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Patrick O'Brian : A Life Revealed

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Dean King's "Patrick O'Brian: A Life Revealed" cannot wholly live up to its subtitle because its subject, the author of some of the best fiction of the 20th Century, withheld any cooperation and evidently instructed his friends to do likewise. King had to construct his biography using none-too-plentiful public sources and the views of estranged relatives, some quite embittered. Fortunately, King avoids becoming merely the advocate of those hostile to Patrick O'Brian, generally maintaining a conspicuous neutrality about the rights and wrongs of the author's personal life, and instead devotes much of the book to a survey of O'Brian's work, examining sources, the struggles to publish, critical reaction, and -- in some cases -- the relationship of particular incidents in the fiction to O'Brian's own life. O'Brian, it is now known, constructed a wholly fictional persona for himself (including his name and nationality) after breaking with his family over 50 years ago. Under those circumstances, and perhaps because of the pain of his own memories, it is not surprising that O'Brian made privacy a fetish. Still, Dean King has been able to assemble a reasonably detailed literary biography. I doubt that someone who is not familiar with O'Brian's marvelous novels would find a great deal of interest in this book, but for fans of his fiction, this biography provides hints and insights into the wellspring of his tales.

This would have been an outstanding biography even had its subject, Patrick O'Brian, cooperated completely, opened a cache of diaries and papers, and welcomed Dean King to have a go. "A Life Revealed" is well-written, detailed, fast-moving and as entertaining as it is informative, positive in portraying O'Brian's great talent yet honest in confronting his shortcomings; in short, it is everything you could want in a biography. The fact that O'Brian not only did not cooperate, but lived a life veiled in layer after layer of secrecy, makes what Dean King has achieved here nothing short of astonishing. Every detail in this book, from the momentous events surrounding Russ/O'Brian's identity change to minor but telling details about his childhood and domestic life, is the result of dogged, painstaking legwork.

One certainly expects that Dean King will get his critical and popular due for having produced the first serious biography of a cherished writer. But the biggest winner to emerge here is O'Brian himself. O'Brian, who died recently, could not have hoped for a more just treatment of his life, nor a more thoughtful consideration of his work. For all of O'Brian's prickly insistence on keeping his life a secret, this biography can only add to the depth of understanding and enjoyment that O'Brian's millions of fans get from his novels.

Dean King has written an honest, thorough and revealing portrait of the author of the greatest extended novel series of the 20th century. King has clearly gone to considerable lengths in uncovering the unpleasant past of O'Brian, his unhappy childhood, early years as a writer, failed first marriage (which culminated in O'Brian abandoning his wife and two young children), his poverty and struggles as a writer in Wales and then in the south of France, and the unrecognized genius of the first few books in his Aubrey/Maturin series. King is nearly adulatory (and rightly so) in describing the Aubrey/Maturin books of O'Brian; but he makes no excuses for O'Brian the man. O'Brian was vindictive, mean-spirited and unforgiving. He had not the slightest compunction about irretrievably cutting off any family member or "friend" who made the slightest criticism of him or his work. He was irrationally sensitive about his past and the cricumstances in which he changed his name (and identity) after WW II, and he ruthlessly cut off all enquiries into his past. Although he vehemently denied it, O'Brian was a snob of the first water, a self-absorbed dilletante, who had patience for only those who admired his work. Yet, in the final analysis (and perhpas this is all that matters, since O'Brian died in early 2000), O'Brian was a very great writer. His Aubrey/Maturin books so far transcend the genre of historical fiction that even identifying them with such is an injustice. As a connected narrative, the twenty books which comprise the Aubrey/Maturin series have no equal -- not even close -- in the 20th century. That the stories are set in the past, in the late years of Napoleonic Europe, is incidental. King recognizes this fact in describing O'Brian the novelist and provides much new information about how O'Brian began and developed this wonderful series of stories. Perhaps King realizes, as we all should, that, at the end of the day, only the books matter.

This is a book about the life of a writer: about his formative years, about his tumultuous family, about his persistence as a writer, and about his very late and final success and recognition for having authored the Aubrey-Matutin series. It is a well researched work, with author Dean King obviously taking delight in the thoroughness and lavishness he invested in this work (Patrick's brother Mike, if you must know, was the navigator of a Lancaster bomber that was shot down over Germany in WW II. He is buried in the Reichwald Forest Cemetery, Plot 3, row A, grave 6).

Patrick O'Brian was the son of a physician and a gentle and beautiful woman who died when he was six. By age 15 he had written and published his first novel. Thereafter he devoted himself to writing, generally with good critical success. In 1945, for reasons unknown, he changed his legal name from Russ to O'Brien and started to allow new acquaintances to think of him as being from Ireland.In his 30's at that time, he had been married and divorced and was the father of a boy and a girl with spina bifida, who died at age three. One of the dark and disturbing spots in his life was the abandonment of that family. He eventually settled in the south of France, where his wrote the Aubrey-Maturin series.

O'Brian's success did not rush at him; on the contrary, for years he eked out a living by doing French translations (such as the works of Simone de Beauvoir and the novel Papillon) and by taking on literary assignments of one sort or another. It was one of these assignments ("try your hand at another sea novel") that led to the publication of the first of the Aubrey-Maturin novels ("Master and Commander") in 1967. The book and those that followed were well received but read only by a relatively small group of aficionados. In 23 years he had written 13 novels of the series series, all of superb quality, when at last in 1990, at age 75, he became famous practically overnight. A British critic called the intelligentsia's failure to recognize his talents any sooner "as baffling as the Inca inability to invent the wheeel."

I could not put the book down. It is a rich, complex, detailed, balanced, and above all, fair biography. Its subject was a secretive and private individual who was entirely non-cooperative on the theme of his own biography. He obviusly abhorred the idea of the violations of privacy inherent in such a work. Ironically, O'Brian had unflinchingly done to Pablo Picasso (another non-cooperating, private subject) precisely what Don King has done to him: written about his life ("Pablo Ruiz Picasso: A Biography).

Patrick O'Brian died a couple of months ago (January 2000), and therefore is not around to be aggravated by this work. I am glad about that part, for now one can read his biography with pleasure, umarred by mental images of an angry and resentful Mr. O'Brian fuming about the book in the south of France.

This book would stand as an outstanding biography even had its subject cooperated fully. It is well-written, exhaustively detailed, sensitive to the subject yet unsparingly honest in detailing his shortcomings -- in short, it is everything you could ask for in a biography. But the fact the subject, Patrick O'Brian, was not merely uncooperative, but lived a life veiled in layer after layer of secrecy, makes what Dean King has accomplished here nothing short of astonishing. Each detail, from O'Brian's momentous identity change to minor but telling glimpses of his childhood and domestic life, is the result of dogged, tireless legwork. Amassing enough details for a magazine profile would have been difficult enough. Yet here is a big, hefty book crammed with choice details, seamless and complete.

While one certainly expects that King will get his critical and popular due for producing the first serious biography of a cherished writer, it is O'Brian who emerges as the big winner here. For all his flinty evasions and prickly protestations, O'Brian, who died recently, could not have asked for a more fair or just portrait of his life, nor a more thoughtful analysis of his works. This book will only add to the enjoyment and understanding that O'Brian's millions of admirers get from the novels.

Dean King has published two companions to O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin series (Harbours and High Seas, and A Sea of Words) and this is his companion to the life of the author. He has uncovered many of the secrets that O'Brian would have preferred to remain hidden, and he has given an insight into the literary background and writing style of O'Brian that will delight anybody interested in his works, especially the twenty volume epic canon of Captain Jack Aubrey RN and Surgeon Stephen Maturin FRS.

King has dug deep into O'Brian's family, discovering spies, crank doctors, salty seadogs, bad fathers and errant husbands enough for a whole shelf full of fiction. He has chronicled O'Brian's life through its several changes, especially the golden afternoon of his writing career, when he was discovered by the world's readers and became a heroic figure, writing best-seller after best-seller from his vineyard home in the South of France.

While in many ways it is an intrusion that Patrick O'Brian would have been apalled to see published, it is also a tribute by one of his foremost fans. Make up your own mind when you read this.

Having been a rabid fan of O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin novels, and then joyfully discovering his two earlier sea novels, I encouraged every friends and family member I thought would be interested to read those wonderful books. Though biographies are not a favorite genre of mine, I was presented with this book as a gift because it was well-known among my loved ones that O'Brian's work had meant so much to me over the years.

I had no idea of O'Brian's persona.

Dean King is to be commended for putting together a very well constructed biography of an extremely difficult subject. O'Brian deliberately obfuscated his past, distorted facts and outright lied to even close friends throughout his entire life. His attempt to hide his own past must have been a terrible obstacle to writing this biography, but King did a wonderful job.

Ultimately, I realized that I would have keenly disliked O'Brian had I known him personally, and I'm glad that never happened. Instead, I can simply enjoy the fruits of his marvelous creativity.

Dean King is to be commended for his hard work and meticulous research; he is honest at those points when he doesn't have all the facts so presents what he feels is the "most likely" scenario. In summary, being neither iconoclastic nor apologist, King's unbiased and frank account of Patrick O'Brian's strange life and how it translated into the nuances of his novels is perceptive and engaging.

In what is presumably his final companion to Patrick O'Brian's work, Dean King details the experiences and emotions that drove and shaped O'Brian's literature. King's research is meticulous and often stunning, as when he describes O'Brian's brief and less-than-heroic RAF stint. The level of detail in this biography is remarkable, considering O'Brian's desire for privacy and his active deceit of journalists more gullible than King.

King's book examines a man tortured by paired gifts of insight into human nature and a crippling inability to forgive. O'Brian was perhaps least of all able to forgive his own shortcomings, his discomfort with the past spurring his pains to keep his personal history out of the public eye. Regarding this kind of speculation, King reins himself in, drawing reasonable conclusions but leaving the true enigmas of O'Brian's behavior to the reader's consideration. King's book is a thorough and perceptive companion to the literature of Patrick O'Brian.

Not only did Patrick O'Brian invent two of the greatest characters in history, he did a remarkable job of inventing an entire life for himself. Dean King has done a masterful job of digging beneath the veils that O'Brian layered over his past. His biography is concise, penetrating, and well written. He does literature a service by bringing the real Patrick O'Brian to life, whether the old man wanted it or not.

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 gifted but humanly flawed O'Brian, I am happy 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. Given that King is a devoted reader of O'Brian's works, he can be forgiven for his breathless treatment of how O'Brian came to be known and revered especially in America for his Aubrey-Maturin series.

Which is not to excuse King's excesses of style. His chapter-heading quotations are odd choices that smack occasionally of invincible pretension. What Thoreau and Plutarch had to do with the matter at hand eluded me. King opens the bio with the episode of the writer Richard Patrick Russ changing his name to Patrick O'Brian, and King purports to know what Russ/O'Brian was thinking. King spoke with many people who knew O'Brian, but one is never sure about sources for particular passages because footnotes are wholly absent. Finally, there is a logical inconsistency that dogs King: having established that O'Brian consistently lied about his putative Irish background, King uses O'Brian's writings about himself often uncritically. Many of O'Brian's family refused to speak with King, so perhaps King just had to work with what he had.

King's writing is entertaining, and not always in a good way; it often leaves one with the feeling of not having reached the level of ept. The reaction to an early novel "was as if Beethoven's Ninth Symphony were being performed sotto voce." The potential American market for O'Brian's books "was like a Manila galleon lying halfway around the world, strange, unfathomable, immensely rich." One "watershed review was seeping into the minds of American book readers." At one point, having exhausted his store of merely strange figures of speech, King then compares O'Brian to the Little Engine That Could. I think that's projection at work. In any case, King demonstrates that immersing oneself in good writing doesn't necessarily spill over.

Tolstoy, having read and disagreed with King's bio of his stepfather, has given us a tedious and 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.