Huzzah! for Pirates
Jorn Barger
My tireless quest to discovery *all* the best reading on the Web has
turned up a brandnew gem, in the latest Lingua Franca: a long piece
exploring a recent academic trend, treating _pirates_ as culture heroes.
Instead of being the biker gangs of the
eighteenth century, were they in fact nascent
democrats and socialists who shared their spoils,
practiced free love, offered women exciting job
opportunities, and treated blacks with dignity?
The article gives a very lively history of piracy, of the pirate as an
icon, and of historical and archeological studies of piracy.
Rather than give you the direct URL, I think I'll make you go thru my
weblog, linked below:
--
I EDIT THE NET: <URL:http://www.mcs.net/~jorn/html/weblogs/weblog.html>
"Tell me, Eutrapelus, which is the weaker person:
he that yields to another, or he that is yielded to?" --Erasmus
tejas
Jorn Barger wrote:
>
> My tireless quest to discovery *all* the best reading on the Web has
> turned up a brandnew gem, in the latest Lingua Franca: a long piece
> exploring a recent academic trend, treating _pirates_ as culture heroes.
>
> Instead of being the biker gangs of the
> eighteenth century, were they in fact nascent
> democrats and socialists who shared their spoils,
> practiced free love, offered women exciting job
> opportunities, and treated blacks with dignity?
>
> The article gives a very lively history of piracy, of the pirate as an
> icon, and of historical and archeological studies of piracy.
>
> Rather than give you the direct URL, I think I'll make you go thru my
> weblog, linked below:
Isn't this rather old news for a state-of-the-art technophile like
yourself?
--
TBSa...@richmond.infi.net (also te...@infi.net)
'Do the boogie woogie in the South American way'
Hank Snow THE RHUMBA BOOGIE
Ron Hardin
tejas wrote:
> Isn't this rather old news for a state-of-the-art technophile like
> yourself?
I myself was shocked to see today's McDonald's meal toys include an
alternatively handed pirate and a clown with an eye patch.
--
Ron Hardin
r...@research.att.com
On the internet, nobody knows you're a jerk.
Jorn Barger
tejas <tbsa...@richmond.infi.net> wrote:
> Isn't this rather old news for a state-of-the-art technophile like
> yourself?
Uh-oh.
Where should I have already seen it?
SubGenius
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tejas (tbsa...@richmond.infi.net) wrote:
: Jorn Barger wrote:
: > My tireless quest to discovery *all* the best reading on the Web has
: > turned up a brandnew gem, in the latest Lingua Franca: a long piece
: > exploring a recent academic trend, treating _pirates_ as culture heroes.
: Isn't this rather old news for a state-of-the-art technophile like
: yourself?
+---------------------------------SubG------------------------------------+
Your Humble Narrator has the utmost confidence---the utmost at my
disposal, that is to say---that the piratanical lifestyle offers the
prying eie ingress into whole new lurching vistas of artifice
intelligence. `Pieces of seven...pieces of seven...' Oops; parity
error.
Speaking of Patrick O'Brian, Your Humble Narrator has for some time
now been embarked on a reading of the whole solidungulous run of
the Aubrey and Maturin novels. I'd read a few of them some number
of years ago and had been not entirely impressed with those I
sampled but, solifidian SubG, had begun collecting the consitituant
novels and, when I had accumulated the first dozen or so, undertook
a reread.
While this latter examination found the novels and myself far
more reciprocally companionable, Candour insists I admit that
while some stretches of what one hesitates more from context than
from content from calling the _roman fleuve_ have the character
or a right corker, (Your Humble Narrator at least has found) others
to be such slow going as to be only navigable inchmeal. Even allowing
for the obvious literary conceit, I find that that I cannot
extend the avuncular praise toward the novels which appears nearly
obligatory in these parts---another act of rabbinical heresy from
Your Humble Narrator. Having only a few still unread and
no intention of sounding the chamade, perhaps I will be able
report more favourably anon.
One thing which has struck me, however, is how superlatively
O'Brian can manage the tempo of a narrative---which is why the
what I find I must call dragging doldrums of the tale are so
distressing. For with what seems a very few exceptions what the
reader sits through for vast stretches of the interior of the
series are repetitions of Aubrey's flawlessly executed cutting out
expeditions, Aubrey's successful single ship actions against
implausible odds and of course numerous reminders that he is
sometimes known as `Lucky' Jack Aubrey. The reader, or this reader
at any rate, is therefore nearly taken temulent when something as outre
as capture or demotion befalls Our Man Jack.
Perhaps it is merely another indication of a fundamental flaw of
Your Humble Narrator as a reader---I frequently find Great Yarns of
the Sea wearisome. _Moby Dick_, for example, bores me half to
tears, certifiably Great Novel or no.
Yours etc.,
SubGenius
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Jorn Barger
SubGenius <su...@atheist.tamu.edu> wrote:
> One thing which has struck me, however, is how superlatively
> O'Brian can manage the tempo of a narrative---which is why the
> what I find I must call dragging doldrums of the tale are so
> distressing.
I've only read the first one and last two (of 18), but I'm skeptical.
Isn't it maybe just that what he's up to there is over your head? :^/
My take on O'Brian is that he's written the great literary Textbook of
the Psychology of Work, which I've been watching out for since I first
noted its absence, ten years ago now.
The Psychology of Romantic Love is well-documented everywhere, with the
possible exception of the conflicts-while-living-together phase. (See:
<URL:http://www.mcs.net/~jorn/html/solace/00intro.html> for preliminary
data.)
Iris Murdoch covers almost everything else with great fearlessness...
except for work. But I can imagine no better source for inventorying
the psychology of work than O'Brian's series.
tejas
SubGenius wrote:
> Perhaps it is merely another indication of a fundamental flaw of
> Your Humble Narrator as a reader---I frequently find Great Yarns of
> the Sea wearisome. _Moby Dick_, for example, bores me half to
> tears, certifiably Great Novel or no.
I've never been to sea for extended periods, but my compadres who
have (mainly on seismic logging vessels) say that the tedium is great
and greenhorns unused to such periods of nautical ennui can truly
go off the deep end and need to be sedated or taken off ship, A.S.A.P.
This also happens to Gothamites stuck in the sticks, much like a
Pom used to the bustle of Momerath-Outgrabe-on-the-Thames being
dropped blind in Coober Peddy, S.A.
ObBook: The Pyrates by George McDonald Fraser
SubGenius
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Jorn Barger (jo...@mcs.com) wrote:
: > One thing which has struck me, however, is how superlatively
: > O'Brian can manage the tempo of a narrative---which is why the
: > what I find I must call dragging doldrums of the tale are so
: > distressing.
: I've only read the first one and last two (of 18), but I'm skeptical.
: Isn't it maybe just that what he's up to there is over your head? :^/
+---------------------------------SubG------------------------------------+
While of course this is within the realm of possibility, Candour
insists two observations of Your Humble Narrator. One is that it
seems a bit odd to presume the cause a disparity between the
impressions about a work of one who has read it and one who has not to be
ignorance on the part of the former rather than the latter.
The other is that in fact if Your Humble Narrator was less aware of
the intent of the author operating beneath the narrative I quite
probably have fewer complaints with the work in question.
+---------------------------------SubG------------------------------------+
: My take on O'Brian is that he's written the great literary Textbook of
: the Psychology of Work, which I've been watching out for since I first
: noted its absence, ten years ago now.
+---------------------------------SubG------------------------------------+
Which, sure, must be great gratification to you, and indeed Your
Humble Narrator can only imagine with what great anticipation you
must contemplate actually expanding your fractional familiarity with
the work to encompass its entirety. Indeed, one is forced to
wonder why you should choose to exibit such coyness as a reader to
a work for which you have been looking for a decade.
While the Aubrey and Maturin novels compose a near encyclopaediac
description of a time, a few lifestyles, and indeed a genre,
nevertheless Your Humble Narrator chooses to evaluate novels as
novels and so, as clever as narrative automatons they may be, if
they fail in some fundamental respects as literature I cannot
help but feel this in some way counts against them.
One of the specifics which stands out is the near complete flatness
of O'Brian's treatment of Character. Indeed, on reflexion in
conjunction with another thread of late vanfrankenstein'd here on
r.a.b., I can't say that I believe that O'Brian handles characters
any better than, say, [wait for it], Heinlein. While of course
Heinlein is more wont to describing the emotional state of women
by the condition of their nipples and O'Brian is more in the habit
of using the colour of Aubrey's face or the coldness of Maturin's
gaze, I don't find the gulf between the two, in this respect,
so great. And, too, we find that all attention is ever given to
a very few characters, bouncing back and forth in their limited
ranges and occasionally colliding with any of a number of foils
minted entirely for this purpose and most nearly indistinguishable
from the rest of their kind.
But again I find I must hasten to add that I have not yet read
the latter few volumes of the series and so it is of course
possible that there might be more in the way of development
of good ol' `Lucky' Jack Aubrey apart from a few more noted
weight fluctuations. Your Humble Narrator will, of course,
keep you posted.
Yours etc.,
SubGenius
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Jim Gunson
tejas <tbsa...@richmond.infi.net> wrote:
(sssssnip)
> This also happens to Gothamites stuck in the sticks, much like a
> Pom used to the bustle of Momerath-Outgrabe-on-the-Thames being
> dropped blind in Coober Peddy, S.A.
This is not the first time you've mispelled Coober Pedy
in this newsgroup, Ted,
Now, lift your game !
ObBook: _Tourmaline_ by Randolph Stow
Jim Gunson
Jim.G...@cnes.fr
Jorn Barger
Suppressing my gag reflex, I retrieved the following phrase from a vast
field of muck:
> [...] the near complete flatness of O'Brian's treatment of Character [...]
I have a pronounced tendency to see Joycean parallels everywhere, so my
first comparison of Aubrey and Maturin to _Mulligan and Dedalus_ seemed
plainly farfetched. But then, Maturin *is* named Stephen, and is as
introspective as Aubrey is extraverted...
But this theory just got a tremendous boost in volume two, when Stephen
takes a long solitary walk along a sandy strand...
(A quick search of the POB mailinglist archives turns up one speculation
regarding the first volume, where Dillon hums as he shaves, as being a
tip of the hat to Joyce.)
Anybody got any other evidence, either way?
--
I EDIT THE NET: <URL:http://www.mcs.net/~jorn/html/weblogs/weblog.html>
"The PhD system is the real root of the evil of academic snobbery.
People who have PhDs consider themselves a priesthood." --Freeman Dyson
tejas
Jim Gunson wrote:
>
> tejas <tbsa...@richmond.infi.net> wrote:
> (sssssnip)
> > This also happens to Gothamites stuck in the sticks, much like a
> > Pom used to the bustle of Momerath-Outgrabe-on-the-Thames being
> > dropped blind in Coober Peddy, S.A.
>
> This is not the first time you've mispelled Coober Pedy
> in this newsgroup, Ted,
Sigh. It's like losing the spelling bee in Wagga Wagga.
>
> Now, lift your game !
(?)
ObBook: JACK MAGGS by Peter Cary. Half through, so far a fine book.
Everything I've read by Cary has been excellent.
SubGenius
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Jorn Barger (jo...@mcs.com) wrote:
: Suppressing my gag reflex, I retrieved the following phrase from a vast
: field of muck:
: > [...] the near complete flatness of O'Brian's treatment of Character [...]
+---------------------------------SubG------------------------------------+
While of course your dismissive gesture makes no attempt to support
itself factually from the fraction of the work with which you have
claimed some familiarity, Your Humble Narrator is however willing
to forgive it much in that it also makes no thrasonical allusions
to one or other of your web pages.
Yours etc.,
SubGenius
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