MDMD William of Orange

[Tiarnan O'Corrain]

> From: Terrance [mailto:lycidas2 at earthlink.net]
> Tiarnan O'Corrain wrote:
> > 
> > Patrick O'Brian? Famous spinner of yarns about the British navy --
> > his books feature a bluff English sea-captain and an Irish
> > intelligence agent. Another famous duo.
> 
> Doesn't O' Brian celebrate the life styles of the poor and ordinary? 
> I mean in his fiction even if not in his own life and family affairs.

I suppose he does, if sailors at sea count as the poor and ordinary. I
wouldn't call him a chearleader for the preterite tho'. Most of his
characters are sea-officers, intelligence officers and types
of sail. If you want to bone up on obselete nautical jargon, read
O'Brian, which is (evidently) what Pynchon did.

Patrick O'Brian was not his real name, however: he adopted the persona
of the 'cultivated Irishman' (v. Henry James, *The Golden Bowl*) and
lived in the South of France. Also wrote a biography of Picasso.

Tiarnan