Radio Flyer turns 100

    Once I pulled a little red wagon down the center of Sheridan Road.
    OK, there was more to it than that. It was the WOOGMS Parade, an eccentric East Lakeview neighborhood event marking Memorial Day and the beginning of summer. Sheridan Road was closed; my boys were perched within the wagon. I'm sure I have an unwatched video of it, somewhere.
    The wagon was a Radio Flyer, a gift, mirabile dictu, of the newspaper, which once upon a time distributed catalogues to employees so they could select presents to mark their various work anniversaries. On my fifth I chose the proverbial set of steak knives. For my 10th, the wagon. For the past decade or so, your gift is you keep your job.
    The wagon proved very useful in carting boys. Not the metal wagon of my youth, but the less aesthetic plastic. Still, it had a certain fat, pleasing roundness, and a compartment inside for storing things. I did not mind it. 
    Radio Flyer is marking its centennial this year. The venerable Chicago company doesn't construct its little red wagons here anymore—production moved to China in 2004— but at least it still makes them, which is cause for celebration. If you are reading this Thursday, July 13, you can join the fun from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Pioneer Court, the plaza just south of Tribune Tower. Radio Flyer will have their World's Largest Wagon, somehow fitting outside what once imagined itself the World's Greatest Newspaper. 
      Strolling out to the garage to snap the above, I reflected how sentimental it is to keep the wagon. The boys certainly aren't going to ride in it again, and by the time grandchildren arrive, if they ever do, they'll have wagons that hover, and no doubt the tykes will demand them, as tykes do.
    This is probably enough for one day but, in case you are interested in the history of Radio Flyer -- such as why a wagon company has a form of communication in its name — I explain that in this late 1990s Christmas story on toys that originated in Chicago. I've left the other toys in, though the entirety, like old toys themselves, tends toward woodenness. 

      Furby may be hot now, but just wait. Odds are he won't stand the test of time. Someday, the babbling little furball may be as desirable a Christmas present as a Hula Hoop; or a Pet Rock is today.
     But certain toys keep their appeal. While they may never have created the intense -- and passing -- mania that the Tickle Me Elmos of the world once inspired, they've done something that is perhaps more incredible: They've survived (though some just barely) and become classics, delighting generation after generation of children who found them under their Christmas trees.
    Here is a roundup of some cherished toys which originated in the Chicago area.

     The Radio Flyer: The definitive "little red wagon" is manufactured on the West Side of Chicago, and has been for more than 80 years.
     In 1917, an Italian immigrant cabinet maker named Antonio Pasin founded The Liberty Coaster Wagon Co., named for the Statue of Liberty. Originally the wagons were wood, but when metal stamping became popular for cars in the 1920s, he borrowed the technology for wagons, rolling the edges so they wouldn't cut little fingers.
     In the 1920s, the company took to naming its wagons after popular figures and phenomena. There was the Lindy Flyer, in honor of Charles Lindbergh, and the Radio Flyer, named for the hot new communications medium. That wagon was particularly popular, and in 1930 the company renamed itself the Radio Steel & Manufacturing Co. (It officially adopted the name "Radio Flyer" in 1987).
     The wagons are still made in Chicago, of wood, steel and plastic, and the company is still owned and operated by the Pasin family. And they still name their products after the latest wave of pop culture: Recent wagons have mimicked burly all-terrain vehicles and been given brawny, sports-utility-vehicle-like names such as "Voyager" and "Navigator."
     Lionel trains: For decades, no Christmas tree was complete without a Lionel train circling the base. The trains were the brainchild of Joshua Lionel Cowen, who, in one of those amazing quirks of history, also invented the flashlight.
     He put a small electric motor in a model train, and began selling them by catalog in 1903. The company had some close calls over the years. It nearly went bankrupt during the Great Depression, then came up with an offering that hit the public fancy: a handcar pumped by a Mickey Mouse character. The handcar was the top toy in the nation in 1934, and it saved the company. Today a large part of Lionel's business is the adult hobby market -- a basic set runs a hefty $ 150 or so -- but nostalgic adults still buy their kids Lionel trains at Christmas, whether the children want them or not.
     Raggedy Ann: Like the first teddy bear, the first Raggedy Ann doll was promoting something else. Johnny Gruelle, a political cartoonist in Downstate Arcola, had created the Raggedy Ann character (named for James Whitcomb Riley's poems "The Raggedy Man" and "Little Orphan Annie") to amuse his daughter, Marcella.
     But he also had the foresight to patent the Raggedy Ann image in 1915. His book on the red-yarn-haired beauty, Raggedy Ann Stories, was published in 1918.
     Marshall Field's created the first Raggedy Ann doll to place in its window to promote the book, but customers wanted both the book and the doll. Raggedy Andy showed up two years later, when a friend of Gruelle's mother handmade a brother.
     Ironically, after 80 years, Field's once again isn't selling Raggedy Ann. It has stopped carrying the dolls.
     Tinkertoys; : An Evanston stonecutter named Charles Pajeau was disillusioned with the gravestone trade. Fishing around for a new line of work, he noticed how children played, for hours, with pencils and wooden spools from thread. A classic toy was born.
     He formed the Toy Tinkers Co. in Evanston and introduced the product at the New York Toy Fair in 1913 (the same year another classic, now faded, was introduced: A.C. Gilbert's Erector Set). Tinkertoys were an instant hit -- selling nearly a million sets in 1915, the first year it went national.
     Tinkertoys sold millions of sets, with almost no advertising. And not only kids played with them. Illinois Bell used Tinkertoys to test skills of job candidates; Harvard University bought the sets, in bulk, to study executive decision-making.
     Tinkertoy has been buffeted, in recent years, by construction sets with more flash and sizzle. But it still carries on, its wooden dowels and hubs replaced with plastic, manufactured by Hasbro.
—Originally published in the Chicago Sun-Times, Dec. 24, 1998

Henry David Thoreau: More to the man than a shack by a pond

Walden Pond (Photo by Tony Galati)

     As much as I enjoyed researching and writing this, I enjoyed even more reading Pond Scum, a 2015 New Yorker article on Thoreau by Kathryn Schulz that longtime friend Bob Goebel shared with me Wednesday morning. I don't know how I missed it, but I did, and if you are interested in the perspectives I touch upon here you should consider reading her piece. It's excellent.

     Henry David Thoreau's father owned a pencil factory.
     In between failing as a teacher and a writer, Thoreau worked in that factory. From the day in 1845 he moved to Walden Pond, where his fans will flock Wednesday to mark the bicentennial of his birth on July 12, 1817, to the day he left, J. Thoreau and Co. churned out high quality pencils.

      There is an irony here. Thoreau is remembered best as an early bard of appreciating nature. On Sunday, the New York Times described a line he uttered in a speech—"In wilderness is the preservation of the world"—as "eight words that in coming decades helped save that Maine woods, Cape Cod, Yosemite and other treasured American landscapes."
     They ignored the pencils that underwrote his work. I know why. It spoils the cherished image, to have Thoreau calling for preservation of trees out of one corner of his mouth and promoting the transformation of trees into pencils out of the other.
     Or does it?
     Do the two values, conservation and business, have to contradict? Our government certainly thinks so. The Trump administration began with a wholesale slaughter of environmental regulations. Dropping out of the Paris climate change accords is only the most visible. Clean water rules—that keep mining and metal companies from pouring waste into streams—are being relaxed Ditto for clean air regulations. And we don't have to worry about alarming increases in pollution statistics, since the EPA, now headed by one of its fiercest critics, is going to stop collecting certain air quality data.
     Thoreau describes the type perfectly—"He knows nature but as a robber."
     Thoreau had a gift for piercing concision. That is why I like him, despite his frequent descent into piety. He used his own experience. You need to be in line to inherit a pencil factory to write a sentence like: "I see young men, my townsmen, whose misfortune it is to have inherited farms, houses, barns, cattle, and farming tools; for these are more easily acquired than got rid of."

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Photo by Tony Galati

Blue lawsuit

     The innovative Cirque du Soleil bought Blue Man Group last week. As a fan of both ensembles, it seems a natural pairing, and sent me back over times I've written about Blue Man Group — in this one I presciently mention their eventual purchaser, in describing a particularly daft lawsuit.  It was a time when the column filled a page, and I've left in the subheadings. Afterward I'll let you know what happened with the case.

OPENING SHOT . . .

     Silly me. Over the years, I have endured countless horrors at the Lyric Opera of Chicago — been menaced by several dragons; seen doomed lovers sealed within a tomb; witnessed the lips of a harmless bird catcher sealed with a padlock, and even watched, aghast, as Satan himself emerged, singing, from the fiery pits of hell.
     And I never sued them. Not once.
     Dumb.
     Meanwhile James Srodon of California attends just one performance of the Blue Man Group at the Briar Street Theatre and files a lawsuit in Cook County Circuit Court claiming that their "Esophagus Cam" was shoved down his throat, knocking out fillings, damaging his windpipe and of course causing psychological distress.
     Now I've attended several Blue Man Group performances and have my own issues with their show, mainly that it ain't drama. People act like it's a play because it takes place in a theater, but it's not. It's entertainment, part Cirque du Soleil, part concert, part magic show. So long as that's clear, Blue Man Group is energetic, loud, clever fun. Duping the audience is part of the thrill.
     One highlight was a version of the Esophagus Cam: A member of the audience was invited onstage and then zipped into a canvas body bag while one Blue Man recorded the proceeding with a video camera. The sack was then dragged backstage — we follow the action on screen —where it was loaded onto a truck, driven away and, eventually, hurled off a cliff.
     By then, it dawned on the audience that they were not watching a man actually being murdered in real time, but a prank involving an unseen cutaway to a pre-filmed segment. The kidnapped audience member actually slipped back into his seat.
     At least one hopes they realized it. If anyone called the cops — "Oh my gosh, I just came from Blue Man Group, and they killed somebody!" — I'm not aware of it.
     Srodon was singled out for a similar bit. The Blue Men gathered around him and pretended  — emphasize pretended — to shove a camera down his throat.
     Now I wasn't there, so perhaps they slipped up, in a frenzy brought on by toxic blue-paint poisoning, and really did pry open Srodon's jaws and, as he claims, shoved a paint-and-food-befouled camera down his throat.
     Perhaps he truly is a victim of assault who needs our cherished legal system to deliver redress for his suffering.
     Or maybe — and frankly, I'm putting all my chips down on this — the Blue Men have done this bit 50,000 times over the last two decades, and were they in the practice of actually shoving cameras down patrons' throats, well, we'd have heard about it by now. Maybe it is a well-done illusion and Srodon, 65, a sensitive soul, was overwhelmed. A judge will decide, sadly.

LEVITATION, ESP, BIGFOOT, UFOS . . .

     There are two important lessons in this lawsuit against the Blue Man Group for a stage trick.
     First, as much as I admire lawyers generally — my wife is a lawyer — this is the sort of lawsuit that exposes the profession to shame and undermines the idea of law as a desirable part of society. This type of lawsuit just hands ammunition to big insurance company hirelings working to further restrict the ability of the truly harmed to receive compensation.
     Second, this sort of thing also ruins life for the rest of us. It is a big reason we live in the padded, homogenized, vacuum-sealed, fenced-off, gelded, oversafe, professional-driver-closed-course, do-not-try-this-at-home world we live in.
     You can't ride a merry-go-round anymore without being herded past a legal disclaimer as long as the Magna Carta, informing you that this is a ride that revolves and goes up and down, that you will be exposed to equine wooden figures but that no actual horses were harmed in their creation, and pregnant women, the fantastically obese, the motion sensitive, equinophobes and those allergic to calliope music should not participate.
     I'm surprised we have any entertainments at all. Most of the animals have already been exiled from circuses by fanatics, and I'm sure clowns are next. "Mr. Binky did knowingly aim and discharge a seltzer bottle in the direction of plaintiff Henry Prudock, exposing him to a stream of cold carbonated water, which wettened him, and drew the mocking laughter of his fellow audience members . . ."
     Second, consider Srodon's belief that the camera was actually jammed down his throat. I am sure he is sincere, and this genuine conviction should remind us just how suggestible people really are.
     It must be important to some part of the collective human ego that we ignore this obvious reality—to flatter ourselves, I suppose. So important that we prefer to embrace the existence of nosy visiting motherships from distant galaxies rather than entertain the possibility that our planetmates are a bunch of gullible dopes, dithering and pliable, soft-minded and open to all sorts of delusions, mirages, misapprehensions, panics and fantasies.
     That is, when they're not outright lying . . .
     Yes, humanity's ability to fall for anything has value — we wouldn't have magic shows, time-share condos or religion otherwise. But the downside is that we automatically assume that the witnesses really saw the criminal, that the testimony is not the product of brain cramp, that the lady was really sawn in half and replaced by a tiger.
     I hate to involve myself in legal proceedings, but if the Blue Man Group is looking for an expert witness, I offer myself. I will testify, under oath and on penalty of perjury, that people are, in the main, morons, and that James Srodon is definitely a person. The jury can draw their own conclusions.

               —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Jan. 27, 2008

    While the filing of the lawsuit was reported everywhere, the result was reported nowhere, as far as I could tell — a common lapse in journalism. In 2013, when another patron sued Blue Man Group after he was hit by a foam ball, the San Jose Mercury News caught up with Sroden's former lawyer.
     ‘The matter was settled for nominal dollars,’ Antonio Romanucci said. “I eventually withdrew from the case.”

You can look here soon for the water that used to be in your basement

     When I visited the new McCook Reservoir, I wasn’t exactly happy to be welcomed by rain pelting down in big summertime drops. I had brought my steel-toed boots but no jacket and no umbrella.
     But the rain was appropriate, considering that rain is what this is all about: the 109 miles of deep tunnel, the 10-billion-gallon reservoir this hole in the rock will someday become part of; all so the water that falls from the sky can find its way into a treatment plant without first detouring through your basement, a task that is getting harder for two reasons: the soot we put into the sky and the pavement we slap over the ground.
     “Forty percent of Cook County is nonpermeable surface, which means water can’t absorb where it falls,” said Mariyana T. Spyropoulos, president of the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago, who accompanied me on a tour of the site tucked between the Stevenson Expressway and the Sanitary and Ship Canal in Bedford Park.
     Here I interrupted her, incredulous. I’ve heard a lot of stark statistics about Cook County. But 40 percent? How can that be?
     “We have concrete,” she said. “We have asphalt. Rainwater cannot absorb into it. Yes, 40 percent. Combine that with the fact that we have climate change, we have more intense rainstorms. In the last 10 years we’ve had three hundred-year rainstorms.

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Just drumming is not enough to make you Blue

     Blue Man Group, the popular and increasingly-pervasive trio of mute drummers putting on a surreal show, were purchased last week by Cirque du Soleil, a marriage of like minds if ever there were.  I saw Blue Man Group when it opened on Broadway, and again a time or two over the years. In 2011, I stopped by to watch them audition future Blue Men.

     By 9 a.m., 10 men are standing in a steady drizzle outside the Briar Street Theatre on Halsted Street, waiting for their chance.
     "Cold, rainy, windy and damp enough to annoy you," says a 20-year-old with the Hollywood-ready name of Nathaniel Hawkins, first in line, having driven in from Cedar Falls, Iowa, the night before and been here since 7:30 a.m. "I always wanted to give this a shot if the chance came up."
     "The chance"—the first in Chicago since June—refers to the open auditions last Tuesday for Blue Man Group, the wildly popular mix of music, vaudeville and social commentary.
     If you think of Blue Man Group as three bald guys painted blue stuffing Cap'n Crunch in their mouths, you're behind the times. That was 20 years ago, when Chris Wink, Philip Stanton and Matt Goldman created the show "to celebrate the human spirit through music, science, art and theater."
     Now Blue Man Productions has some 600 employees worldwide with about 60 full-time Blue Men performing in seven cities: Boston, Orlando, Las Vegas, Berlin, Tokyo, New York, where it has played for 20 years, and at Briar Street, where it has run continually for 15. Not quite the Disney Co., but a long way from busking in Central Park.
     The Briar Street lobby is crowded with men, and a few women. (Two females have become Blue Men). They have driven from as far away as Nebraska. An acting professor at Notre Dame canceled classes to be here.
     Those waiting to be called sit on the floor, filling out forms, many drumming with drumsticks they brought with them, or with the flats of their hands on their chests.
     "I love music," said John Curulewski, 24, of Plainfield. "I want to play drums." Being a Blue Man would be "pretty sweet, it seems like a good job: be kinda crazy and drum."
     Were it that easy. Playing drumheads splashing brightly colored liquids is only part of the job, and the five-level audition process begins with neither craziness nor drumming, but an earnest two-minute interview, sitting in salon chairs facing casting coordinator Tascha Van Auken, who glances at each resume, makes small talk - "So how far is Plainfield?" - then asks about acting experience. Those with none find themselves quickly, but with notable gentleness, thanked for coming and sent on their way.
     "If you went out and got some acting work, we would totally be into it," she tells one. "It doesn't make sense to put you through the process now."
     Those who make it past Van Auken—and most do—are put, five at a time, through a pair of tough non-verbal acting exercises.
     Someone in the room has "a deep sadness" within them, explains Tim Aumiller, director of casting. "You have an opportunity right now to look at us once, just once, and you have to determine who in this room has this deep sadness.
     This weeds out those whose talents are limited to drumming, and the irony is, that test is next. The two skills just don't compare.
     "Almost anyone can learn to be the kind of drummer we need them to be," says Aumiller. "But it can take years to teach someone to be an actor."
     Those who make it this far stand, one at a time, at a drum pad on the Briar Street stage, facing Jeff Quay, the music director.
     "Track my dynamics," he tells one hopeful. "I get softer, you get softer." They mirror each other. "Excellent. Let's keep it going - you track my tempo changes."
     In the audience are current Blue Men Matt Ramsey and Nick Rush, 23, the one actor picked out of 150 auditioning last June.
     "Once I got to training, one of the directors said 90 percent why you get the job is the moment you walk in the door," says Rush. "You can just tell: He's a Blue Man."
     Of the 164 would-be Blue Men who tried last Tuesday, 18 were called back for more intensive exercises and auditions, leading to final trials, in makeup, in the weeks to come. All to get . . . how many new Blue Men?
     "One would be good," says Aumiller, noting that some city auditions yield none.
     A final thought, from hours watching this success funnel, with 164 earnest aspirants pushing themselves into the wide end and one, maybe, emerging from the spout:
     The American dream is that if you have ambition, if you truly believe in yourself and try, really hard, you will succeed, with a bit of luck. And that is sometimes true. But not if you're only a drummer, and what they're really looking for are actors who can drum.

—Originally published in the Sun-Times, April 25, 2011

Feeling blue

     Blue Man Group, the popular and increasingly-pervasive trio of mute drummers putting on a surreal show, was purchased last week by Cirque du Soleil, a marriage of like minds if ever there were. While I've seen and enjoyed Blue Man Group over the years, I was also ambivalent about them, as reflected in this first piece about it, which ran almost 20 years ago. I'll share a couple more blue stories—on Tuesday, a daft 2008 lawsuit against Blue Man, and on Thursday a visit to an audition at the Briar Street Theatre. 

     In today's column, I left out the best line. When my friend—actually my editor at Doubleday—said he's rather see Blue Man than Medea, I slapped my palm to my forehead and said,  sarcastically, "Oh Bill, let me savor this moment: the guy editing my books would rather see three men painted blue stuffing Captain Crunch into their mouths than experience a cornerstone of Western drama for the past 2500 years. Is that the case?" It was. I probably didn't put that in because I didn't want to treat him too roughly. I needn't have bothered; shortly thereafter we parted ways after an argument, me drifting steadily downwards toward the nether regions of publishing, he ascending toward the presidency of Doubleday. Just as well. We were an ill fit.

     Once I forced my wife to go see Samuel Beckett's dark masterpiece "Waiting for Godot," performed by the National Theatre of Ireland. At the end of the minimalist classic, she turned to me and said: "That was so depressing!"
     Maybe the humor of her answer isn't immediately apparent. Imagine taking somebody to the circus and having them turn to you, shocked, and say, "My word, but there are clowns here!"
    "It's Beckett!" I wanted to scream. "It's supposed to be depressing! That's the entire point!"
     I feel like I'm in an ever-shrinking minority of people who love a really good tragedy. The darker the better. My idea of fun is sitting down with my battered copy of Death of a Salesman and re-reading Willy Loman's funeral.
     Tragedy is out of fashion, however. Most people have lost their stomach for sorrow in their entertainments. Focus groups and market research have ruined us, creating a nation of babies who demand refunds if the hero dies at the end or if bad things happen to good people.
     The movies are hardly worth addressing. When was the last time a movie ended on a down note? "Gone With the Wind," maybe? I still can't get over the imperial troops being defeated by a bunch of teddy bears at the end of "Return of the Jedi." Imagine how much more effective that movie would have been if the last scene had been Princess Leia's arm being zupped up in Jabba the Hutt's slobbering mouth. Talk about impact.
     But back to theater, specifically, the "Blue Man Group."
     Now, I have nothing against the "Blue Man Group" per se. I saw it when it opened in New York years ago and found it amusing, tolerable stuff. They drum. They splash paint and toss marshmallows. It's like a high school cafeteria.
     But I felt too guilty watching "Blue Man Group" to really like it. Maybe because I was in a theater. Being there for that kind of show seemed like trespassing, or supporting the manic slapstick that will keep theaters in business in the future, after people have entirely lost their taste for shows where actors speak actual words.
     It's getting worse. Look at what else has been packing them into theaters: "Beauty and the Beast." And don't even get me started on "Lord of the Dance."
     Sometimes I wonder if we'd get tragedies at all onstage if it weren't for certain actors having pangs of conscience and insisting. Would the Goodman be putting on these lovely Eugene O'Neill epics if Brian Dennehy didn't feel the need to periodically atone for his Hollywood potboilers?
     And at least my wife went to "Godot." Once I went to New York just to see Diana Rigg in "Medea." I knew better than to try to get anyone to go with me, but, at the last moment, in New York, I broke down and tried to persuade a friend to tag along to the Greek tragedy.
     "No way," he said.
     OK, I countered -- I must have been really lonely -- how about if I pay for your ticket?
     "No," he said. "I'm just not up to seeing 'Medea.' "
     "OK," I said, "what is it you feel like seeing?"
     "Blue Man Group," he said.
      I saw "Medea" alone.
                                      —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Dec. 2, 1997

Books on the nightstand: the Patrick O'Brian novels

     Boars are conservative.    
     "Deeply conservative," in fact, according to Patrick O'Brian. "Devoted to the beaten track."
     Aren't we all?  Most of us anyway. Humans as well as tusked swine.
     That perceptive observation comes near the beginning of The Nutmeg of Consolation, the 14th book of what are known as O'Brian's "Aubrey/Maturin novels," historical fiction of British naval life set 200 years ago, at the time of the Napoleonic wars.
    And yes, I've read the previous 13. Or at least listened to them on audiobooks, which is approximately the same thing.
    "Aubrey" is Captain Jack Aubrey, tall and blond, dashing, if perpetually overweight and florid, as human a hero as ever raised a cutlass. "Maturin" is his "particular friend," naval physician, natural philosopher, Irish nationalist and, let's not forget, highly effective secret agent, despite a tendency to tumble off ships and into dungeons.
     It shouldn't work. Just setting down the details above sounds trite, as if I'm describing some musty maritime cliche. But I have not only read the previous baker's dozen books, but done so almost daily, one after another, over the past six months, and as someone with a highly evolved reflex to reject fiction for being predictable, hackneyed, cliched, or just not good enough, O'Brian's books are none of these.
      The bit about the boar is an illustration why. Whatever is going on in the books, whether boars are being hunted by Maturin, shipwrecked with 156 crew mates on a deserted South China sea island, or battles being fought yardarm-to-yardarm, sails raised, legs amputated or pudding cooked, it is done so with a wealth of well-researched detail and veracity that sings off the page. I've literally never heard a false note.
     The characters are real. His pig killed, Maturin absent-mindedly wipes his hand on his white jacket, immediately fearing for the reaction of the gloriously-named servant Preserved Killick, "an awkward, slab-sided creature," a maestro of the muttered complaint, with his own distinctive way of speaking and a habit of beginning sentences with "Which."
    "Which there ain't no stern galley, sir, now we've been degraded to a sixth grade," Killick cries "with malignant triumph" in The Ionian Mission. "Stern galleries is for our betters, and I must toil and moil away in the dark."
     Yet somehow Killick, with his fetish for cleanliness and rank, is endearing, both to the readers and to his supposedly superior officers. Maturin is terrified that in gutting the boar he soiled his jacket, creating more work for the over-burdened Killick. Maturin tries to sort it out in his own mind as he heads toward his inevitable dressing down.
    "It wasn't even Killick was his servant with a servant's right," he thinks, dreading his encounter.
     "A servant's right" could support a book on it's own, and one of the series' many joys are the lesser, able-bodied seamen characters, their brief exchanges and rituals, superstitions and philosophies. Yet never does it become routine. A lesser writer, penning his 13th book, would have had Killick upbraid the doctor his characteristic "high, shrill, penetrating voice." But Killick doesn't. He looks at the doctor's mirthless light blue eyes, his general disorder from his boar hunt, and uncomplainingly goes about his business, for a change.
    O'Brian knows that human beings are not clockwork. They might have qualities, but they also diverge from them, and one of the truest things about the books are how his characters don't always behave as they're usually do. Aubrey, devoted to his Sophie, still finds himself fathering a child out of wedlock and almost two. Maturin, the man of science, nevertheless becomes an addict of laudanum, a form of opium, and his mental gymnastics rationalizing and hiding his slavery rings completely true. Diana Villiers, Maturin's love interest, is sometimes free-spirited and careless, sometimes devoted.
     Those characteristics that do endure start to develop a power. About the fifth time Aubrey describes Lord Nelson once asking him to be so kind as to pass the salt, the vignette takes on a deeper meaning, one it hadn't possessed before, speaking to the desperate way we cling to our brushes with fame.
     At some point I need to express my gratitude to my older son Ross. I had seen the movie version, "Master and Commander," with Russell Crowe as Jack Aubrey, and loved it extremely—like the books, it really is a disquisition in leadership. Maybe a decade ago, Ross gave me the novel as a birthday present, but I never got around to reading it until now, really just to stop him from holding that up as a lapse in paternal devotion. It took a few pages to gel, but once it did, I was hooked. Reading O'Brian has embroidered the mundane routine considerably. 
     I don't believe you should recommend a work of art while spoiling it, so I won't give away the surprises, except to say the best moment in the first 13 books comes in The Reverse of the Medal when Aubrey finds himself convicted of stock manipulation—he can be a dunce when it comes to his landward finances—and sentenced to an hour of humiliation in the pillory.  Tears in my eyes.
     The action ranges from Boston to Australia, from Sweden to the Cape of Good Hope, from Antarctica to the equator. There are schemes and traitors, alehouse whores and wheezing admirals. The exchange of letters, the constant consumption of alcohol, the crude medicine, the closeness to the natural world. Some books end in epic battles, others quietly. There is never a sense of repetition, and little crude coincidence—one almost-too-timely rescue, the in-the-nick-of-time arrival of a Polynesian outrigger in The Far Side of the World when Aubrey and Maturin were literally paddling together in the trackless ocean. Then again, it wouldn't do to have Aubrey and Maturin drown in Book 10, would it?
     I won't belabor the point. I've listened to most of the books on tape—a fine alternative to thought, to brooding on the ominous news of the day. I finally joined Audible to do it, since the library didn't carry the full 20 books—O'Brian, an enigmatic figure, died writing the 21st.  I can recommend them wholeheartedly to anyone, particularly during our own difficult days, when men of heroism and backbone, and a bit of escapism are not only welcome, but necessary.