fantasy. I realize that, in some ways, this is a deeply silly comparison, but that’s precisely why I find it so endearing. Sure, Nostromo is an intensely political novel with keen insights into the nature of mankind, but setting it in a fictional country means that Conrad spends a huge amount of time fleshing it out with history and culture, especially as seen through a handful of characters (each with their own similarly detailed backstory)*.

Sometimes it felt like reading a realistic, non-fantasy version of The Simarillion. Plus, you get numerous characters who have several different names (take the titular Nostromo, who also goes by Giovanni Battista Fidanza, Capataz de Cargadores, etc…), just like the LotR characters (i.e. Strider, Aragorn, Elessar, etc…) And the treasure from the silver mine? Everyone greedily seeks it out, and it corrupts even those described as incorruptible. Sound familiar? No? I’m just a huge nerd? Yeah, that checks out.

Tolkien was famously dismissive of “allegory” and denied any topical meaning or “messages” in his work. This has not stopped people from speculating, which is the point, but there’s a similar humanism in Tolkien’s work that can thwart many political interpretations. Conrad is obviously more bluntly addressing politics in his book (in a way that I’m not sure Tolkien would particularly approve of), but I do think there’s a similar perspective underlying both authors’ work.

If the name “Nostromo” sounds familiar to you at all, it’s probably because it was the name of the mining ship from Ridley Scott’s Alien (similarly, the name of the Colonial Marines’ ship in Aliens is Sulaco, which is the name of the town in Nostromo.) There’s also some thematic similarities, though obviously Alien is more fanciful in its presentation (not to mention that it implies its background setting, rather than explicitly establishing a comprehensive setting the way Nostromo does).

I will leave you now with a selection of quotes from the novel that I found interesting. They will give you the flavor of Conrad’s prose, which is not exactly free from hooptedoodle, but which is stylistic and expressive.

Charles Gould did not open his heart to her in any set speeches. He simply went on acting and thinking in her sight. This is the true method of sincerity.

Nostromo, Page 49

Gould is the owner of the silver mine, and this is a reference to his relationship with his wife, which is a humanizing one that, like a lot of individual characters, offsets some of the cynicism inherent in the novel. It’s also the sort of thing that would give people of a certain political persuasion the hives.

Action is consolatory. It is the enemy of thought and the friend of flattering illusions. Only in the conduct of our actions can we find the sense of mastery over the Fates.

Nostromo, Page 54

A nice turn of phrase that might help explain some of our political issues of the day.

In all these households she could hear stories of political outrage; friends, relatives, ruined, imprisoned, killed in the battles of senseless civil wars, barbarously executed in ferocious proscriptions, as though the government of the country had been a struggle of lust between bands of absurd devils let loose upon the land with sabres and uniforms and grandiloquent phrases. And on all the lips she found a weary desire for peace, the dread of officialdom with its nightmarish parody of administration without law, without security, and without justice.

Nostromo, Page 71

Conrad again emphasizing the way individuals are caught up in official events, ground up and spit out of political machinery, and so on… Once again, something that is easy to relate to and apply to our current circumstances.

“I think he can be drawn into it, like all idealists, when he once sees a sentimental basis for his action. But I wouldn’t talk to him. Mere clear facts won’t appeal to his sentiment. It is much better for him to convince himself in his own way. “

Nostromo, page 171

Its easy to think that facts and reason will prevail (and to be fair, they probably should), but that often does not matter to idealists or ideologues, something that will be good to keep in mind during an election year.

It was part of what Decoud would have called his sane materialism that he did not believe in the possibility of friendship existing between a man and a woman.

Nostromo, Page 176

Imagine the takes, the hot takes on this in 1904! One of the many beneficial things about reading older books is that you can see that many topics that concern us today are not new, and indeed, have been hot button issues for hundreds, sometimes thousands, of years.

There was between them an intimacy of antagonism as close in its way as the intimacy of accord and affection.

Nostromo, Page 200

Maybe not quite directly relevant to LotR, but the notion of conflict being the basis for a relationship that can be strong is one that crops up often (in fiction and in life).

The mere presence of a coward, however passive, brings an element of treachery into a dangerous situation.

Nostromo, Page 216

Not much to say about this one other than that it’s a nice turn of phrase, so I Googled “Lord of the Rings coward” and the results are just a never-ending succession of “Is [x character] a coward?” followed by “No, [x character] is clearly not a coward because of y and z.” Except for Denethor. The way he eats those tomatoes, man.

A man haunted by a fixed idea is insane.

Nostromo, Page 298

A concise description of something that seems to happen a lot, especially in our current social media environment.

“There is no peace and rest in the development of material interests. They have their law and their justice. But it is founded on expediency, and is inhuman; it is without rectitude, without continuity and the force that can be found only in a moral principle.”

Nostromo, Page 403-404

Way to finish on an optimistic note, amiright?

* – I should note that parts of this post, particularly the comparison with LotR, are adapted from and originated in a Tasting Notes post from last year.