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Noughts & Crosses
Before the REAL Patrick O'Brian was created, there were several short stories published for boys in the name R.P. Russ, in a magazine called "The Oxford Annual For Boys." A few months ago I reviewed "Two's Company" in this forum, and about a year ago I reviewed "No Pirates Nowadays." All three of these stories included the characters "Sullivan" and "Ross." As far as I know, these stories, plus "Noughts and Crosses" (the first of the three) were the first non-animal stories Russ published.
The quality of writing in these stories is SO poor, so unpolished, so naive, that I would not be at all surprised if Russ changed his name when he learned how to write better, to distance himself from these works. The catch to this supposition is that "The Road to Samarcand" was published in the name "Patrick O'Brian," and used the same characters Ross and Sullivan. Perhaps a slip? But this is of little importance. Here's my review for "Noughts and Crosses," published in "The Oxford Annual for Boys," 1936.
The first thing to notice in "Noughts and Crosses," as also in "No Pirates Nowadays" and "Two's Company," is that the writing is awkward, the dialog clumsy, the entirety unpolished. Here is the opening:
"Several men were sitting around the fire in the smoking-room of their club; they were talking about narrow escapes and strange adventures.
'Well,' said Sullivan, 'I don't know that I have come in for much more danger than most, but I had a pretty unnerving experience once - funny thing, I was dreaming about it only last night; I often do. It was like this - but it's rather a long story - '
'Go on,' said the others."
Contrast this with the short story opening from Patrick O'Brian's "On The Wolfsberg:"
"When she came out of the mindless, ruminating state that walking often induced she found that the moon had risen: a gibbous moon behind hazy cloud, but enough to flood the world with diffuse light. She also found that she had no notion where the road was going to, nor why she was walking along it so eagerly, nor indeed who or where she was."
or from "A Passage of the Frontier:"
"The threat from the north grew stronger, and the stateless persons and undesirables began to move towards the Mediterranean and the southern frontiers. Then suddenly, overnight, the full danger was there, immediately at hand: blind tanks roared down the motorways, endless lines of trucks full of infantrymen, guns, the political police; and far ahead of them all parachutists were setting up roadblocks, directing the military traffic, requisitioning houses, carrying out the first arrests. All trains were stopped, all main roads, bridges, tunnels closed."
"Noughts and Crosses" was stilted, stiff in comparison to the later short stories by Patrick O'Brian, written after he learned how to write, REALLY write.
Sullivan and his "friend" were in Australia, fishing for sharks. They got caught out at sea and barely reached an atoll when a violent storm came up suddenly: not described in O'Brianesque style, unfortunately: "First there was a great howling wind that made the whole of the sea white with broken water, and then there came the most appalling lightning that I have ever seen in my life - it came flashing low over the sea, and it struck several palm-trees quite near us." When the storm died down, they put out to sea again, still fishing for sharks, when a bunch of sharks began following them ominously. The sharks rammed the little boat and it sank, but they got into a barrel or tank and floated for a few days, playing "Noughts and Crosses" (what Americans call Tic-Tac-Toe) on the inside of the barrel with a pencil Sullivan had in his pocket. Luckily, the ocean current conveniently carried them hundreds of miles onto one of the main shipping routes from Australia, and they got picked up by a trade ship. There's a "surprise" ending that is no surprise to anyone who has read juvenile fiction.
This story was written for a boys' magazine. I think it is weak by any standard. Yet, how FASCINATING it is to see young P.R. Russ struggle through plotting, dialog, storyline, words. If I didn't know this was written by young POB I'd have pitched it out - but as an insight into his development, it is priceless.
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To learn about "The Port-Wine Sea," my parody of Patrick O'Brian's wonderful Aubrey-Maturin series, please see
http://www.ericahouse.com/browsebuy/fiction/wenger/index.html
At 11:59 AM 2/9/2001 -0800, Susan Wenger wrote:
The quality of writing in these stories is SO poor, so unpolished, so naive, that I would not be at all surprised if Russ changed his name when he learned how to write better, to distance himself from these works.
Susan
I'm not convinced that "poor" writing is exhibited in the samples you post. What I see is simply a different and more direct style. If the truth be told, I preferred the simpler opening to that in the later POB short.
Marc
msmall@roanoke.infi.net FAX: +540/343-7315
Cha robh bas fir gun ghras fir!
In a message dated 2/9/01 1:59:31 PM Central Standard Time, susanwenger@yahoo.com writes:
There's a "surprise" ending that is no surprise to anyone who has read juvenile fiction.
Oh come on, Susan, I'm not likely to be able to track this down anytime soon. Tell me the ending!
Sarah
Who obviously can't guess obvious endings.
I'm guessing it all took place in a bathtub.
I didn't mean it as a teaser, it just wasn't significant enough to give it away. But here it is:
*
*
*
*
*
the narrator turns out to be Sullivan's companion, Ross.
Thanks to Susan for her report on this story!
She wrote:
The first thing to notice in "Noughts and Crosses," as also in "No Pirates Nowadays" and "Two's Company," is that the writing is awkward, the dialog clumsy, the entirety unpolished.
Well, actually, I thought the writing was pretty good, based on the specimens Susan provided: not bad atoll*, really (*a weak pun, since an atoll figures in the story), and, like much of O'Brian's writings, a closer examination makes things even more interesting.
Looking at the beginning again:
"Several men were sitting around the fire in the smoking-room of their club; they were talking about narrow escapes and strange adventures.
'Well,' said Sullivan, 'I don't know that I have come in for much more danger than most, but I had a pretty unnerving experience once - funny thing, I was dreaming about it only last night; I often do. It was like this - but it's rather a long story - '
'Go on,' said the others."
The first sentence nicely combines two shorter sentences: the long, but exquisitely punctuated, compound sentence being a standard PO'Bian touch, both young and old; though I'm pretty sure the older PO'B would have used a colon rather than a semi-colon here (note how PO'B uses a colon in the two later short story quotations Susan provides, in the first and second sentences, respectively). It would be interesting to know if PO'B -- or RPR, I should say -- used a colon here and it was changed to a semi-colon by his editors, or if this was the way he wrote the sentence and his more typical colonic style developed later (being here only semi-developed).
There are whole books and PhD theses that could be written on PO'B and punctuation.
The next thing of interest in this selection is the rhythmic advancement of the plot: by which I mean the sort of up-and-down motion that enhances interest in the story: the first sentence begins with simple exposition and builds to a small point of interest ("narrow escapes and strange adventures"), which is the crest of the wave. Then the wave comes down as a bit of dialogue begins (i.e., dialogue per se being much less interesting than narrow escapes and strange adventures), but the dialogue is the beginning of the second wave, which builds to a much higher crest than the first ("pretty unnerving experience... dreaming... It was like this"), and then comes down much more quickly and precipitously ("but it's rather a long story - "), all of which sets up the third grand wave, which is the story itself.
"'Go on,' said the others," which is just what we would have said if we were there, and now the story proper begins, with our interest already much more fully engaged than without the first two waves.
(Note as well RPR's early use of characters to ask the questions the readers may have, much like Dr. Maturin asking one of the midshipmen to explain again the difference between the various types of sails, or the difference between a mast and an anchor.)
Then there's RPR's playing with words. In the first sentence, he has men "sitting around the fire in the smoking-room", with a nice juxtaposition between fire and smoking-room (coincidence? or deliberate pun?).
More systematic is his use of alliteration, which is something he also uses effectively in his later writings; though, with so much else going on, it's easy to overlook, being just another arrow in his more mature quiver.
In "Noughts", RPR alliterates the "s" sound (which seems to be his favorite alliteration in later years as well, based on my casual observation), with its repetitive sibilance building through the first sentence ("Several.... sitting ... smoking-room ... escapes ... strange adventures"), and climaxing at the beginning of the second ("said Sullivan"): then a sudden change of rhythm and the "s" sound is gone for a long sentence ("I don't know that I have come in for much more danger than most, but I had a pretty unnerving experience once - funny thing, I was dreaming about it only last night; I often do"). OK, "experience", "ounce", and "was" have "s" sounds, but at their ends, and there's much less of it than before, and competing consonant sounds are introduced (including an initial "d" repeated in "don't" and "danger"); in sum, a change of rhythm, which strengthens the feel of one wave ending and another beginning.
As for the second quotation Susan gave us:
"First there was a great howling wind that made the whole of the sea white with broken water, and then there came the most appalling lightning that I have ever seen in my life - it came flashing low over the sea, and it struck several palm-trees quite near us."
I'll just note that this is another example of a nice compound sentence, with a very effective phrase in "the whole of the sea white with broken water". Has anyone ever heard the expression "broken water" before? I can't say I have, but that's exactly what it is, isn't it? And I won't even mention the alliterated "w" sound. Nicely done, I think.
A final note on the characters Sullivan and Ross: I don't know about Sullivan, but Ross (the name, I mean) sounds quite a bit like Russ.
So maybe the Sullivan and Ross tales weren't as good as his later stuff, but it sounds like, even at age 22 (or younger, depending on publishing lead times), young RPR was Really Prodigiously Remarkable.
John Finneran
It would be interesting to know if PO'B -- or RPR, I should say -- used a colon here and it was changed to a semi-colon by his editors, or if this was the way he wrote the sentence and his more typical colonic style developed later (being here only semi-developed).
The later, more typical style being, I suppose, the "high" colonic phase?
Lois, thinking the Russ piece, pieces a bit like Somerset Maugham, or the Sherlock Holmes tales
The young Patrick Russ has obviously studied the writing style of the boys' magazines of the times ( the 'boys annuals' I think they were sometimes called) with an eye to being published!
If you read the surviving 'boys' books of the earlier part of the century, and indeed, the popular non-literary publications, the manner of presentation is typical.
Thanks, Susan, for bringing it to our attention.
Jean A.
I find this puzzling. He accepted "influences," and acknowledged his debt to Austen, Conrad, Forester, Homer, Renault, etc. Yet his ideas and observations are SO very fresh and unique - I have to admire the way he was able to retain his own perceptions while following certain formulae and rejecting others. It's why I try so hard to find his early writings, poetry, short stories.
I don't quite follow the transition - it seems as though there really WERE two men - Russ wrote in one style, O'Brian in a completely different style - possibly the transition novel was "The Catalans:" "Samarkand" seems to be in the old Russ style even though written in the POB name. Where to put "Richard Temple" and "Testimonies" I do not know.
I've read everything he wrote that I could find - and I KNOW there's more out there. Writing was what he did - and there are gaps. He suggested in an interview that he might have used yet a third name - but then, he might not have. There WERE years in between his publications, but maybe he simply kept writing and stuff that he couldn't get published when he wrote it got published later on.
- Susan