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OP, I think that you've made a great choice in reading material. It's very interesting what O'Brian notes in the foreword of M&C(I think, I'm away from home atm), how the actions and ships described are closely modeled on real ones that he learned about via various Royal Navy and other maritime-related sources.
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Mar 1, 2011 01:09
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Raskolnikov2089 posted:I don't believe Patrick O'Brian intended for their to be sexual undertones, only that it is very easy to read a relationship into the characters. In some ways they are like an extreme version of a 'work couple' as the term is today: they live in an unbelievably close world aboard the ship and things happen between them - both on land and at sea - that one would not normally encounter; this is intensified by both the friendship and the occasional doctor/patient relationship that occurs. In fact, in one unusual sequence, they are in Jack's cabin and conversing about some incident or other while Stephen administers an enema to Jack. Many times in the series, they save each other's lives, fortunes and health with hardly a thought or hesitation.
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Mar 13, 2011 03:33
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Raskolnikov2089 posted:I love re-reads of this series because each book always has some detail that was lost on me in O'Brian's prose. Yes, things were really bad as far as cleanliness and technique went. When Stephen was about to operate on someone's skull... "Had it not been for the need to preserve the appearance of professional infallibility and god-like calm, Mr Cotton would have pursed his lips and shaken his head: as it was he muttered, 'The Lord be with us,' and slid in his flattened probe. Stephen turned back his cuffs, spat on his hands, waited for the roll, placed his point and began his determined cut, the white bone skipping from the eager teeth and Carol swabbing the sawdust away. In the silence the ship's company grew still more intent: the midshipmen's birth, ghouls to a man, craned forward, unchid by their officers. But as the steel bit down into the living head, more than one grew pale, more than one looked away into the rigging; and even Jack, who had seen this grisly performance before, turned his eyes to the horizon where the distant Astrée and Iphigenia flashed white in the sun".
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May 7, 2011 01:57
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Rexim posted:I'm reading The Thirteen Gun Salute and I just got to the part where Yeah, Maturin is not just ice cold, he's very cunning as well, taking advantage of every opportunity that fortune presents. He managed to get in the good graces of various court officials and then orchestrated the downfall of Wray and Ledward, based on the undercurrents of jealousy about the sultan's catamite. Ledward picked the wrong boy to be two-timing with.
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Mar 30, 2012 22:07
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