It’s good to know that you can always find a Batman writer you can rely on: I’m talking about Paul Dini, Harley’s creator and in my opinion the most consistently good writer of the comics I’ve yet come across. After reading several lacklustre titles, Batman: Private Casebook made me sit up and take notice. Dustin Nguyen is a curiously variable artist, not in ability but in style—he seems to veer toward a more painterly approach and then go back to very crisply, inked-in lines. I always find Ra’s al Ghul a bit of a yawn, so we’ll skip over “The Resurrection of Ra’s al Ghul—Epilogue.” “The Wonderland Gang!” is a lot more fun, using the now-popular motif of Alice in Wonderland as a vehicle for one of the second-tier of Batman’s costumed foes, the Mad Hatter (here he has Tweedledum and Tweedledee along with March Harriet, and the Carpenter goes after Batman with some power tools). “The Suit of Sorrows” felt very different for Batman, as it took him out of Gotham and into more Hellboy-like territory. “Opening Night” and “Curtains” both give us interesting new twists for Zatanna, a sultry magician who is interested in Batman, and the (female) Ventriloquist. It’s been a long time since a Batman comic story has enthralled me like “The Riddle Unanswered” did—it was ostensibly about the Riddler, but Catwoman made a memorable cameo, and I loved the way it used instant messaging forums as the way Batman got his scoop. Brings a whole new meaning to the series title, Detective. I also really liked the short “Kcirt Ro Taert,” again featuring Zatanna but also the Scarecrow, where Nguyen really let his artistic, painterly talents run wild. It’s rare that witticisms in Batman will actually make me laugh.
BATMAN: There was a fire at Johnny Sabatino’s new club earlier tonight.
PENGUIN: As I have often noted, it sucks to be Johnny Sabatino. Anything else?
And:
ZATANNA: You sure were quick to say “no.”
BRUCE: Did I lie?
ZATANNA: No, but you’ve never investigated the option, either.
BRUCE: I wasn’t aware that option existed.
ZATANNA: Well, it’s here and it’s wearing a top hat.
Friday, June 3, 2011
The Color of Earth
originally written 18/04/2010
The Color of Earth by Kim Dong Hwa is a beautiful and frank volume about the growing up a young girl named Ehwa in rural Korea. I didn’t realize until halfway through that Kim Dong Hwa, famous as a writer/artist of manhwa (the Korean equivalent of manga), was a man, which is quite a feat considering it’s a sensitive book that talks quite unabashedly (but also with candor and understanding) about the mother-daughter bond and female sexuality in a non-exploitative way. While the afterword suggests that the Color of Earth trilogy stands out “in the Korean comics market, which is dominated by books whose stories are based on a male worldview,” I would go so far as to say comics in general are still dominated by a male worldview; if you look at how female sexuality is treated in this universe versus that in Love and Rockets, you see something entirely different. For all the gender politics—Ehwa’s mother is a widow who runs a tavern and is exposed to the chauvinistic gossip of her clients—the humor and universality of this book is what makes it endearing.
The art is simple but beautifully rendered, and the characters range from the cartoon-like to express emotions of embarrassment and surprise, to the lyrical. I’ll admit I was attracted to reading it in the first place because the drawing of Ehwa on the cover looked like Mulan from an English translation of the original poem about Fa Mu-Lan. Little Ehwa first realizes the differences between boys and girls when two village boys tell her she’s deformed for not having a gochoo (chile pepper) between her legs (later the boys tell her to look for her “persimmon seed” which creates a whole new set of embarrassing problems for her!). As she grows older, she realizes the special relationship her mother is developing with the wandering scholar/artist who visits them and has her own awkward first crush on a young trainee monk. The book ends with her becoming a young woman, off to more adventures in The Color of Water and The Color of Heaven.
I think it’s a lovely book and a good meditation on the power and universality of good graphic novels.
***
I’ve also recently read Star Trek: TNG: Intelligence Gathering, which was beautifully drawn but rather dull, story-wise. I also read two more volumes of Love and Rockets, namely Human Diasporism and Love and Rockets, New Stories vol.1, which was just weird. Batman: Gotham Underground was a fairly good read, with competent art, and featured the Penguin, the Scarecrow, and a huge host of costumed freaks.
The Color of Earth by Kim Dong Hwa is a beautiful and frank volume about the growing up a young girl named Ehwa in rural Korea. I didn’t realize until halfway through that Kim Dong Hwa, famous as a writer/artist of manhwa (the Korean equivalent of manga), was a man, which is quite a feat considering it’s a sensitive book that talks quite unabashedly (but also with candor and understanding) about the mother-daughter bond and female sexuality in a non-exploitative way. While the afterword suggests that the Color of Earth trilogy stands out “in the Korean comics market, which is dominated by books whose stories are based on a male worldview,” I would go so far as to say comics in general are still dominated by a male worldview; if you look at how female sexuality is treated in this universe versus that in Love and Rockets, you see something entirely different. For all the gender politics—Ehwa’s mother is a widow who runs a tavern and is exposed to the chauvinistic gossip of her clients—the humor and universality of this book is what makes it endearing.
The art is simple but beautifully rendered, and the characters range from the cartoon-like to express emotions of embarrassment and surprise, to the lyrical. I’ll admit I was attracted to reading it in the first place because the drawing of Ehwa on the cover looked like Mulan from an English translation of the original poem about Fa Mu-Lan. Little Ehwa first realizes the differences between boys and girls when two village boys tell her she’s deformed for not having a gochoo (chile pepper) between her legs (later the boys tell her to look for her “persimmon seed” which creates a whole new set of embarrassing problems for her!). As she grows older, she realizes the special relationship her mother is developing with the wandering scholar/artist who visits them and has her own awkward first crush on a young trainee monk. The book ends with her becoming a young woman, off to more adventures in The Color of Water and The Color of Heaven.
I think it’s a lovely book and a good meditation on the power and universality of good graphic novels.
***
I’ve also recently read Star Trek: TNG: Intelligence Gathering, which was beautifully drawn but rather dull, story-wise. I also read two more volumes of Love and Rockets, namely Human Diasporism and Love and Rockets, New Stories vol.1, which was just weird. Batman: Gotham Underground was a fairly good read, with competent art, and featured the Penguin, the Scarecrow, and a huge host of costumed freaks.
The Taking of Chelsea 426
originally written 05/04/2010
It’s wrong to call this a paint-by-numbers Doctor Who book; it’s got all the elements of a good story, it’s well-written, it has an interesting setting and uses the Sontarans and the Rutans to the fullest of their possibilities as villains/monsters. It was written very much in the framework of a TV series two-parter. It didn’t really suffer at all from the lack of a regular companion. It was simply . . . a bit dull.
Chelsea 426 is an off-world colony for humans who believe that Earth itself has gotten too cosmopolitan. The people who choose to live there want a life similar to that of twentieth century Chelsea: twee, regulated, calm. They are very much the inhabitants of River City in The Music Man before the action in that story takes place. The easy comparison is to those in Britain who want “England for the English.” Some of the characters in The Taking of Chelsea 426 show an appalling xenophobia, and the fact that it continues to hamper the Doctor without him taking any real action against it is somewhat unnerving. It feels like he’s the Third Doctor in “Inferno,” running around trying to convince people to go along with him while he comes up against pig-headed resistance over and over.
I didn’t realize until halfway through the book that there isn’t the customary young female companion that many of the books in this Tenth Doctor on his own range of book have relied upon. Rather like the First Doctor and his grandchildren à la the early comics, the Doctor’s companions in Chelsea 426 are Jake and Vienna Carstairs, a pair of tween twins, smart, talented, and good to have in a crisis. They are also slightly skeptical of the Doctor and somewhat desperate to escape the death-by-quiet in Chelsea 426.
The Rutans’ scheme reminded me of the plot to “The Gift” in The Sarah Jane Adventures. The Sontarans presented here are a bit more fleshed out than we have ever seen them before: General Kade is tough but fair (well, as fair as Sontarans can be), which is why Chelsea 426 doesn’t turn into a bloodbath. He commands the Fourth Sontaran Intelligence Division, which has been created to counter-attack the Rutans’ battle strategies. The Sontarans’ dialogue doesn’t seem to be quite right, in my opinion; calling everyone “sir,” even the useless Mayor of Chelsea 426, doesn’t seem a privilege they would afford to weaklings.
Likewise, although the Tenth Doctor has some general Tennant-y-ness, I didn’t get an overwhelming sense of his character. It wasn’t necessarily that any other Doctor could have filled the role, as the sprinklings of “molto bene!” showed David Llewellyn could hear the Tenth Doctor’s voice as he was writing. Perhaps there was a sense of shell shock in this version of the Tenth Doctor, as despite the brave façade he was putting on, he didn’t seem his mad, dashing self.
The writing was clever and more than satisfactory for the well-paced adventure story, but no characters besides the Carstairs (and possibly General Kade) were allowed to develop much. It was an enjoyable diversion.
It’s wrong to call this a paint-by-numbers Doctor Who book; it’s got all the elements of a good story, it’s well-written, it has an interesting setting and uses the Sontarans and the Rutans to the fullest of their possibilities as villains/monsters. It was written very much in the framework of a TV series two-parter. It didn’t really suffer at all from the lack of a regular companion. It was simply . . . a bit dull.
Chelsea 426 is an off-world colony for humans who believe that Earth itself has gotten too cosmopolitan. The people who choose to live there want a life similar to that of twentieth century Chelsea: twee, regulated, calm. They are very much the inhabitants of River City in The Music Man before the action in that story takes place. The easy comparison is to those in Britain who want “England for the English.” Some of the characters in The Taking of Chelsea 426 show an appalling xenophobia, and the fact that it continues to hamper the Doctor without him taking any real action against it is somewhat unnerving. It feels like he’s the Third Doctor in “Inferno,” running around trying to convince people to go along with him while he comes up against pig-headed resistance over and over.
I didn’t realize until halfway through the book that there isn’t the customary young female companion that many of the books in this Tenth Doctor on his own range of book have relied upon. Rather like the First Doctor and his grandchildren à la the early comics, the Doctor’s companions in Chelsea 426 are Jake and Vienna Carstairs, a pair of tween twins, smart, talented, and good to have in a crisis. They are also slightly skeptical of the Doctor and somewhat desperate to escape the death-by-quiet in Chelsea 426.
The Rutans’ scheme reminded me of the plot to “The Gift” in The Sarah Jane Adventures. The Sontarans presented here are a bit more fleshed out than we have ever seen them before: General Kade is tough but fair (well, as fair as Sontarans can be), which is why Chelsea 426 doesn’t turn into a bloodbath. He commands the Fourth Sontaran Intelligence Division, which has been created to counter-attack the Rutans’ battle strategies. The Sontarans’ dialogue doesn’t seem to be quite right, in my opinion; calling everyone “sir,” even the useless Mayor of Chelsea 426, doesn’t seem a privilege they would afford to weaklings.
Likewise, although the Tenth Doctor has some general Tennant-y-ness, I didn’t get an overwhelming sense of his character. It wasn’t necessarily that any other Doctor could have filled the role, as the sprinklings of “molto bene!” showed David Llewellyn could hear the Tenth Doctor’s voice as he was writing. Perhaps there was a sense of shell shock in this version of the Tenth Doctor, as despite the brave façade he was putting on, he didn’t seem his mad, dashing self.
The writing was clever and more than satisfactory for the well-paced adventure story, but no characters besides the Carstairs (and possibly General Kade) were allowed to develop much. It was an enjoyable diversion.
Love and Rockets
originally written 3/30/10
Okay, now I see why it’s called Love and Rockets. There are actual rockets! Jaime Hernandez’s saga of the punkettes Maggie and Hopey started out with a decidedly surrealist/science fiction bent, and I have to say I prefer the later episodes as they are somewhat more grounded in reality (and the drawing style improves and gains confidence).
This volume sees Maggie becoming the mechanic assistant to Rand Race and traveling across the world with his entourage, a fact which doesn’t seem to faze her much despite the fact the world at large is full of hovercrafts, dinosaurs, failed coups, bombings, and stuff that just doesn’t happen in Hoppers! She’s head-over-heels with Race, but they never quite hit it off right.
The Hernandez Brothers are not afraid of nudity, something that should be clear to all readers of Love and Rockets right away. I don’t think I would charge them with sexism as even though Hopey, Maggie, and Penny Century spend a lot of the comics in various states of undress, they are for the most part drawn realistically (unlike DC or Marvel women, that’s for sure!) and usually have good reasons for being unclothed—for example, Maggie and Hopey sleep in the same bed. Perhaps they overdo it a bit, but I think I can honestly say as an artist it can be more fun to draw bodies than clothes all the time!
The early years of Las Locas are clever and punny and quite meta-fictional; they refer to themselves as being in a comic and also to their artist/writer! One of my favorite pieces is “Locos,” which is told from Speedy Ortiz’s perspective: Maggie, Izzy, and Speedy’s relationship with them. It’s interesting that, as fun as Hernandez’s forays into the fantastic are, I prefer the more grounded stories.
Okay, now I see why it’s called Love and Rockets. There are actual rockets! Jaime Hernandez’s saga of the punkettes Maggie and Hopey started out with a decidedly surrealist/science fiction bent, and I have to say I prefer the later episodes as they are somewhat more grounded in reality (and the drawing style improves and gains confidence).
This volume sees Maggie becoming the mechanic assistant to Rand Race and traveling across the world with his entourage, a fact which doesn’t seem to faze her much despite the fact the world at large is full of hovercrafts, dinosaurs, failed coups, bombings, and stuff that just doesn’t happen in Hoppers! She’s head-over-heels with Race, but they never quite hit it off right.
The Hernandez Brothers are not afraid of nudity, something that should be clear to all readers of Love and Rockets right away. I don’t think I would charge them with sexism as even though Hopey, Maggie, and Penny Century spend a lot of the comics in various states of undress, they are for the most part drawn realistically (unlike DC or Marvel women, that’s for sure!) and usually have good reasons for being unclothed—for example, Maggie and Hopey sleep in the same bed. Perhaps they overdo it a bit, but I think I can honestly say as an artist it can be more fun to draw bodies than clothes all the time!
The early years of Las Locas are clever and punny and quite meta-fictional; they refer to themselves as being in a comic and also to their artist/writer! One of my favorite pieces is “Locos,” which is told from Speedy Ortiz’s perspective: Maggie, Izzy, and Speedy’s relationship with them. It’s interesting that, as fun as Hernandez’s forays into the fantastic are, I prefer the more grounded stories.
Sunday, December 12, 2010
Top Books 2010
Top Books 2010
I’m jumping the gun here a bit, but there won’t be time for me to do it nearer to the end of the year. Since the only books I’m likely to finish before the end of the year are War and Peace and Eclipse, if either of them are to go on the list, they will have to wait til next year.
Like last year, I’m not ranking these—I’m just going to put them in order of when I read them. I read some quite enjoyable books this year, some in my comfort zone and some out, but really none quite leap out at me as extraordinary (though I always, always enjoy Patrick O’Brian, but that’s a foregone conclusion).
I read more than 50 books this year, which makes it seem quite good (ie I read more than one a week), but that’s deceptive, given that 19% was poetry and 22% was Doctor Who-related. The split between fiction and nonfiction was pretty even (48% fiction).
News of a Kidnapping (Gabriel Garcia Márquez)
This was the best book by Márquez that I have yet read. Totally different in style to the magic realism of his fiction—this was precise, to the point, well-structured, but full of humanity, and wholly gripping. The author’s roots are in journalism, and this is an accomplished and moving study of what happened in the early 1990s when Pablo Escobar’s terrorist faction decided to pressurize the Colombian government not to extradite to the U.S.—by kidnapping eight innocent people. I found it very hard to put down even though you know at the beginning who will live and who will die. In it, I believe, you can see the best and worst of humanity.
Not in These Shoes (Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch)
Maybe I really liked these poems because I identified with them-that was even before I got into the catering business! They deal with real life, in a distinctive voice. An experienced, cynical, yet self-deprecating approach.
Their Finest Hour and a Half (Lissa Evans)
This book was set on the Home Front of Britain during World War II, but what set it apart was its delightful tone and creative use of filmmaking techniques within a novel. It was entertaining, amusing, and full of authenticity but not in an ostentatious way, and had some quite strong characters. The three seemingly disparate parts of the plot met up briefly, as in The Night Watch (except in real time whereas that book moved backward), which was oddly and appropriately cinematic. My favorite parts were the imbedded “film” scripts and the accompanying metafictional technique.
The Bloody Chamber (Angela Carter)
I really surprised myself in that I loved this collection. If you want to go for all the symbolic stuff, there’s plenty to search for—but if you want to read it on a superficial level, it’s as fun as one of my favorite books of all time, Beauty by Robin McKinley. I can see this influencing McKinley, Disney, Sondheim, and on and on and on. It was a lot less erotic and explicit than I had been given to believe. It’s very in tone with Gothic horror.
The Fortune of War (Patrick O’Brian)
Well, what can I say? O’Brian did it again. Some exciting naval battles, wonderfully paced, and a real shift on focus, both character-wise and in setting. O’Brian’s handling of the War of 1812 is splendidly even-handed, and there were some great touches to the setting in and around Boston. Stephen Maturin’s adventures in espionage and affaires-de-coeur were riveting. Really love these characters and think these books are next to flawless.
Wolf Hall (Hilary Mantel)
For awhile, this is what everyone was talking about, so I jumped on the bandwagon. It’s familiar territory-the Tudors-but it’s an enjoyable novel about the fortunes of much-maligned Thomas Cromwell. An achievement in scholarship and imagination, rich, complex, full of character and effortless historical detail, particularly successful with Mary Tudor, Mary Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Thomas More, and Henry, of course. And kudos for constructing a convincing Cromwell from a dearth of historical information.
The Pig-Faced Lady of Manchester Square (Jan Bondeson)
I’ve been reading a lot Jan Bondeson because of the research involved with my poetry collection, but there’s more than one reason I keep coming back to his output. This was a meticulously-researched read, thoughtful, sensitive, and not without a sense of humor. Bondeson seemed a little less impish than the first book of his I read, The London Monster, but then this subject is a bit more close to the heart. He clearly has a lot of compassion for the likes of Julia Pastrana, the Tocci Brothers, and Daniel Cajanus—but he also seems politely fascinated by all this business-I think I’ve found a fellow enthusiast!
The Dinosaur Hunters (Deborah Cadbury)
This is a very thorough and meticulous, but narrative-driven, story of the first discoverers and classifiers of dinosaur fossils in England in the first 40 years of the 19th century. It’s a superb history/science book focusing as much on the characters as the fossils and the theories. You could really sympathize with the humanity of Gideon Mantell and Mary Anning and could be astonished by the arrogance of Richard Owen and Thomas Huxley. I found it extremely gripping despite all of this played out more than a hundred years before I was born-my lifelong obsession with dinosaurs was subsumed (or elevated) by the part humanity played in the discovery of them.
Life and Fate (Vasily Grossman)
Epic—it certainly draws parallels as the 20th century’s War and Peace (as I’m finding out first hand!). This is a massive, well-written and unflinching account of the battle of Stalingrad-for all that, it’s surprisingly fair and balanced (which is why the KGB must have seized it immediately after it was finished!). I don’t normally like books about war-this was an uphill struggle all the way-a real downer, but certainly one of those “books you must read” for the sake of your humanity.
Runners up: The Spy (James Fenimore Cooper) is supposed to be dull as dishwater, but I found it quite exciting and very pleasant reading. Considering this was the US’ first real novel set in its own locales and highlighting the Revolutionary War, I think it should be read far more than it is. But you don’t have to read it-it’ll be on Radio 4 next year! It may now be an unpopular choice, but I was quite moved by Dreams from My Father (Barack Obama). I thought the voice and the story were uniquely his, and he’s a solid, eloquent writer-even if some of the writing is speech-like. I felt after reading it that I’d done my civic duty AND had a good read. The Devil in Amber (Mark Gatiss) was an extremely well-written piece of fluff-it’s top of the class for its genre.
I’m jumping the gun here a bit, but there won’t be time for me to do it nearer to the end of the year. Since the only books I’m likely to finish before the end of the year are War and Peace and Eclipse, if either of them are to go on the list, they will have to wait til next year.
Like last year, I’m not ranking these—I’m just going to put them in order of when I read them. I read some quite enjoyable books this year, some in my comfort zone and some out, but really none quite leap out at me as extraordinary (though I always, always enjoy Patrick O’Brian, but that’s a foregone conclusion).
I read more than 50 books this year, which makes it seem quite good (ie I read more than one a week), but that’s deceptive, given that 19% was poetry and 22% was Doctor Who-related. The split between fiction and nonfiction was pretty even (48% fiction).
News of a Kidnapping (Gabriel Garcia Márquez)
This was the best book by Márquez that I have yet read. Totally different in style to the magic realism of his fiction—this was precise, to the point, well-structured, but full of humanity, and wholly gripping. The author’s roots are in journalism, and this is an accomplished and moving study of what happened in the early 1990s when Pablo Escobar’s terrorist faction decided to pressurize the Colombian government not to extradite to the U.S.—by kidnapping eight innocent people. I found it very hard to put down even though you know at the beginning who will live and who will die. In it, I believe, you can see the best and worst of humanity.
Not in These Shoes (Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch)
Maybe I really liked these poems because I identified with them-that was even before I got into the catering business! They deal with real life, in a distinctive voice. An experienced, cynical, yet self-deprecating approach.
Their Finest Hour and a Half (Lissa Evans)
This book was set on the Home Front of Britain during World War II, but what set it apart was its delightful tone and creative use of filmmaking techniques within a novel. It was entertaining, amusing, and full of authenticity but not in an ostentatious way, and had some quite strong characters. The three seemingly disparate parts of the plot met up briefly, as in The Night Watch (except in real time whereas that book moved backward), which was oddly and appropriately cinematic. My favorite parts were the imbedded “film” scripts and the accompanying metafictional technique.
The Bloody Chamber (Angela Carter)
I really surprised myself in that I loved this collection. If you want to go for all the symbolic stuff, there’s plenty to search for—but if you want to read it on a superficial level, it’s as fun as one of my favorite books of all time, Beauty by Robin McKinley. I can see this influencing McKinley, Disney, Sondheim, and on and on and on. It was a lot less erotic and explicit than I had been given to believe. It’s very in tone with Gothic horror.
The Fortune of War (Patrick O’Brian)
Well, what can I say? O’Brian did it again. Some exciting naval battles, wonderfully paced, and a real shift on focus, both character-wise and in setting. O’Brian’s handling of the War of 1812 is splendidly even-handed, and there were some great touches to the setting in and around Boston. Stephen Maturin’s adventures in espionage and affaires-de-coeur were riveting. Really love these characters and think these books are next to flawless.
Wolf Hall (Hilary Mantel)
For awhile, this is what everyone was talking about, so I jumped on the bandwagon. It’s familiar territory-the Tudors-but it’s an enjoyable novel about the fortunes of much-maligned Thomas Cromwell. An achievement in scholarship and imagination, rich, complex, full of character and effortless historical detail, particularly successful with Mary Tudor, Mary Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Thomas More, and Henry, of course. And kudos for constructing a convincing Cromwell from a dearth of historical information.
The Pig-Faced Lady of Manchester Square (Jan Bondeson)
I’ve been reading a lot Jan Bondeson because of the research involved with my poetry collection, but there’s more than one reason I keep coming back to his output. This was a meticulously-researched read, thoughtful, sensitive, and not without a sense of humor. Bondeson seemed a little less impish than the first book of his I read, The London Monster, but then this subject is a bit more close to the heart. He clearly has a lot of compassion for the likes of Julia Pastrana, the Tocci Brothers, and Daniel Cajanus—but he also seems politely fascinated by all this business-I think I’ve found a fellow enthusiast!
The Dinosaur Hunters (Deborah Cadbury)
This is a very thorough and meticulous, but narrative-driven, story of the first discoverers and classifiers of dinosaur fossils in England in the first 40 years of the 19th century. It’s a superb history/science book focusing as much on the characters as the fossils and the theories. You could really sympathize with the humanity of Gideon Mantell and Mary Anning and could be astonished by the arrogance of Richard Owen and Thomas Huxley. I found it extremely gripping despite all of this played out more than a hundred years before I was born-my lifelong obsession with dinosaurs was subsumed (or elevated) by the part humanity played in the discovery of them.
Life and Fate (Vasily Grossman)
Epic—it certainly draws parallels as the 20th century’s War and Peace (as I’m finding out first hand!). This is a massive, well-written and unflinching account of the battle of Stalingrad-for all that, it’s surprisingly fair and balanced (which is why the KGB must have seized it immediately after it was finished!). I don’t normally like books about war-this was an uphill struggle all the way-a real downer, but certainly one of those “books you must read” for the sake of your humanity.
Runners up: The Spy (James Fenimore Cooper) is supposed to be dull as dishwater, but I found it quite exciting and very pleasant reading. Considering this was the US’ first real novel set in its own locales and highlighting the Revolutionary War, I think it should be read far more than it is. But you don’t have to read it-it’ll be on Radio 4 next year! It may now be an unpopular choice, but I was quite moved by Dreams from My Father (Barack Obama). I thought the voice and the story were uniquely his, and he’s a solid, eloquent writer-even if some of the writing is speech-like. I felt after reading it that I’d done my civic duty AND had a good read. The Devil in Amber (Mark Gatiss) was an extremely well-written piece of fluff-it’s top of the class for its genre.
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Saturday, August 21, 2010
The Fortune of War
Two weevils crept from the crumbs. ‘You see those weevils, Stephen?’ said Jack solemnly.
‘I do.’
‘Which would you choose?’
‘There is not a scrap of difference. Arcades ambo. They are the same species of curculio, and there is nothing to choose between them.’
‘But you suppose you had to choose?’
‘Then I should choose the right-hand weevil; it has a perceptible advantage in both length and breadth.’
‘There I have you,’ cried Jack. ‘You are bit—you are completely dished. Don’t you know that in the Navy you must always choose the lesser of two weevils? Oh ha, ha, ha, ha!’
If you’ve been reading for awhile you’re aware of my tradition to read one Master and Commander book every year (though I may have to step it up a notch as I realized I will be 38 by the time I finish, at this rate! ). Desolation Island was very good, and The Fortune of War continued the upward trend. I truly envy O’Brian’s ability to churn out novel after novel with the same characters and roughly the same setting and make each one fresh, funny, exciting, and full of heart.
This book begins with Captain Jack Aubrey and ship’s surgeon (and spy) Stephen Maturin arriving in the Spice Islands after the debacle at Desolation Island. When Jack tells the Admiral there what has brought them and the battered Leopard to such a state, he is in fact recapping the last book for anyone who had forgotten, which is a handy device. The Leopard isn’t really seaworthy anymore, so Jack, Stephen, and a few of Jack’s midshipmen are to take passage on La Flèche back to England and take a new command there. Stephen is upset that they’re leaving the Spice Islands so soon, not giving him a chance to gather more natural specimens, but Jack is looking forward to heading home and seeing his beloved wife Sophie again. Even seeing a letter the worried Sophie has written makes him homesick: The sight of that familiar hand struck Jack with astonishing force, and for a moment he could have sworn he heard her voice.
They have, however, had more than enough contact with natural specimens, living and pickled, that Stephen has picked up on Desolation Island and elsewhere: ‘Now, sir,’ cried the Captain . . . addressing the wombat, one of the numerous body of marsupials brought into the ship by her surgeon, a natural philosopher—‘give it up directly, d’ye hear me, there?’ (Jack then asks Stephen to take back the wombat who is eating his hat, and then it climbs on Stephen and looks up in his eyes “with affection.”) Stephen, whose ability to be good at nearly everything is as infuriating as it is attractive, makes a winning contribution toward a game of cricket that is very nearly like Matt Smith kicking butt in “The Lodger.” On board La Flèche, life is rather pleasant, with long and rambling officers’ dinners (which is where the “weevil” story comes from), aside from growing tensions with America. It is 1812, and it’s not long before war is declared. In the meantime, though, Captain Yorke and Captain Aubrey have time for discussions about novels:
‘Every novel I have ever looked into is all about love; and I have looked into a good many, because Sophie loves them, and I read aloud to her while she knits, in the evening. All about love.’
‘Of course they are,’ said Yorke. ‘What else raises your blood, your spirits, your whole being, to the highest pitch, so that life is triumphant, or tragic, as the case may be, and so that every day is worth a year of common life? When you sit trembling for a letter? When the whole of life is filled with meaning, double-shotted?’
And Stephen makes a friend in the Scottish surgeon aboard La Flèche, an ill-mannered, pipe-smoking, keen observer of nature, and they spend their hours dissecting Maturin’s specimens. These moments seemed a little too idyllic to me, and I knew that O’Brian, being the storyteller that he notoriously is, was going to have disaster strike.
It did, and you can’t say it came from an unexpected quarter: the surgeon’s pipe set the entire ship ablaze, and all those not killed in the fire or the boat’s inevitable sinking are stranded in a small boat surviving on nothing but biscuit for weeks. Stephen, of course, suffered similar deprivations a few books earlier when he was stranded on an island for days with blue-footed boobies. But the men, including Aubrey, are dangerously close to starvation and dehydration before a miraculous rain of flying squid in a tempest! O’Brian casually refers to things like cannibalism and pedestry, but then the story has picked back up again. It is, as usual, riveting stuff.
They are picked up by Java, but it isn’t long before the U.S.S. Constitution appears. I knew it was a formidable foe because in middle school I wrote a short story about the ship, which had among its sailors an impostor named Lucy Brewer who insisted on disguising herself as a boy to fight in the war. She doesn’t make an appearance here, alas, but in a surprising defeat for “Lucky” Jack Aubrey, the crew of the Java surrender, and Jack is taken to a hospital outside Boston where he is treated for a shattered arm and generally low spirits. Unusually, half of the book takes place on land, and it’s daringly set on the East coast of the United States.
Stephen is a liminal figure in almost every circumstance. He is Irish, Catholic, and a Republican, but is working as a spy for His Majesty’s government. This is because he despises Napoleon as a tyrant and also because his mother was Catalan. However, his equivocal attitude toward the War of 1812 is echoed not only by some other characters in the book, but, it seems, by Patrick O’Brian himself. The Admiral’s sentiments on Americans are some typical American-bashing: ‘Damned rascals—convicts themselves, for the most part, piebald mongrels for the rest . . . Disloyal—hang the whole lot of them, the whole shooting-match.’ However, after declaration of war, Bonden (coxswain) tells Stephen that the lower decks of Java are not altogether pleased—they consist of mostly hands taken from merchant ships or those pressed on shore. All had American shipmates. They could not see the sense in fighting Americans: there were half a dozen Americans aboard at this moment, and they were practically the same as Englishmen—no airs or graces about them—and you could not say fairer than that. Fighting the French was different . . .
The battles Stephen and Jack have to fight in the second half of the novel are quite different than the ones they usually face. Jack is laid up in Dr. Choate’s progressive hospital among the mentally deranged, and I have no doubt that O’Brian research has led him to recreate the hospital from true reports. However, Stephen is much more the focus of this section. He meets again two characters central to the last book, Michael Herapath and mother of his child, would-be spy Louisa Wogan. Wogan eventually proves incidental but Herapath helps Stephen and Jack escape with their lives in a daring piece of espionage and danger that makes James Bond look like child’s play (strengthening rumors that O’Brian was himself a spy in World War II).
The continuing humorous and philosophical examinations of the differences between Americans and Brits give some levity to the cat-and-mouse (Americans can make neither coffee nor tea to the protagonists’ likings, and southern and northerners are compared). But at the crux of the conflict is Stephen coming in contact once again with Diana Villiers, the woman he has loved with desperation for about four books now. When he does finally meet her again, he begins to wonder if he still loves her after all. Unfortunately, he doesn’t have much time to wonder, as she is in as much danger as he and Jack are. SPOILERS My heart was keening for Stephen when he asked Diana to marry him, again, after his first rejection—I know no good can come of this. /SPOILERS
I was shocked when Stephen said “Ugh” to the Indian porter to the hospital, but O’Brian had this fascinating exchange up his sleeve:
‘You would not be astonished [that I hate all American government] if you were a native of this country, an aboriginal native. . . . Why did you say Ugh to me?’
‘I looked upon it as a usual greeting in the language of your nation—the Huron is represented as saying Ugh to the paleface in many authors, French and English. But if I am mistaken, sir, I ask your pardon: my intent was civil, though perhaps inept.’
‘Most of the Hurons I know have every reason to say Ugh to the paleface, French, English, or American: in the language that I speak—and I must tell you, sir, that there is an infinity of languages spoken by the original possessors of this continent Ugh is an expression of disgust, repulsion, dislike. I had thought of resenting it, but it appeared to me that you meant no offense; and then I have a certain fellow-feeling for you; we are, after all, both defeated, both victims of the Americans.’
There is one last daring battle at sea in the Shannon versus the Chesapeake, and O’Brian ends on a truly infuriating cliffhanger. I speculated in Desolation Island that Stephen and Diana’s story was at last going to reach a conclusion in this book, but I think that conclusion is still far off . . .
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