More like Long Con Silver, amirite?

[mmcirvin]

I downloaded the Kindle app for Android recently, and one of the three books that came with it was Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island, one of the all-time classic kids' adventure stories and the ultimate basis for most modern pop mythology about pirates.

I remember attempting to read this when I was a kid, and, I think, not yet having the patience to decipher the nautical terms and slightly antique argot. But when I was about ten I remember finding the basic storyline thrilling on the basis of (I am embarrassed to remember) a cartoon filmstrip adaptation I saw in school starring Mr. Magoo, and I wrote a science-fiction adaptation of it set IN SPAAAACE, beating Disney's flop Treasure Planet to the punch by decades.

Anyway, I don't think I had actually gotten all the way through the book back then. So just now I read it for what was effectively the first time.


For what it is... it's a great book. Stevenson's prose is economical and transparent, aside from the occasional nautical term I actually had to look up, and the action set pieces in it are as exciting as they come. The best bit is young Jim Hawkins' solo recapture of the Hispaniola; it's like an early Die Hard, an incredible boy's power fantasy.

But I was annoyed by the contrivances Stevenson uses in the first third of the book to get everyone into trouble in the first place. The expedition's financial backer and recruiter, Squire Trelawney, is a fool of the first order who is incapable of either keeping a secret or detecting the most poorly disguised subterfuge, and all the other characters recognize this and comment on it, but they don't let it keep them from going along with his ridiculous plan to go after the treasure located on the map they got off a dead pirate whose lethal enemies are still very much on the loose, with a crew of disreputable fellows Trelawney hired apparently after leaking the story all over the docklands. When the captain he hires tells him this is a bad course of action in more or less these terms, he just gets angry. Later on Stevenson reveals that Trelawney is a crack shot, presumably to give him some positive quality worth mentioning. His associate, Dr. Livesey, is much more clever, but not clever enough to walk away.

The protagonist and narrator of most of the book, Jim Hawkins, has more of an excuse for foolish, impulsive behavior; he's a kid and he thinks like a kid. This is a time-honored excuse in the plotting of YA adventures, and it works here. Why Trelawney and Livesey think it's a good idea to bring him along, I'm not sure, but he ends up repeatedly stumbling into situations where he can save the day, in the manner of such tales.

But it's not the good guys you come for in a story like this. Stevenson's most enduring creation, of course, is the pirate Long John Silver, the one-legged guy who goes around saying "Shiver my timbers" with a parrot who squawks "Pieces of eight! Pieces of eight!" And Silver is an awesome character, at once familiar where he spawned the pirate clichés everyone knows, and strikingly unfamiliar where he diverges from the movie and parody portrayals that spawned other clichés (I was surprised that he's described as a generally healthy, beefy guy who can move with athletic grace on his crutch). The key thing about him is that he's the one competent pirate, a charming, treacherous sociopath who can command grudging loyalty even from people he's just tried to kill, and probably the smartest character in the story with the possible exception of Dr. Livesey, who ultimately does get the better of him. In the early chapters, he's the one guy in the crew who nobody suspects of being a potential mutineer, and it's actually believable even if, like everyone in the Western world, you already know who and what Long John Silver is, because he comes across as genuinely likeable.

It's striking, too, that Stevenson doesn't kill him off, or hand him down any great degree of punishment. Though it's solemnly stated that he'll burn in hell someday, he's the one unreformed pirate who survives to the end and skips off with a bag of doubloons, because even though he's the principal villain, he's also the smartest pirate and the coolest pirate, and Jim Hawkins has a little bit of subtextual Stockholm Syndrome over him.

Of course, I doubt it bears any resemblance whatsoever to a realistic portrayal of 18th-century pirates or adventure on the high seas. And, as a boy's boy's adventure, there are effectively no women in it. Long John Silver has a wife, a black woman, but, though she's mentioned, she never appears in person; Jim Hawkins' mother does appear briefly but doesn't even seem capable of objecting to his going on this damn fool adventure, like any sane parent would.

Comments

[silk-noir.livejournal.com]

Did you ever see the TNT version with Charlton Heston as Long John and Christian Bale as Jim? Great stuff.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Hmm... By 1990 Heston would have been a little old for the part as written, but I could definitely see him as Long John.

The image that seems to have been burned into everyone's head as the ur-pirate is that of Robert Newton in the 1950 Disney live-action version and many sequels.

[silk-noir.livejournal.com]

Oh, you MUST SEE IT

[surferelf.livejournal.com]

I'm sure I've seen Newton and the 1950 film multiple times, yet the portrayal that springs to mind when I think of LJS is Orson Welles in the 1972 film. While I believe it's considered to be one of the poorer versions, and Welles was too old and fat for the role, he did a masterful job of portraying a manipulative sociopath. It's the only thing about the film that I remember.

[tb-doc-smith.livejournal.com]

Definitely great stuff! In addition, you have Christopher Lee as Blind Pew, Oliver Reed as Billy Bones, and a soundtrack composed by Paddy Malone and played by the Chieftains.

A low-resolution version is available starting at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6x8SeGHrOps.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

...I remember that in my version the ship was called the Mars Beauty and, in my illustrations, looked like an old-time science-fiction rocket with a bulging dome added amidships. And the island became a moonbase, so the title was [something] Base, but I can't remember what the McGuffin was that provided the other half of the title.

[lots42.livejournal.com]

Treasure Planet was awesome.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

I've never actually seen it; its critical reception seems to have been better than the box office it did. (But that and Cutthroat Island seem to have effectively killed off pirate movies until Captain Jack Sparrow came along.)

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

...Huh, actually Treasure Planet was much later than I remembered: it came out not long before Pirates of the Caribbean suddenly made movie pirates a going concern again. That's surprising.

[lots42.livejournal.com]

Cutthroat Island was also incredibly awesome. And not just because Geena Davis forgot to button up half the time.

And the video game tie-in was actually playable

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

I guess it's actually a bag of guineas; Jim had sorted them all out by type.

[sunburn.livejournal.com]

Guineas, New Guineas, Papua New Guineas, Equitorial Guineas, and of course, Guinea Swine.

[surferelf.livejournal.com]

I think TI is routinely given to children before they are ready for it. I, too, became frustrated fairly early on and relegated it to the boring book pile, where it has remained. I think I'm going to move it to the read-aloud-to-the-kids pile while I'm thinking about it.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

The odd thing is that at the same age I was captivated by Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, even though its plotting is relatively aimless and its prose is far, far clunkier, especially in the translations that were available at the time. I guess the science-fiction content there was enough to keep me hooked.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

...Maybe it's just the way it gets started, with the long description of decrepit Billy Bones sitting around scaring random visitors to the inn and being mysterious until his run-in with other pirates, who themselves don't figure much in the rest of the narrative. It's a little while before we meet Long John Silver and get out on the water.