Nikolai Tolstoy: Patrick O'Brian

Writers don't have to be nice people. It doesn't matter if the tales of daring that grip us are written by abject cowards or if the author of the heart-breaking romance is a cynical lecher. This is just as well, as the band of scribblers seems to have a higher than usual percentage of deeply flawed individuals.

Patrick 'Brian's characters in the remarkable Aubrey/Maturin series are, for all their foibles and failings, true heroes. But even in the hands of the most sympatheic biographer, as here with his stepson Nikolai Tolstoy, 'Brian emerges as not merely unheroic but falling pretty short of any passing resemblance to a decent human being.

His achievement in the roman fleuve of 20 novels set in the Royal Navy of the Napoleonic Wars attracted extravagant praise, with admirers from Iris Murdoch to A. S. Byatt, by way of the more dubious applause of Charlton Heston. The Far Side of the World was made into a movie with Russell Crowe as the bluff English officer Jack Aubrey.

The Nelsonic naval genre was not original and 'Brian had notable predecessors including the Hornblower books of C. S. Forester (typically discarded by 'Brian into a sack of 'trash'). But he transformed the stereotype into a vast, rolling chronicle with two captivating principals - Aubrey and the intellectual demonic Irish surgeon Stephen Maturin - and an ever-growing and always interesting cast list. The books combine a wealth of period detail, formidable narrative skill, a sense of humour (a quality Forester rarely demonstrated) and a unique style, studded with archaic vocabulary and convoluted syntax that seems to be of its time without being either parody or an attempted replication.

Like many others, I stumbled into them almost at random, became captivated and compulsively read the lot. I have read them all at least twice and some more often. One returns to them with pleasure although repeatedreading does produce a growing awareness of their flaws, like the ingrained snobbery despite the often affectionate portrayals of the lower orders and Aubrey's respect for them.

Maturin, who develops as a more complex character than Aubrey, is driven by his Irish nationalism. 'Brian, it seemed safe for most of his readers to assume, was himself a staunch Irishman and the biographical details that emerged suggested he was also an experienced sailor and of some social status.

In fact, 'Brian was as fictional a creation as the characters of his books. Far from being Irish he was born and educated in England and possessed not a drop of Irish blood. It seems doubtful that he had any real sailing experience and after an abortive attempt to join the RAF he avoided military service. His actual name was Russ and he adopted 'Brian by deed poll in 1945, having apparently decided to try to obliterate the first 30 years of his life.

This included abandoning his working-class wife, son and a daughter with spina bifida for a new life with Mary Tolstoy, the socially privileged wife of the exiled Russian aristocrat Count Dimitri Tolstoy. The details of his new persona remained sketchy but included claims of auniversity education, private schools and private tutors.

But in 1998 when he was at the height of his fame the truth began to emerge, notably in a biography by the American Dean King.

According to Nikolai Tolstoy, Mary's son, who knew Patrick throughout their long and devoted life together, it was partly to address the wrong impressions and 'egregious errors' of King that he embarked on this book, although 'Brian himself had asked him to destroy a variety of personal material.

Tolstoy says his purpose is not to provide an apologia but his determination to try to cast at least a light of understanding on 'Brian becomes palpably desperate. He says he aims to stick to the facts but there is a litany of 'could have been' and 'it seems likely'. Reality keeps getting in the way and 'Brian emerges as spectacularly neurotic, self-centred, crippled by class-consciousness and a persistent liar.

Tolstoy points to his subject's deep sense of 'irrational shame' over his lack of formal education, the exposure of which produced a 'near-paranoid fear of which all too often led him into needless exaggeration and invention'. He talks of his 'lifelong propensity to detect slights where none existed'.

But 'Brian was, above all, a lifelong professional writer, with his first novel published in his teens.

'Only through his writing was he able to provide a satisfying corrective to faults and weaknesses,' Tolstoy claims. 'There, uncharitable or petulant sarcasm could be transmuted into gently humorous irony, underhand deceptions become wily pranks and defensive withdrawal, courageous defiance.'

His work was all. In a letter to Mary at around the time of their silver wedding he appeals for her to confirm her devotion. 'If you think my writing worth a straw do not keep me in this state.'

Unfortunately, the writing in this biography falls far short of 'Brian's own standards. Although it covers only the first part of his life, before the works that brought him real fame, it is tediously padded with laborious descriptions of places, as over-stuffed with adjectives as any guidebook. Bits of potted history are crammed in, presumably in the hope of providing background. The editing is woeful and there are endless repetitions.

It does provide some insights into the process by which a fiction writer transmutes his experiences into his books but it's a long slog for little reward. 'Brian's books themselves, although hundreds of pages, provide great reward for little slog.

* John Gardner is editor of the Weekend Herald Review section.

* Century, $65