As some may remember from the distant past of this blog, I set out to actually read a whole e-book from start to finish on Book Glutton, all this in honor of read a book month, or read an e-book month, or some other kind of month. Given that most Americans don’t even read one book a year, e or otherwise, I am so proud of myself for managing to fulfill my quota in a mere three weeks. Or so. Anyway, I finished Treasure Island about a couple of weeks ago, but have been too swamped with work (and my kids soccer games) to collect any thoughts. And, of course by now, given that I am uncomfortably close to my fiftieth birthday, I have actually forgotten most of the experience. So the comments that follow are no doubt not anywhere nearly an accurate reflection of my experiences but more a kind of fiction of what I construe could have happened in my reading experience. Pierre Bayard and Roland Barthes would be so proud.
First Treasure Island itself. What a romp! One consequence of being an academic is that works in my specialization I am always reading as an academic. Which probably means dully and ponderously. So when I read for pleasure…well, I never really do read for pleasure. But let’s just say that in order to re-activate the pleasure zones in my reading brain, I often have to get far away from stuff I have to teach or write about in my official capacities.
Treasure Island is surely a boys book in a certain sense of that word. For all the sturm and drang about about the dominance of masculine narratives in the canon, it’s worth saying that boys books aren’t much appreciated as boys books per se. They have to first be turned in to “LITERATURE.” That is, something ponderous and masculine rather than, well, rompish. If “rompish” even qualifies as a term of analysis. And much of what we talk about as literature–things like The Great Gatsby as exhibit A; things like The Scarlet Letter as exhibit B–are really chick flicks dressed up to go out on the town. No wonder boys don’t read.
But then there are boys books. Romps that lose their fun in becoming literature, or which are ignored because they seem resistant to literary seriousness. Huckleberry Finn used to be sold as a boys book, in fact, though now it is banned from high schools. For my money Melville’s most readable works are Typee, Omoo, and Redburn. Works written for adolescent boys, and adolescent men, who were looking for a little tittilation in thinking about naked polynesian breasts. Let’s be truthful folks. How many of us really truly loved Moby Dick. Confession of the week. I can’t bring myself to finish Pierre. And I did my master’s exams on Melville. I think I read the Cliff’s notes. Perhaps if either book did more to foreground Polynesian breasts I would get more interested.
In any case, Treasure Island, falls into the category of a boys book so stereotypical that we now can hardly feel it as anything but predictable. The boy in search of a father since he’s lost his own. And finding fathers in all the wrong places, especially among barely disguised pirates who everyone and their mother knows are pirates except apparently Jim Hawkins himself.
I was struck in reading it by how much Jim is the characteristic “good boy.” The loyal son to his mother. Although the novel is often described as a coming of age story, there’s a peculiar sense in which jim is already aged. He is already formed as the good man that he will become, protector of his mother becomes protector of his friends and ultimately, even, the protector of his erstwhile enemy, Long John Silver.
In other words, Jim is already his own father, a boy seeking for a father he doesn’t really need or want. Thus, explaining Jim’s constant penchant for running off for no good reason, whether in to the apple barrel or jumping ship to gain the Island ahead of the others, or stealing the ship out from under the noses of the pirates themselves. Jim is a boy who doesn’t need a father because he is a father already, the one who can save those even whom he despises. Sprung whole and righteous from his own loins. (This is, of course, also a description of Milton’s Satan, but I won’t press the point).
For my money, this makes Treasure Island more of an adventure story than a coming of age story or bildungsroman. Jim is already who he is or will become. He is threatened by evil, but he is not tempted by it. Huckleberry Finn could worry about whether he is going to hell, and he could play his pranks on the slave Jim on the raft for his own selfish ends and pleasures, but Jim Hawkins always chooses the good and we always know he will. And perhaps more importantly, he always knows he will. Thus the story is not about whether Jim will be good and will grow as a human being–he doesn’t grow at all. It is more about whether goodness will out. Does goodness pay off in the end? Is goodness the treasure that we can have without seeking.?Will goodness save our own necks from the noose, and perhaps the necks of Long John Silver as well?
Well Stevenson seemed to think so. I’m tempted to say it’s a vapid vision of the world, where the mutineers of the world exist not to tell me that I too might be one, but as foils for my own moral self-display. Nevertheless, this criticism is awfully literary and ponderous. So I’ll stop before I lose sight of the fact that I actually loved reading it.
Of course, I also weep when watching Brian’s Song. What does this prove?
More later about the actual experience of reading on book glutton.
Peter Kerry Powers 