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Aug. 27th, 2004 05:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
senoritafishFrom today's The Writer's Almanac newsletter:
My father introduced me to Horatio Hornblower when I was in 5th or 6th grade, I think. All my girlfriends were still reading Nancy Drew, or maybe starting on Harlequin Romances (if they were reading at all), and here I was reading stories of the Napoleonic Wars; the thrill of a tall ship under full sail, deafening cannon battles with accompanying blood and flying splinters, weevils in your morning breakfast biscuit, and leaving your family behind for years at a time. Not that war is a favorite subject of mine, but Captain Hornblower inspired my fondness for historical fiction, and furthered my love of the ocean. I think the reasons I liked him as a character was that no matter how successful he was, he was always unsure of himself, certain that he wasn't worthy, and never grew out of seeing himself as a gangly, unhandsome, callow midshipman. He could've treated the women in his life better, but tried to do the honorable thing as much as possible. What I liked most was the rare moments when Forester alluded to the deep friendship between him and his first lieutenant, William Bush. What can I say? I've always been a sucker for a buddy story. I've even seen some Hornblower slash recently, probably inspired by the recent A&E series. I guess I was an innocent, but that sort of relationship would have never occurred to me at the time.
I remember also reading Forester's stories of more modern wars, and somehow the characters seemed rather flat in comparison. Maybe I just had less interest in the time period. The African Queen was a wonderful story, however. I had read the book and was surprised to find out the movie existed -- with Katherine Hepburn, no less. The movie was quite faithful to the book - something that doesn't seem to happen often nowadays.
I'm guess I'm kind of weird - I very seldom read any fiction set in present day. It's usually either historical, speculative or fantasy. Is my own present so humdrum I have to escape it? Or is that my escapism has to be exotic somehow?
It's the birthday of novelist who wrote under the name C. S. Forester, (books by this author) born Cecil Smith in Cairo, Egypt (1899). His father was a British official working in Africa. Forester went to school in London, and then started his literary career writing hack biographies and thrillers.
His experiences as the captain of a ship inspired him to write his first really successful novel The African Queen (1935) about an evangelical English spinster and a grizzled small-boat captain who fall in love while navigating a river through Central Africa. Forester had never been to Central Africa, but he managed to make the novel convincing anyway. The book was made into a movie starring Katherine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart.
Forester kept sailing in his spare time, and it was on a long, slow sea voyage along the coast of Central America that he got the idea for his most famous character, Horatio Hornblower, a fictional Royal Navy midshipman, born July 4, 1776, who becomes a hero in the naval wars against Napoleon. The first novel featuring the new character was The Happy Return (1937), and Forester published many successful sequels.
Readers still remember the character today because he is so unique: heroic but also introverted, suffering from sea-sickness, full of self-doubt, class-conscious, a fanatic about discipline and efficiency, and a hater of the poetry of Wordsworth.
My father introduced me to Horatio Hornblower when I was in 5th or 6th grade, I think. All my girlfriends were still reading Nancy Drew, or maybe starting on Harlequin Romances (if they were reading at all), and here I was reading stories of the Napoleonic Wars; the thrill of a tall ship under full sail, deafening cannon battles with accompanying blood and flying splinters, weevils in your morning breakfast biscuit, and leaving your family behind for years at a time. Not that war is a favorite subject of mine, but Captain Hornblower inspired my fondness for historical fiction, and furthered my love of the ocean. I think the reasons I liked him as a character was that no matter how successful he was, he was always unsure of himself, certain that he wasn't worthy, and never grew out of seeing himself as a gangly, unhandsome, callow midshipman. He could've treated the women in his life better, but tried to do the honorable thing as much as possible. What I liked most was the rare moments when Forester alluded to the deep friendship between him and his first lieutenant, William Bush. What can I say? I've always been a sucker for a buddy story. I've even seen some Hornblower slash recently, probably inspired by the recent A&E series. I guess I was an innocent, but that sort of relationship would have never occurred to me at the time.
I remember also reading Forester's stories of more modern wars, and somehow the characters seemed rather flat in comparison. Maybe I just had less interest in the time period. The African Queen was a wonderful story, however. I had read the book and was surprised to find out the movie existed -- with Katherine Hepburn, no less. The movie was quite faithful to the book - something that doesn't seem to happen often nowadays.
I'm guess I'm kind of weird - I very seldom read any fiction set in present day. It's usually either historical, speculative or fantasy. Is my own present so humdrum I have to escape it? Or is that my escapism has to be exotic somehow?
