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Honolulu Lite Charles Memminger |
O’Brian movie
is something to
(Russell) Crowe aboutThe soon-to-be released movie "Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World" likely won't enjoy the same blockbuster status as the "Harry Potter" movies but there are enough sea-story nerds and Patrick O'Brian fans to assure it gets a good ride.
I'm looking forward to the movie in the same giddy way a "Star Trek" geek starts dusting off his Klingon costume when William Shatner comes to town.
I'm part of a literary underworld addicted to the 20-book series written by O'Brian, a shy, intelligent man who died in 2000 at age 83. I'm part of an even smaller underworld of writers who actually got to talk to O'Brian, who had a healthy disdain for attention. His publishers practically had to march him at gunpoint to an airplane to fly from England to New York to publicize one of his books. He was a man who not only wrote about the 19th century, but lived it.
If you've never heard of O'Brian, you've got plenty of company. He's the best unknown writer of our times, a man who avoided fame at all costs and hated it when it came to him anyway. A man of mystery, he was born in either Ireland or England and is believed to have been some kind of intelligence agent during World War II. He began writing long-haired essays and biographies of people like Pablo Picasso before suddenly launching into an unlikely series of naval tales centering on the life of Jack Aubrey and his shipmate surgeon and sometimes spy, Stephen Maturin.
In 20 books, O'Brian followed Aubrey's career from lieutenant to admiral, taking readers into life on board a British fighting frigate in such detail, you could actually taste the suet pudding known as "Drowned Baby" and smell the gun smoke from rippling broadside.
I WAS SUCH an O'Brian fanatic that when I heard he was coming to America I convinced the Star-Bulletin's managing editor that it was essential that I interview him. He asked what connection O'Brian had with Hawaii and I pointed out that he wrote about ships on oceans and that Hawaii was surrounded by an ocean.
My rationale was desperate and a bit thin but the editor fell for it. A phone call was set up by O'Brian's publisher, who warned me that the author hated interviews and did not consider the question-and-answer format an appropriate form of discussion. I tried to envision an interview devoid of questions and answers and plunged on anyway.
O'Brian came on the line with a bad cold. I had one, too. We sneezed and wheezed greetings at each other. Then he broke the question-and-answer rule by asking, "The macadamia nut, does it grow on trees?" He also asked if we had trout in streams here and after a while, I understood his aversion to being questioned. What was this, a nature test?
He is more like his character Maturin, the Irish surgeon, than the swashbuckling Aubrey and, as such, sympathized with Hawaiians. "There's something to be said for just leaving other people alone," he said, expressing empathy for Irish and Hawaiian domination by outsiders.
With Russell Crowe playing Aubrey in "Master and Commander," the movie will, hopefully, lead a new generation of armchair frigate commanders to O'Brian's writing. I read the "Harry Potter" books to bond with my daughter. Is it too much to ask her to jump up to the mainmast and keep an eye out for enemy privateers?
See the Columnists section for some past articles.
Charles Memminger, winner of National Society of Newspaper Columnists awards, appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. E-mail cmemminger@starbulletin.com
