Essay
Opposites are very attractive in O'Brian's novels

By Mary Ann Gwinn
Seattle Times book editor

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I hope the four-star sex appeal of Russell Crowe will open O'Brian's world to the uninitiated, male and female alike. These are wonderful books. Though they do have their share of swearing sailors and salty dogs, what they're really about is friendship between two men whose opposing natures are a beautiful complement to one another.

O'Brian, a British novelist who died at age 85 in 2000 after completing the 20th book of the "Master and Commander" series, was an obscure author of biographies and fiction until 1989, when an admiring editor at W.W. Norton picked up the novels written to date and republished them in America. Then the New York Times Book Review called them "the best historical novels ever written." They took off like a cannon shot and have been padding their publisher's bottom line ever since.

The first installment, "Master and Commander," sets up the friendship between Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin.

Aubrey is a career Royal Navy officer; blond, boisterous and courageous. Maturin is an Irish physician, full of dark passions and high intelligence, a sometime spy who treats the wounded and mops up the blood, shed brutally, during Aubrey's many engagements.

These two meet in "Master and Commander," get into an argument over music, smooth things over with a bottle of wine and sail off into a long-gone world of courage, loyalty and danger. On board, crewmen from a bewildering range of class, race and temperament unite in a common purpose, for motives as diverse as the crew. O'Brian's circumscribed world of a 19th-century sailing ship yields endless opportunities for drama, violence and suspense.

Aubrey, the English patriot, wants to whip Napoleon. Maturin, an Irishman, joins the cause of his native land's oppressors because of his hatred for Napoleon's tyrannies.

The two plot, argue, endure seasickness and torment the French. They share a fervent appreciation of music and conversation, sly humor and beautiful women.

I hope Maturin gets his due in the movie, because I believe he is the divided heart of the series. He believes in the English cause, but he sees and treats the carnage of war, dosing his suffering with an intemperate amount of coca-leaf and laudanum. He is a passionate natural observer. One of the many delights of the series is to see the outposts of the 19th-century world through Maturin's eyes ("Desolation Island," which records a stopover in Antarctica, is my favorite book in this regard).

O'Brian authored a biography of Sir Joseph Banks, the 18th-century naturalist who accompanied Captain Cook on his circumnavigations. His recreations of the unspoiled natural world can almost make you weep with regret for our losses in that quarter.

O'Brian passed through Seattle in 1995 and enthralled a packed house at a Seattle Arts & Lectures talk. I asked him in an interview about the light-dark duality of Aubrey and Maturin.

The two share "a common liking," O'Brian said. "Likings arise when one has no earthly reason for liking — the most wildly improbable marriages and uncommon friendships. By making them opposites, I can say what I want of a sociological — and not to sound too pompous — of a philosophical nature."

That friendship among opposites may be this series' most enduring draw. The courage of Jack Aubrey would be a great gift, but what everyone really needs is a friend like Stephen Maturin.

Mary Ann Gwinn: 206-464-2357 or mgwinn@seattletimes.com

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