Once you wade through the nautical terms (including the most awkward word in the English language: fo'c'sle . . . and a rope splicing term that will make you blush) then Patrick O'Brian's novel Master and Commander is less about sailing a brig in the Napoleonic Wars-- although there is plenty about sailing-- and more about how Commander Jack Aubrey navigates his great authority over men, while still being under the authority of his ranking officers; it is the first book in a series of twenty-one and I will certainly read more of them, though they are, as David Mamet calls them in a Times article, "Humble Genre Novels," but he argues that they will last longer than any of "today's putative literary gems," and then Mamet decides he will write a fan letter to O'Brian, thanking him for the great series, only to read in the newspaper that O'Brian has just died . . . and this reminds me of when I "discovered" Mitch Hedberg on a comedy DVD from Netflix, thought he was brilliantly funny, and went on-line to check if he was coming to The Stress Factory any time soon, only to find he had just died.
And then there was that eerie pattern where right after you would read a book, the author would die. I know Graham Greene was one of them.
ReplyDeletedid it to johnny cash as well. sang a song of his in class and he died a few minutes later. goes right along with the clairvoyance.
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