Treasure Island

Treasure  Island

By Robert Louis Stevenson

The classic adventure tale of buried treasure and pirates, young Jim Hawkins becomes involved in a search for the lost treasure of legendary pirate Captain Flint.  He sails to Treasure Island only to discover the ship's crew is planning to mutiny and kill their passengers after the treasure is found, and his life will depend not only on his own quick wits, but on the uncertain benevolence of Long John Silver, leader of the mutineers.

Despite this book being a classic in just about every sense of the word, I realized very early on that the only thing I knew about it was that the main character was a young child, and there was a bad pirate called Long John Silver who kinda, like, took the kid on an adventure??? In hindsight, I'm pretty sure most of my impressions were generated by Muppet Treasure Island (and like, Swiss Family Robinson, which also involves children and pirates) - which was somewhat problematic, since I've never even seen Muppet Treasure Island.   But I definitely got the idea this was a kids book.  I mean, it was a Disney movie! Uh, sure, like a pirate kids version of And Then There Were None.  As Jim says at end, of their fully staffed ship, only five people made it out alive.   Jim is almost murdered multiple times (although he fears the torture worse) and ends up shooting and killing another pirate.  I'm just saying, at no point did I have any idea of what to expect.

In fact, despite the popular idea that this is a kids book, perhaps because the narrator is a child, and it's short, honestly, it didn't feel very child-like.  I also struggled with the whole intro, in which we meet a variety of pirates whose relationship to each other was less important for Stevenson to describe, than the ominous signs and portents and chills which accompany their actions.  So, I guess I'm pretty sure that the pirate at the beginning was Flint's first mate (we never meet Flint, but everybody talks about him all the time) and had the treasure map, but just wanted... to retire in poverty?  It's unclear to me why he's just camped out at the hotel basically waiting for the other pirates to track him down, but you do you, as the kids say.

Then there's like, Blind Pew and his gang, who are somehow affiliated with Long John and his gang, although they never appear together in the book.  Or maybe they're competing pirate gangs?  All I know is, we meet a whole bunch of pirates in the first fifty pages that never appear again and aren't, actually, relevant to the main story.  Well, I guess they add spice.  And for some reason, Jim and his mom just give the map to the local squire? And then the squire decides Jim will be going on this trip and we never hear about his mother again (except that before they depart, Jim can spend one more night with her - like, was this childcare in the 1800s? Good lord).

And THEN! I was delighted to find out Long John Silver was hired as the cook! Amazing!  It makes the chain restaurant so much more apt!  Other things I was surprised by: the fact that Long John is both a mutineer and like, a triple agent! He actually is the only "good" pirate, even though he's the one that lead the mutiny. And they're more concerned about getting off the island alive than they are in looking for treasure (which does make sense).

Treasure Island has a lot of dialect, and also some like, 1880s sea-faring slang, which makes whole pages at times incomprehensible. In fact, I found the story better when there was less dialogue.  Its beginnings as an action serial are clear.

I will add just as a final note, that having just sailed on a masted schooner, I have no further insights on Treasure Island except to say that the experience is the opposite of restful, such that I had like, waking night terrors for four days following my sail, thinking that I was still rocking gently on the boat and also had no idea where I was.  Maybe that's just me. However, I can certainly understand the desire to mutiny, if only to claim better sleeping quarters.

I had a tough time with this prompt, since "celebrity" and "admire" don't really go hand in hand.  But in addition to the recommendation, I happened to have a very handsome set of adventure stories which I bought two years ago and never opened, so this was the perfect opportunity.

28: A Book Recommended By A Celebrity You Admire 
(Barack Obama)