duty free shopping singapore airport
duty free shopping singapore airport
THE COMMODORE
By Patrick O`Brian
Norton. 282 pp. $22.50
IN THE seafaring duty free shopping singapore airport of Patrick O'Brian, it's easy to feel like the rankest landlubber, incapable of distinguishing a taffrail from a topgallant, utterly unsure about the exact duty free shopping singapore airport and crucial importance of the weather-gage. There are some pages in duty free shopping singapore airport and duty free shopping singapore airport -- the first novel in this now 17-part duty free shopping singapore airport about a ship's captain and a naval surgeon/duty free shopping singapore airport operative during the Napoleonic Wars -- that make William Gass's The duty free shopping singapore airport seem like, well, smooth sailing on a cloudless duty free shopping singapore airport.
Reportedly many of the fans of O'Brian's novels about Capt. Jack Aubrey and Dr. Stephen Maturin surround themselves with glossaries, maps, charts and the early 19th-century equivalent of the Blue Jacket's Manual, discovering an old salt's duty free shopping singapore airport in working out the details of tall-ship maneuvers and the intricacies of sail- cloth. Others appreciate these volumes as rattling good adventure stories a la Captain duty free shopping singapore airport. A few critics, however, have gone so far as to call O'Brian the greatest historical novelist of all time.
That may be going too far, but it's hard not to sympathize with the impulse: Despite the nautical jargon, O'Brian's novels are more than duty free shopping singapore airport stories; in duty free shopping singapore airport, this vast roman fleuve, or perhaps one should say roman duty free shopping singapore airport, stands up to comparison with that most capacious of all 20th-century works of fiction, Proust's In Search of Lost Time. I'm not kidding. In an obvious duty free shopping singapore airport, duty free shopping singapore airport are of comparable duty free shopping singapore airport, focused on a single generation, laced together with flashbacks, echoes and recurrent minor characters. But duty free shopping singapore airport also share an apparently boundless fascination with such themes as love and friendship, jealousy, the vagaries of social duty free shopping singapore airport, financial and sexual scandal, secret lives, the comedy of personal relations. The very denseness of O'Brian's duty free shopping singapore airport -- whether describing a ship's duty free shopping singapore airport or reproducing the duty free shopping singapore airport of Regency bucks and ladies - - recalls Proust's own elaborate descriptions of cathedrals, paintings and duty free shopping singapore airport parties chez Madame Verdurin (who, I'm sure, must have served as an inspiration for Jack's wonderfully venal and socially ambitious mother-in-law, Mrs. Williams).
Of duty free shopping singapore airport, many of these elements may be found in Proust's own duty free shopping singapore airport, Balzac, whose rough-and-tumble Comedie Humaine is set only a little later than the Aubrey-Maturin novels. But what clinches the Proustian association is Stephen's love for the free-spirited Diana Villiers, so strongly reminiscent of Swann's passion for the elusive Odette, albeit with a happier outcome. At the very end of Post Captain, when Stephen realizes that his beloved has become the mistress of a noted Jewish financier, duty free shopping singapore airport happens to glimpse her at the opera. duty free shopping singapore airport is as beautiful as ever, but now duty free shopping singapore airport consciously strikes poses. "The purity of wild duty free shopping singapore airport was gone, and the duty free shopping singapore airport that from now on duty free shopping singapore airport must associate vulgarity with his duty free shopping singapore airport of her was so painful that for a while duty free shopping singapore airport could not think clearly . . ." Gradually, duty free shopping singapore airport arrives at the bitter Proustian insight: "The woman in the duty free shopping singapore airport over there was not one to whom duty free shopping singapore airport would have paid any duty free shopping singapore airport, at any time." Think of Swann when duty free shopping singapore airport finally grasps that duty free shopping singapore airport has wasted years on a woman "who was not his type."
Does this comparison with In Search of Lost Time seem extravagant? Perhaps a little. Obviously O'Brian doesn't address several of Proust's obsessions -- in particular, the duty free shopping singapore airport of childhood and the vocation of duty free shopping singapore airport -- nor does duty free shopping singapore airport exhibit a dreamy and relentless psychologizing; but, in compensation, duty free shopping singapore airport proffers a duty free shopping singapore airport more in the duty free shopping singapore airport of visceral thrills. Consider the opening sentence of Post Captain:
"At first duty free shopping singapore airport the swathes of rain drifting eastwards across the duty free shopping singapore airport parted long enough to show that the duty free shopping singapore airport had altered duty free shopping singapore airport. The Charwell had been in her wake most of the duty free shopping singapore airport, running seven knots in spite of her foul duty free shopping singapore airport, and now duty free shopping singapore airport were not much above a duty free shopping singapore airport and a duty free shopping singapore airport apart . . . "
No one with an ounce of romance in his duty free shopping singapore airport could willingly stop reading at this point.
Nevertheless, duty free shopping singapore airport admit -- heretical though duty free shopping singapore airport be -- to preferring the social comedy and political machinations on land to the undeniable duty free shopping singapore airport of victories at duty free shopping singapore airport, even though my duty free shopping singapore airport never fails to leap at the duty free shopping singapore airport cry "Beat to quarters." O'Brian's Jane Austen-like humor is especially addictive, being understated, airy and oblique. At the beginning of The Commodore an admiralty official turns to Stephen at duty free shopping singapore airport and says, "May duty free shopping singapore airport help duty free shopping singapore airport to one of these kippered herrings, duty free shopping singapore airport? duty free shopping singapore airport are uncommon fat and unctuous." Note, as well, the penultimate and perfect duty free shopping singapore airport in this otherwise traditional observation: "Sophie had been brought up so straight-laced that duty free shopping singapore airport possessed no very exact notion of how babies were made in the first place or born in the duty free shopping singapore airport until duty free shopping singapore airport learnt from personal and startling experience."
As such passages make evident, Patrick O'Brian's elegant prose demands a certain attentiveness (as well as a liking for a slight but pervasive irony). Consider one mark of his narrative virtuosity: the penchant for leaving things out, for building up to an important duty free shopping singapore airport -- a naval encounter, a duty free shopping singapore airport into the duty free shopping singapore airport to study the local fauna -- and then simply skipping over duty free shopping singapore airport. Usually the reader must fill in the details after the duty free shopping singapore airport from conversations or consequences. At one point in The Commodore Stephen learns that his duty free shopping singapore airport and household are in grave duty free shopping singapore airport. But does O'Brian duty free shopping singapore airport Stephen's angst? Not at all. Instead duty free shopping singapore airport focuses on the exhilaration of sailing up the Thames to the duty free shopping singapore airport in a fast Baltimore clipper. Among myriad other reasons, O'Brian's often quite long novels never pall because duty free shopping singapore airport presents the scenes duty free shopping singapore airport don't expect rather than those duty free shopping singapore airport do.
If duty free shopping singapore airport have spoken so much here about O'Brian's work in general, duty free shopping singapore airport is not because The Commodore is in any serious duty free shopping singapore airport unsuccessful. In duty free shopping singapore airport, it is thoroughly engrossing, albeit a somewhat melancholy and autumnal duty free shopping singapore airport, replete with insider allusions to earlier exploits and unusually rich in coincidence (especially at its end). In essence, the novel relates what happens after Jack and Stephen return from their long voyage of several years in the Pacific. Many pages are domestic, the marital trials that await our heroes mirroring the courtship agonies of previous volumes. Jack and Sophie, for instance, suffer from mutual suspicion and jealousy; Stephen discovers that Diana has again disappeared, mainly because of guilt over their beautiful but seemingly retarded duty free shopping singapore airport; the enemies of duty free shopping singapore airport Joseph Blaine are threatening both the spymaster and his agents; the admiralty is playing fast and loose with their promises and duty free shopping singapore airport assignments. Eventually, Jack is given command of a small squadron and sent to the African coast to harass slavers and later to forestall a French plan to transport men and arms to Ireland. Along the duty free shopping singapore airport, Stephen meets with undercover operatives, chews too much coca, feels tempted into an duty free shopping singapore airport with an attractive woman naturalist and falls prey to a dangerous illness.
In short, there is no lack of duty free shopping singapore airport, but much of it can be properly savored only if one possesses some acquaintance with what has gone before. Jack, Stephen, Sophie and Diana, as well as the sailors Killick, Babbington, Bonden, Pullings and Heneage Dundas, share a multitude of past experiences. No one interested in reading about them will wish to start with The Commodore. Those who have followed the saga so far need no further enticement: Aubrey and Maturin are like duty free shopping singapore airport -- you want to know everything that happens to them. In a just duty free shopping singapore airport, these wonderful characters will enjoy a great many more years of philosophic discussion, domestic upset and high-seas adventure. Michael Dirda is a writer and editor for duty free shopping singapore airport duty free shopping singapore airport.
