THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, April 13, 1995 TAG: 9504130042
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E5 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY TONY WHARTON, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 72 lines
``QUESTION AND answer is not a civilized form of conversation,'' says one of Patrick O'Brian's characters in ``The Truelove.'' Yet O'Brian sat still for an hour of questions Tuesday night at the Mariners' Museum in Newport News, and no one could call it anything but civilized.
O'Brian, 80, is the author of 17 novels of the British navy during the Napoleonic Wars of the early 1800s. While they are hardly on best-seller lists, the books have drawn an avid and growing audience of readers in recent years.
The occasion for O'Brian's visit was the release last Monday in the United States of ``The Commodore,'' the latest in the Aubrey/Maturin series. Like the others, it spins a sea-going tale around friends Jack Aubrey, an officer in the Royal navy, and Stephen Maturin, ship's surgeon, naturalist and intelligence agent.
Not surprisingly, the books are very popular in Hampton Roads, home of the largest naval base, and Tuesday showed it. Nearly 400 people, from armchair sailors to by-God gold-sleeved admirals, navigated clogged rush-hour roads on the Peninsula to attend, and museum officials said 100 more were on a waiting list for tickets.
The event was staged not as a speech, but a conversation between O'Brian and John B. Hightower, president of the museum and a frank admirer. They spoke in front of a portrait of British naval hero Admiral Lord Nelson.
``I don't sleep well at all, you know,'' O'Brian said in a rich, deep British-Irish tone. ``I do much of my writing at night, walking the far mountain road. This is how I compose.''
Asked why he is now so popular for books that have been coming out for more than 20 years, O'Brian threw up his hands and said, ``I am perfectly amazed. I have no explanation for it. None.''
There were mildly teasing questions about the intricate details of the books, including unheard-of parts of a ship and sailors' diseases like ``the marthambles.''
``I receive a good many things from persons whose ancestors were sailors,'' O'Brian said of his research. He also is known for using exact accounts of naval actions from British naval journals of the time.
As to the nautical details, which Hightower called ``impenetrable,'' O'Brian said, ``They may be impenetrable, but they just have to be right. Because every now and then someone is going to penetrate.''
Yet readers said Tuesday night that they love the books because they are not simply ``sea stories.'' Through his characters O'Brian thoughtfully explores the nature of love, friendship, power and fidelity, as well as music, medicine, history and nature.
If the books are thoroughly steeped in the language and conventions of the early 19th century, O'Brian himself seemed a throwback to another age. He reads widely in Latin and Greek, has sailed extensively and displays comprehensive knowledge of many of the subjects in his books.
``I was a sickly child, and I read an immense amount of books,'' he said. He named as influences primarily English and ancient writers, from Homer and Johnson to Jane Austen, ``that perfectly glorious mistress of English and the semicolon.''
He also struck some in the audience as gentlemanly to the core. Asked a question about the other famous British sea novels, the Horatio Hornblower series, O'Brian cautiously complimented the descriptions of battles, then stopped, unwilling to sound critical or jealous. When a questioner mentioned something about a character O'Brian obviously disagreed with, he said only, ``You have your view and I have mine.''
O'Brian finishes an Aubrey/Maturin novel about once a year. He is at work on the next one now. But one of the last questions asked, and hugely applauded, was, ``Could you please write a book a week?''
KEYWORDS: INTERVIEW by CNB