Horatio Hornblower: man of action and really a lot of angst
Just got back from five-ish days without real internet: planning on dealing with comments and things momentarily. But I just finished reading another Hornblower book, and I'm trying to sort through how I feel about the series, so I thought that now would be a good time to make a post about that.
I've read almost all of the Hornblower books now - my library is missing a couple, so I just skipped over those, and I think I'm done for now, since my summer break is almost over. I had a lot of fun reading the books, but I feel very conflicted about them, much more so than most things that I like.
On the one hand, OH MY GOD, I love these books. I love historical military fiction with a huge passion, but I don't have a lot of patience with it when it's not well-written, or acts as a history lesson/info dump, and C. S. Forester generally avoids both of those pitfalls. I'm not actually sure how accurate the books are, but they definitely carry a feeling of being true to life - there's a level of subverting expectations with a lack of melodrama about apparently big events, like a character's death, or a won battle, which really works. And things are blown out of proportion, and then turn out to be minor incidents after all, or the book continues past where the big denouement was, and so on and so on, Forester is constantly puncturing my expectations and I love it. The Hornblower books are just fascinating for me from a writing standpoint, like I actually am going 'agh, wow, oh man,' out loud right now, just thinking about it. And I always enjoy reading them, it's not like I'm just fixating on the style, haha.
But on the other hand, OH MAN, I really don't like Hornblower. He rubs me the wrong way all the time, and I'm not sure if he's supposed to or if it's just my own issue. Certainly the way he acts around Maria (his first wife) drives me up a wall, and I was guiltily pleased when she died so that I wouldn't have to deal with that anymore. But his interactions with women, or people that he likes or feels obliged to, or people in general, god, are generally stilted and kind of uncomfortable, and wow, it is hard for me to read. And the way Hornblower calculates all his interpersonal reactions and tries to project various facades can be fun to read or really tedious, take your pick. And he's constantly down on himself, all the time, which can be hard to read (but also kind of gratifying, because I can say 'man, Hornblower, I hate you,' and he's like 'me too, I totally understand your antipathy').
So there's that. But Hornblower's character is also part of what makes the books fun to read! Because he's not a typical hero, he spends way more of his thinking time worrying about whether his men think he's too cold or too warm or whatever rather than dealing with battle plans, because he's good at the latter and thinks he's terrible at the former. People tell me that Kirk was partially based on Hornblower, which could make sense, except I don't think Kirk has the same level of over-self-awareness as Hornblower - and I dislike Kirk a lot more than Horblower, haha, probably because of that. So I don't know. I do appreciate that Forester never cuts Hornblower any slack - the quiet omniscient narrator is really great, since I think the Hornblower books would be even more difficult for me if they were buried in Hornblower's voice and perceptions. (My favorite book for a while was the one that was more or less from Bush's point of view.)
I do think that Hornblower bugs me so much because a lot of the traits I dislike in him are ones that I recognize in myself - the over-analysis of past actions and interactions, the extremely harsh perception of one's own worth. There's a section in Admiral Hornblower where he essentially says that no action he could make will ever be good enough, because it can't be perfect and... yeah, I've thought that when I was feeling particularly melodramatic. And in early books, where he's clearly not romantically interested in Maria, it was very easy to see some form of asexuality in Hornblower, which made me frustrated because I both did and did not want to identify with his character.
There are definitely things I dislike about Hornblower that I don't recognize in myself - he's self-consciousness about his legs, for one, I've got great legs. And god, his class issues and his jealousy - they're very explicit in his relationships with Maria, Marie, and Lady Barbara, even in his formal relationship with his manservant, Brown, and I can feel both distant and disparaging about those, haha.
This post seems kind of incoherent, sorry. It's just that usually when I like something I just LIKE it - I can recognize its flaws and talk about problematic places, but I still am just generally happy with the thing as it is. And I really don't feel that way about these books. But I still like them way more than the movies based on them, even though I love those movies, and have way fewer problems with them. Hornblower, man.
PS: Having read these books, I can see where Flashman was more or less construed as an anti-Hornblower. The Flashman Papers are another historical fiction series, set a little later and with an army-type guy instead of a seaman. Flashman is just so unapologetic and not heroic at all, and I find him way more fun to deal with. I take pride in how I'm not at all like him, haha, but I'd still rather read about him than read about Hornblower. Plus Flashman's relationship with Elspeth, his first wife, is way better than Hornblower's relationship with maria. God, I love Elspeth, she is the best.
(And the Flashman Papers are definitely a thing that I like where I can admit that they are problematic, and I recommend them to people with a host of caveats and content warnings, and toooooo late, I don't care, I love them to pieces.)
This entry was originally posted at http://neveralarch.dreamwidth.org/46659.html. Comment wherever you want.
I've read almost all of the Hornblower books now - my library is missing a couple, so I just skipped over those, and I think I'm done for now, since my summer break is almost over. I had a lot of fun reading the books, but I feel very conflicted about them, much more so than most things that I like.
On the one hand, OH MY GOD, I love these books. I love historical military fiction with a huge passion, but I don't have a lot of patience with it when it's not well-written, or acts as a history lesson/info dump, and C. S. Forester generally avoids both of those pitfalls. I'm not actually sure how accurate the books are, but they definitely carry a feeling of being true to life - there's a level of subverting expectations with a lack of melodrama about apparently big events, like a character's death, or a won battle, which really works. And things are blown out of proportion, and then turn out to be minor incidents after all, or the book continues past where the big denouement was, and so on and so on, Forester is constantly puncturing my expectations and I love it. The Hornblower books are just fascinating for me from a writing standpoint, like I actually am going 'agh, wow, oh man,' out loud right now, just thinking about it. And I always enjoy reading them, it's not like I'm just fixating on the style, haha.
But on the other hand, OH MAN, I really don't like Hornblower. He rubs me the wrong way all the time, and I'm not sure if he's supposed to or if it's just my own issue. Certainly the way he acts around Maria (his first wife) drives me up a wall, and I was guiltily pleased when she died so that I wouldn't have to deal with that anymore. But his interactions with women, or people that he likes or feels obliged to, or people in general, god, are generally stilted and kind of uncomfortable, and wow, it is hard for me to read. And the way Hornblower calculates all his interpersonal reactions and tries to project various facades can be fun to read or really tedious, take your pick. And he's constantly down on himself, all the time, which can be hard to read (but also kind of gratifying, because I can say 'man, Hornblower, I hate you,' and he's like 'me too, I totally understand your antipathy').
So there's that. But Hornblower's character is also part of what makes the books fun to read! Because he's not a typical hero, he spends way more of his thinking time worrying about whether his men think he's too cold or too warm or whatever rather than dealing with battle plans, because he's good at the latter and thinks he's terrible at the former. People tell me that Kirk was partially based on Hornblower, which could make sense, except I don't think Kirk has the same level of over-self-awareness as Hornblower - and I dislike Kirk a lot more than Horblower, haha, probably because of that. So I don't know. I do appreciate that Forester never cuts Hornblower any slack - the quiet omniscient narrator is really great, since I think the Hornblower books would be even more difficult for me if they were buried in Hornblower's voice and perceptions. (My favorite book for a while was the one that was more or less from Bush's point of view.)
I do think that Hornblower bugs me so much because a lot of the traits I dislike in him are ones that I recognize in myself - the over-analysis of past actions and interactions, the extremely harsh perception of one's own worth. There's a section in Admiral Hornblower where he essentially says that no action he could make will ever be good enough, because it can't be perfect and... yeah, I've thought that when I was feeling particularly melodramatic. And in early books, where he's clearly not romantically interested in Maria, it was very easy to see some form of asexuality in Hornblower, which made me frustrated because I both did and did not want to identify with his character.
There are definitely things I dislike about Hornblower that I don't recognize in myself - he's self-consciousness about his legs, for one, I've got great legs. And god, his class issues and his jealousy - they're very explicit in his relationships with Maria, Marie, and Lady Barbara, even in his formal relationship with his manservant, Brown, and I can feel both distant and disparaging about those, haha.
This post seems kind of incoherent, sorry. It's just that usually when I like something I just LIKE it - I can recognize its flaws and talk about problematic places, but I still am just generally happy with the thing as it is. And I really don't feel that way about these books. But I still like them way more than the movies based on them, even though I love those movies, and have way fewer problems with them. Hornblower, man.
PS: Having read these books, I can see where Flashman was more or less construed as an anti-Hornblower. The Flashman Papers are another historical fiction series, set a little later and with an army-type guy instead of a seaman. Flashman is just so unapologetic and not heroic at all, and I find him way more fun to deal with. I take pride in how I'm not at all like him, haha, but I'd still rather read about him than read about Hornblower. Plus Flashman's relationship with Elspeth, his first wife, is way better than Hornblower's relationship with maria. God, I love Elspeth, she is the best.
(And the Flashman Papers are definitely a thing that I like where I can admit that they are problematic, and I recommend them to people with a host of caveats and content warnings, and toooooo late, I don't care, I love them to pieces.)
This entry was originally posted at http://neveralarch.dreamwidth.org/46659.html. Comment wherever you want.