Raiders Of The Lost Flash
January 5, 2008 at 1:01 am
Extreme Mortman senior historian Richard Andrews supplies us this free content:
George MacDonald Fraser, author of the ‘Flashman’ novels of a drunken womanizing reprobate and his comic (if harrowing) adventures (mostly in Central Asia), passed away Wednesday.
In George Criles’ book, ‘Charlie Wilson’s War’, there are a couple mentions of Congressman Wilson referring to the inner circle funneling aid to the Afghans (himself, Gust & his CIA cohorts, Joanne, the weapons geek who had a nice piece on him in the Wash Post last Sunday, the Israeli -Egyptian-Pakistani crowd) as “Flashman’s Raiders.”
Also, I can’t help but think that I was not the only person in the English-speaking world who saw that wire-photo in late ‘01 of U. S. Special Operations forces operating (in local dress) with the irregular cavalry of the Northern Alliance and thought:
Flashman!
RKV said,
January 5, 2008 @ 10:35 am
“mostly in Central Asia?” No.
There are 12 books in the series, namely:
* Flashman (1969)
* Royal Flash (1970)
* Flash for Freedom! (1971)
* Flashman at the Charge (1973)
* Flashman in the Great Game (1975)
* Flashman’s Lady (1977)
* Flashman and the Redskins (1982)
* Flashman and the Dragon (1985)
* Flashman and the Mountain of Light (1990)
* Flashman and the Angel of the Lord (1994)
* Flashman and the Tiger (1999)
* Flashman on the March (2005)
Action ranges from the US Civil War to Africa, China, India, Mexico, Europe and Great Britain, the Crimea, indeed as far as the boundaries of the British Empire and covers the period 1840-1900.
Fraser was a fine writer, dishing out equal measures of wit and British colonial history along with a passion for period language. He beats the more widely known Patrick O’Brian hands down for sheer breadth and depth of material, and for literary quality as well. Do yourself a favor and pick up a copy of any of his works and enjoy. His work wasn’t all Flashman either, as his autobiography of his war years in Burma will show.
Neil Ferguson said,
January 5, 2008 @ 11:54 am
Sirs,
I can’t leave the opinion above unanswered. I read both series with delight, so I have no axe to grind. Certainly literary quality per se is subjective, but I am sure that O’Brien’s books will be recognized by history as clearly superior. I would put Fraser’s Flashman as at about the same level as C. S. Forester’s Hornblower.
MF said,
January 5, 2008 @ 12:31 pm
Arguments about literary merit aside, Flashy was just damn good fun! It is difficult to find a bawdy, action-filled read these days. God bless you, GMF.
RKV said,
January 5, 2008 @ 12:36 pm
Flashman is nowhere near all that Fraser wrote, so if that’s all you have read you don’t really get the picture. Oh, it’s O’Brian, not O’Brien, by the way. I think Fraser’s career as a journalist certainly equates to that of O’Brian as a translator. And the Aubrey-Maturin series is over-rated and trendy - in tone, subject matter and complexity is really is more like Forester than Fraser’s oeuvre. Fraser in fact invented something different. O’Brian followed a formula and went to the bank with it. Further, you might note the personal details of O’Brian’s name change, abandonment of his wife and family followed by a reclusive existence in France. Of course to some that sort of thing is an attraction rather than a demerit. The usual euphemism is “complexity.” For my part he was a moral midget whose work quality declined as he aged.
Bill Peschel said,
January 5, 2008 @ 1:33 pm
“Flashman’s Raiders”? Good God, he must never have read the books!
Flashy wouldn’t have gone near Afghanistan if he could have helped it, much less help its people. Absconded with the gold and resell the weaponry in Bombay would be more his line.
John F. MacMichael said,
January 5, 2008 @ 3:21 pm
Pardon my nit-picking but none of the Flashman books actually cover his service in the Civil War. There are many references to it in the existing books but, alas, we never got the story of how he served on both sides, was blackmailed by Lincoln into saving the Union (by his account) and won the Congressional Medal of Honor. We do know that he served with or met Grant, Lee, Custer and J.E.B. Stuart. There is also the intriguing reference to his one of his finest lies being the one that convinced Jefferson Davis that “…I was there to fix the lightning rod.”
Sadly, with the loss of GMF we will never now learn just how the Ace of Cads enlisted in the French Foreign Legion, found himself in Peking for the Boxer Rebellion or survived the fall of Khartoum to the bloodthirsty hordes of the Mahdi.
Firehand said,
January 5, 2008 @ 6:31 pm
I can see Flashman’s Raiders: brave men out running arms to the Afghans whilst Sir Harry sits in a ’suitable location’, i.e. as far from the hazard areas as possible, controlling the work.
And don’t forget ‘Quartered Safe Out Here’ about his service in Burma in WWII, and ‘MacAuslan in the Rough’, and ‘The General Danced at Dawn’, the latter two about WWII and after.
A damn fine writer, he was.
JIm Jacobsen said,
January 5, 2008 @ 11:12 pm
We can only hope that Mr. Padget Morrison of South Africa had indeed sent the to-date unrevealed packets to Mr. Fraser long ago, and that the edited manuscripts are even now at the publishers.
nichevo said,
January 6, 2008 @ 11:01 am
RKV, you obviously have a personal prejudice. PoB’s oeuvre cannot be described as anything but original, unless history itself is a discredited study. I used to think that he was ripping off CSF, but it’s just not true. It is true that they were influenced by the same events. Even so, his prose far exceeds Forester’s, Kent’s Pope’s, or any rival you care to name (and I venerate Forester BTW).
As for morals? What are you, Irish and resent PoB’s assumption of an Irish identity? Whatever his offenses in life, PoB never sought to share them; if you fear a negaitve infuence on the world, the character Flashman is such a rogue he might well be censored on any such ground no matter how nice Fraser might have been IRL.
John F. MacMichael said,
January 6, 2008 @ 4:12 pm
Firehand, there is a third collection of the McAuslan stories; title: ” The Sheikh and the Dustbin”. It was published in 1988.
steve said,
January 7, 2008 @ 5:46 pm
RIP Mr. Fraser - whether Mr.O’Brian or he was a better writer - who’s to say. What can be stated with complete certainty is Mr. Fraser was one of that rapidly- disappearing band who served in WWII and literally saved those of us who came after from the horrors of Nazi Germany and Japan. For a look at what the military is really like - read “Quartered Safe out Here,” Fraser’s story of his service with the Border Regiment in Burma in WWII, and any of his short stories in the three compilations of “McAuslan” stories. I can only hope Mr. Fraser is right now with his comrades who he so brilliantly portrayed, perhaps sipping a scotch and listening to “the colonel” talk about the Gordon Highlanders.
nichevo said,
January 9, 2008 @ 6:36 pm
To be sure, I have nary a word to say ill of Mr. Fraser, for whose service to Western Civilization in the War let us be truly thankful. And if it matters, Mr. O’Brian did something or other in the War, I’m not sure what. I merely didn’t wish to let RKV’s jape go unaddressed. May Mr. Fraser’s Scotch be precisely at temperature.
Jake said,
January 25, 2008 @ 5:06 am
How could anyone not like someone who describes himself as “the fastest man in the worls with his pants around his ankles….” ?