Wednesday, July 17, 2024

Treasure Island and the powerful call to adventure

It’s been a busy last month or so. Mostly in a good way, with some PTO combined with some busy times at work. But that means my writing has suffered and the blog collecting a bit more dust than usual.

Reading has been OK. I did manage to finish Ursula LeGuin’s Tehanu and Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island while on vacation last week, and have since moved on to Beowulf and Other Old English Poems.

Treasure Island was a treat. I hadn’t read this since I was a kid and it holds up extremely well, both from the perspective of an adult reading a book ostensibly for young men (it was first published in serialized fashion for Young Folks, a children’s magazine), but also a work written in 1881. It’s bloody, but relatively bloodless, the violence ample though at a slight remove. The action however never stops, and the atmosphere and plotting are things of beauty. Pure, mainlined adventure from page one.

Treasure Island was published as a standalone novel in 1883, a time when literary realism and literary modernism were in the ascendancy, and so was a bit of an anachronism, a throwback to the historical romances of the likes of Sir Walter Scott. But it nevertheless proved immediately popular with the reading public and even many critics of the age.

I read a 1930 edition (Windsor Press) with a fascinating introduction by Harry Hansen, “How Robert Louis Stevenson Wrote Treasure Island.”  In addition to an interesting story behind the physical writing, publishing history and critical reception, I learned of another chapter waged in the well-grooved war of realistic vs. fantastic fiction. Henry James, perhaps the greatest practitioner of slice-of-life/realistic fiction, enjoyed the book himself—but nevertheless critiqued it during a symposium on the art of fiction in 1884. James was “unable to come to grips with the author because it did not touch his own experience,” Hansen writes. James further stated, “I have been a child, but I have never been on a quest for buried treasure.”

Word reached Stevenson. Though he never claimed Treasure Island was more than an adventurous narrative, Stevenson felt the need to defend his work and expound on the artists’ urge to create fantastic stories full of vicarious experience removed from our own. “The creative artist takes certain characters, incidents, motives out of the vast store of living and arranges them to suit his mind,” he wrote, adding that a creative author “both selects from life and expands the slightest incidents, possibly even more successfully when they relate not to what he has actually done but what he has wished to do.”

Stevenson adds a final beautiful rejoinder to James, quoted verbatim by Hansen:
If he has never been on a quest for buried treasure, it can be demonstrated that he has never been a child. There never was a child (unless Master James) has but hunted gold, and been a pirate, and a military commander, and a bandit of the mountains; but has fought, and suffered shipwreck and prison, and imbrued its little hands in gore, and gallantly retrieved the lost battle and triumphantly protected innocence and beauty.
The only thing missing was the N.C. Wyeth illustrations I remember so vividly from my childhood in whatever edition I first enjoyed, decades ago. This edition had fine black and white illustrations by Lyle Justis, but Wyeth of course is a master.

While I remain on a bit of a reading break from sword-and-sorcery Treasure Island is definitely part of its DNA.

***

Tehanu was a lovely read, LeGuin at the height of her literary powers, and I will probably have more to say about it later. Not as soaring or epic as the original Earthsea trilogy but a stirring coda. And quite a distinct experience from Treasure Island, reserved and reflective. It was sitting on my shelf for years and I finally plucked it off and read it, and am glad I did.

9 comments:

  1. I haven't read Treasure Island recently but Stevenson's work is something I keep meaning to get back to in general.

    I recently read Road to Infinity by Gael Deroane, which is a fairly recent book but I found it really wonderful. There's a lot of Jack Vance in it but it doesn't have the cruel, sardonic quality that you see in something like The Dying Earth. It has a bloody start, but the hero is just a nice guy going on an adventure and you can't help fearing for his safety as he encounters various people, monsters, fairies, etc.

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  2. The Wyeth illustrations can be seen here:

    https://www.nocloo.com/n-c-wyeth-treasure-island-1911/

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  3. Andy: It's worth reading again... holds up very well. Thanks for the recommendation on Road to Infinity.

    Don: That's what I'm talking about... those illos remain definitive and probably always will.

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  4. I wish Henry James was the last to slip into such a NPC brained opinion. God help us if we could only create things we've already seen and read booka we've already lived through.

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  5. Anonymous: Right? Not to mention that realistic novels, unless autobiographical, are inventions of an artist and thus "fantasy fiction."

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  6. A favorite story about "Treasure Island" (which I read somewhere years ago so I cannot cite a source) tells how RLS was staying in a hotel in, I think, San Francisco. He left his room and rang for the elevator to take him downstairs. The elevator did not come. He rang again. And again. Finally he walked down the stairs and went to find the elevator operator. He found the boy who ran the elevator absorbed in a book. RLS opened his mouth to give the neglectful boy a piece of his mind. Then he saw what book the boy was reading. It was "Treasure Island". So Stevenson forgave him.

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  7. JohnnyMac: Love that, thanks for sharing.

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  8. Hey Brian, I hope you're doing well! Funny that you should have just reread (as of July) TREASURE ISLAND, since I also just did a reread, same time. I bought a twofer--a hardback set, with the Wyeth illustrations, of TI and KIDNAPPED. Haven't read KIDNAPPED yet, never have, though this was my second read of TI. I also felt it held up great. Right now I'm reading RLS's short fiction, and just yesterday finished my rearead of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde. (I first read it in high school.) If you're still in a piratical mood, I HIGHLY recommend Netflix's BLACK SAILS. Truly rousing adventure and a prequel to TI. Much fun. On a different note, don't forget: if you ever do a revision to FLAME & CRIMSON please let me know; I would be honored to act as a beta reader. Be well and keep up the good work!

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  9. Hey Craig! I'm glad you enjoyed the re-read as much as I did. I haven't read Kidnapped either. Thanks for the recommendation on Black Sails. And yes, I haven't forgotten your Flame and Crimson offer (nor my eventual ideas for a 2nd edition--but I've got another writing project up first that I'm deep into). Will keep you posted!

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