In the late Sixties an American publisher wrote suggesting that I should write an adult book about the sea: this it seems arose from a recollection of both Testimonies and the cheerful little Golden Ocean. The suggestion came at an opportune moment; I agreed and quickly wrote Master and Commander, setting the tale in the Mediterranean during the Napoleonic wars, the glorious days of the Royal Navy. I am sorry to say that the Americans did not like it much at its first appearance (they have changed their minds since then, bless them), nor did Macmillan, then my English publisher. Collins did, how ever, and they sold a most surprising number in hardback: many more of course in paperback. And to my astonishment it was translated into Japanese.
This encouraged me and I carried on with the series until 1973, when still another American publisher asked me whether I should like to write a life of Picasso, offering a princely advance. By all means: I had long admired him, I knew him moderately well and some of his friends quite intimately. It was clearly a book that would require a very great deal of work, but at that time I had the unthinking health and energy for it and the resources. We travelled all over the great man's Spain and above all his Catalonia, we went to Philadelphia, to New York, to Moscow and St Petersburg, to countless galleries and libraries. It took over three years, and I think the book was quite good. At all events Kenneth Clarke said it was the best in existence. Its reception was mixed: poor in the United States (I had scoffed at Gertrude Stein), moderate in England, good in France (which gratified me extremely), Italy and Sweden, very good in Germany, even better in Spain.
Yet on the whole I was glad to get back to my naval tales, where I could say what I liked, and control rhythm and events, if not the course of history. They followed one another at a steady pace, interrupted only by a life of Sir Joseph Banks, that amiable naturalist and circumnavigator. By now there are sixteen of them, and for the last ten or twelve it had been borne in upon me that this is the right kind of writing for a man of my sort.
Obviously I have lived very much out of the world: I know little of present-day Dublin or London or Paris, even less of post-modernity, post-structuralism, hard rock or rap, and I ca write with much conviction about the contemporary scene. Yet I do have some comments, some observations to offer on the condition humaine that may be sound or at least of some interest, and it seems to me that they are best made in the context of a world that I know as we as the reader does, a valid world so long as it is inhabited by human beings rather than by lay figures in period clothing.
The historical novel, as I learnt with some concern after I had written two or three, belongs to a despised genre. But the tale or narrative set in the past may have its particular, time-free value; and the candid reader will not misunderstand me, will not suppose that I intend any preposterous comparison, when I observe that Homer was farther removed in time from Troy than I am from the Napoleonic wars; yet he spoke to the Greeks for two thousand years and more.
This essay is taken from
Patrick O'Brian, Critical Appreciations and a Bibliography,
edited by A E Cunningham, British Library, 1993
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Black, Choleric & Married?
The Thirteen-Gun Salute Page 35