understandascope

We sail onward with Patrick O’Brian’s The Mauritius Command! Before we get to the actual book, a brief pause to note that O’Brian dedicated this book to Mary Renault, in Greek, which (according to littlerhymes and Google translate) means “Glaucus in Athens.” Still not sure what this means but love this further confirmation that Mary Renault loved this series. I presume she was reading it with her slash goggles firmly attached.

After a brief interval at home (Jack has acquired twin baby girls and lost all his money again), Jack is appointed commodore, which means he is a captain in charge of other captains, a big rise in responsibility with no corresponding rise in pay! (Some things never change.) He is going to direct the conquest of Mauritius, an island off the coast of Africa currently in the hands of the French.

This of course leads to many exciting sea battles, etc. etc., but what most captured my attention was Captain Clonfert. When Jack and Clonfert were both lieutenants, Clonfert hung back during an action where Jack’s command took heavy losses, then took all the credit for himself in dispatches. Either out of a guilt or gay crush (por que no los dos?, asks O’Brian), Clonfert has been obsessed with Jack’s career ever since.

He is also obsessed with proving his bravery. The rest of the world (except Jack and Clonfert himself) has long since bought that Clonfert is the Most Dashing Captain to Ever Dash, but unfortunately those exceptions are the people Clonfert really wishes to convince, so he continues to make extremely gallant, dashing, strategically disastrous choices, for which Jack is forced to very, very gentle suggest a reproof to him. But no reproof is so gentle that it cannot cast Clonfert into the depths of despair.

In general, Clonfert can’t stand any kind of judgment from Jack, negative or positive. Reproof crushes him, but so do praise/promotions/benefits of any kind, presumably because Clonfert experiences any kindness from Jack as heaping coals of fire on his head for previous misdeeds. (Jack, a simple soul, is just trying to let bygones be bygones.) If Clonfert could make a clean breast of it to Jack and apologize, it might make a world of difference. But also, Clonfert would rather die.

Clonfert also doesn’t get along well with other captains, presumably because the society of equals challenges his meager store of self-confidence. Jack is constantly trying to manage around him.

In some ways it would be easier if Clonfert were simply an all-around bad captain, but awkwardly for Jack, Clonfert in his attempts to prove his bravery really has made himself into a dashingly heroic captain beloved of his crew. His men simply adore him. His officers are aware of his foibles, particularly his pleasure in praise from people who are not Jack, but this awareness is affectionate and admiring: they see his faults and would still follow him into hell. So he could be a tremendous asset, if only Jack could figure out how to manage him - or if only he were being managed by someone other than Jack.

A fascinating character study. ( spoilers )

It is probably foolish to read a book called Studies in Words and then complain “Gosh, C. S. Lewis is really getting into the weeds here on the fine points of meanings of specific words.” However, I must admit that there were times when I simply couldn’t follow the book’s argument about, say, the fine shades of distinction between different meanings of nature at different times, possibly because I just haven’t spent enough time reading things like Piers Plowman and The Canterbury Tales to have seen these meanings in action.

However, despite sometimes getting completely turned around in the weeds, I did manage to extract a few interesting general principles.

1. Words always and inevitably have multiple meanings, particularly if the word is culturally important. If a writer from a time period sits down to explain “this is what X word really means,” that’s actually a pretty good sign that X was rarely or never used to mean that. (In fact, in other contexts, said writer will probably use X in a manner that contradicts the explicit definition he wrote elsewhere, because he’s fallen into the general usage.)

2. In general, usage has a tendency to move from descriptive to evaluative. For instance, “villain” originally described a social class (peasant), began to be used as an insult, and at last lost its original meaning entirely and came to mean simply “bad guy.”

3. If a word becomes REALLY culturally important, this can paradoxically drain it of most of its specific meaning. Lewis uses the example of the word “wit” in the 18th century - the concept of wit became the center of such a highly charged discourse that often when a critic says a work or a person is “witty,” they mean little more than that they approve it. (When a word has reached the stage of casting this glow of approval all around it, Lewis says it has acquired a “halo.”) Once we agree that a word defines our cultural ideal, we will therefore never be able to agree on the specific details of its definition until that ideal is dead.

The last of my already-finished reading lists. A bit less exciting to post these when I’m not asking for advice about what to read for some of the authors, but I'm still glad to have the complete record on here.

Susan Fletcher - Journey of the Pale Bear

Adam Gopnik - A Thousand Small Sanities. Didn’t review this one. No longer remember it very well. I keep reading Gopnik because I love Paris to the Moon SO much but none of his other books are the same.

Rosemary Sutcliff - Rudyard Kipling. Not a biography of Kipling so much as an overview of his children’s books. A useful source if you’re interested in Kipling’s influence on Sutcliff.

Francesca Forrest - “Semper Vivens.” A short intense story about a terraforming accident that has created a patch of land where all life is constantly transforming into other life, which recently became the focus for a cult which decided to land there even though it meant death-by-transforming-life; a story of an awe-ful place in the old sense of the word. Hard to get a hold of, which is why I didn’t review it, but so memorable.

Rumer Godden - Premlata and the Festival of Lights

William Dean Howells - Literary Friends and Acquaintances

Barbara Cooney - The American Speller: An Adaptation of Noah Webster's Blue-Backed Speller. A picture book loosely based on Noah Webster’s iconic speller. Like many picture books, I didn’t have enough for a whole post about it, and so it fell through the cracks.

Sarah Orne Jewett - A White Heron

Dorothy Sayers - Lord Peter

Hilary McKay - The Time of Green Magic

Jane Langton - Paper Chains

Rachel Bertsche - The Kids Are in Bed: Finding Time for Yourself in the Chaos of Parenting

Angela Brazil - A Popular Schoolgirl

Annie Fellows Johnston - Cicely, and Other Stories

Zilpha Keatley Snyder - The Treasures of Weatherby

C. S. Lewis - The Great Divorce. Apparently I never reviewed this one? This shocks me. Surely I meant to review it and it just fell by the wayside. Clearly I’ll have to reread and review properly at some point.

Ben Macintyre - Operation Mincemeat

Elizabeth von Arnim - Elizabeth and Her German Garden