Patrick O'Brian: The Making of the Novelist, 1914-1949 [Hardcover]

Nikolai Tolstoy (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 26, 2005

A complex, layered portrait of the man considered by many to be the greatest British novelist of the twentieth century.

This is the story of Patrick O'Brian's life up to his decision to move to Collioure in the south of France. His childhood; his precocious writing success; his sailing experiences; and the truth behind his first marriage, divorce, and name change are set forth with candor and sympathy. Along the way Nikolai Tolstoy reveals the seeds of inspiration that would one day lead to comparisons to Jane Austen and even Homer. Tolstoy was O'Brian's stepson, and their acquaintance lasted forty-five years. He stayed with his mother and O'Brian at their French home and was a frequent correspondent with the reclusive author, discovering facets of his character and creative genius that were hidden from others. Over the years he accumulated a vast collection of the author's papers, correspondence, and notebooks, many of which are reproduced here. On the basis of this trove of original material, Tolstoy has written the definitive biography that O'Brian and his admirers deserve. 16 pages of illustrations

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

As much a rebuttal as it is a biography, Tolstoy's biography of the twentieth century British novelist's life proves both unusually insightful and distractingly biased. The author's relationship to his subject is revealed up front: Tolstoy was O'Brian's stepson through a second marriage and a "frequent correspondent with the reclusive author" before his death in January 2000, an association that provides Tolstoy with a trove of untapped source material in the form of personal letters and family papers. More impressive, perhaps, is Tolstoy's encyclopedic knowledge of his stepfather's work, which he employs at almost every turn to demonstrate the largely autobiographical nature of O'Brian's fiction. Too often, though, Tolstoy's analysis resorts to speculation, and, given the writer's potential conflict of interest, such uncertainties are impossible to ignore. Hanging over Tolstoy's work from page one is a previous biography, Dean King's Patrick O'Brian: A Life, an unflattering and possibly flawed portrayal of the historical novelist that turns on his mid-century decision to walk out on his first family. Here, Tolstoy tries to set the record straight by providing a more nuanced view of his stepfather's choices and eccentricities. Unfortunately, each moment of clarification is accompanied by a moment in which Tolstoy, routinely name-checking King's biography, falls into the role of an apologist. The tragedy is that O'Brian is a fascinating subject because of his faults, shortcomings and quirks, not in spite of them, as Tolstoy would seem to believe.
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From Booklist

How did Patrick Russ, doctor's son, become Patrick O'Brian, writer? Tolstoy, his stepson, relies heavily on family papers and autobiographical elements in O'Brian's early works (his first novel was published when he was 12). An unhappy childhood fostered both deep insecurity and intense imagination, and O'Brian's interest in natural history and in the eighteenth century ("the happy land into which he escaped") helped lay the groundwork for the Aubrey/Maturin series, for which he is best known. Although Tolstoy doesn't downplay his stepfather's eccentricities of character (including his disavowal of his family and his claim to be Irish), he seeks to offer a corrective to Dean King's Patrick O'Brian: A Life Revealed (2000),which depended much on contributions from the bitter son of O'Brian's first marriage. This detailed and thoughtful account ends more than 20 years before the publication of Master and Commander (1990), so readers looking for more-specific background on the Aubrey/-Maturin series may be disappointed. Perhaps there is a later volume to come. Mary Ellen Quinn
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 512 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton (September 26, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393061302
• ISBN-13: 978-0393061307
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #484,949 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Nikolai Tolstoy versus Dean King--neither bio is adequate, May 28, 2006

By 

Nicholas Dujmovic (Vienna, Virginia) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Patrick O'Brian: The Making of the Novelist, 1914-1949 (Hardcover)

Dean King's groundbreaking biography of Patrick O'Brian has taken a real beating of late from Nikolai Tolstoy's recent and competing treatment of his stepfather's first 35 years. Having slogged through both biographies of the literary gifted but humanly flawed O'Brian, I have to say, no one wins. In fact, a pox on both their houses; I am going to forget what I have read and will just start rereading the man's work.

King gets credit for being the first to put together O'Brian's life. Even with all the inaccuracies so helpfully pointed out by Tolstoy, King was able to anchor the main points of that life in a way that make Tolstoy's criticisms often seem petty (more on that). Above all, it must be understood, King has written a biography more of O'Brian's work--what was written when, how it was received, the struggles for recognition--than of his life with all its hidden chapters and strange motivations.

Tolstoy, having read and disagreed with King's bio of his stepfather, has given us an uneven, often tedious, and overly defensive account of O'Brian's life until his move to France in 1949. In the end, quite ironically, his biography leaves one less enamored with O'Brian the man than does King's.

Tolstoy's thickest problem is that he's too close to his subject for comfort. The most transparent example of this is Tolstoy's repeated criticisms of Dean King's errors--some factual but most on the writer's motivations--that themselves originate in O'Brian's lies about himself, lies that Tolstoy dismisses as "innocuous pretense" or "romancing." Tolstoy, in essence, just doesn't see what all the fuss is about, but as one of those O'Brian family members who refused to speak with King, he really cannot have it two ways. Likewise, Tolstoy swings between saying that O'Brian knew perfectly well that he was lying about his background (and what does that matter really?), the suggestion that O'Brian believed his own lies (and therefore is not culpable), and the idea that others wanted to believe O'Brian was Irish, so he had to follow along (and therefore should be forgiven).

It's in the substance of Tolstoy's defense of O'Brian--responding to what King unearthed in his research--that things get ugly, or amusing, depending on your point of view. King discovered that O'Brian had an affair shortly after marrying his first wife; Tolstoy gives O'Brian a pass on adultery because the girl was willing and the wife probably would never know! Tolstoy lets us know that "nothing can justify" O'Brian's leaving the first wife and two small children--one with a fatal disease--but he apparently thinks the situation mitigated somehow by the fact that O'Brian was "constitutionally ill equipped" for fatherhood (in fact he hated children), that his little daughter wasn't going to live long anyway, and that in any case he had met and moved in with his soul mate, the author's mother, a woman of wit and education, quite in contrast to the first wife. At one point Tolstoy cannot understand the first wife's bitterness, as O'Brian had done nothing (nothing!) to provoke it.

Tolstoy's biography is more accurate than King's (it helps to have the subject's diaries and papers), there is no doubt Tolstoy is a better writer (a family thing, perhaps), and I have to say his teasing out autobiographical elements from early short stories is very good indeed. But one must question both his judgment and his perspective. He started by wanting to defend O'Brian against what he saw as unfair treatment, but he ended up portraying a far more dysfunctional, far less appealing Patrick O'Brian than Dean King ever did or would.

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Life Before Capt. Jack Aubrey, November 8, 2005

By 

Jay A. Frogel (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Patrick O'Brian: The Making of the Novelist, 1914-1949 (Hardcover)

A biographer who is intimately familiar with his or her subject, especially if that familiarity extends over nearly half a century, can bring a unique perspective to the subject. Tolstoy certainly does that since his mother, Mary Tolstoy (her last name derives from her first marriage to a member of a branch of THE Tolstoy family) was O'Brian's second wife for that much time. It can also bring a certain bias to the biography, for better or for worse. In this case I think that the author has succeeded in presenting a balanced and highly nuanced portrait of a complex and secretive individual. I disagree with one of the trade reviews on the Amazon page that suggests that Tolstoy is too much of an apologist for O'Brian's behavior, especially towards his first wife and mother of his son.

The writing can get rather tedious at times and I often found myself scanning quickly over whole paragraphs, but taken as a whole the book is well written. Much of it is based on private letters and diaries available only to Tolstoy and not to O'Brian's previous biographer (a book I did have not read). As a result of access to this material there are exquisitely vivid portrayals of war time London and the harsh but beautiful landscape of Wales. Tolstoy's analysis of O'Brian's life, particularly his youth, relies heavily on deconstruction of O'Brians short stories and other early writings. I was amazed to learn that O'Brian's first work was published when he was barely a teenager. While highly speculative, Tolstoy does manage to present a fairly convincing and consistent picture of the author. Although you might wonder if a completley different picture might be drawn from the same fictional writings of O'Brian, the lengthy excerpts from these writings that Tolstoy presents suggests that if you are going to take this approach, then you are not likely to end up with a widely divergent description.

I read the entire Aubrey/Maturine series over a period of a few months about a year ago and wanted to learn more - actually anything - about the author. While Tolstoy's work ends well before O'Brian began or even conceived of the A/M series, you can certainly see his growing fascination both for detail and for life in the late 18th early 19th centuries. Indeed, Tolstoy makes the case that O'Brian probably would have been much happier living in the past than in the present. He was exceedingly class conscious and regarded with disdain many of the "new-fangled" contrivences of mid-20th century life.

So, would I rank this as amongst the best biographies I have read? No, for reasons I have already given. But I certainly do not regret having read it since the writing is good and I learned a great deal about O'Brian. And I certainly would read its successor volume if one is in Tolstoy's plans.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Dreadful, April 16, 2011

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greenhornet - See all my reviews

This review is from: Patrick O'Brian: The Making of the Novelist, 1914-1949 (Hardcover)

This has to be the worst biography I've ever read, hands down. What sort of editor would let this get published? Tolstoy pads this thing out to such an extent you want to pull your hair out. And the man has no humour whatsoever. Deadly dull prose, all the more horrifying when you consider the subject- Patrick O'Brian- took such care with HIS brilliant writing, and was himself a master prose stylist. Avoid at all costs. O'Brian needs someone to do him justice (and not a besotted fan either). What a biography it would be!