Obtain Treasure Island Generated By Robert Louis Stevenson Version
on Treasure Island
to read Treasure Island have been pinging me all my life, Most recently I read sitelinkHenry James's famous essay “The Art of Fiction,” in which he says “I have just been reading, . . the delightful story of Treasure Island, by Mr, Robert Louis Stevenson. ” That got me recalling all the favorable mentions of Stevenson in good old Jorge Luis Borges' sitelinkSelected NonFictions, More recently, while streaming sitelinkBlade Runner, I decided to throw in the towel when Rick Deckerd says to Officer K “'You mightnt happen to have a piece of cheese about you, now'” which is an allusion to Treasure Island's desperate Ben Gunn.
Thus, was I finally sent regressing, Well, not really Id never read it as a boy, And neither, says James, is it a book solely for boys, Its a book for all ages, rather like Defoes sitelinkRobinson Crusoe, Read it. Its pure narrative pleasurea treasure in itself,
A great joy is the suspense, but also the description of passing across the landscape, This is a gift all the great novelists sharesitelinkGabriel GarcíaMárquez, sitelinkThomas Hardy, sitelinkEdith Wharton, sitelinkV, S. Naipaul spring to mind, Heres a favorite passage as the search for the treasure finally begins:
Heavy, miry ground and a matted, marish vegetation, greatly delayed our progress but by little and little the hill began to steepen and become stony under foot.As Indiana Jones once, rather astutely pointed out, when it comes to treasure "X never, ever marks the spot", Well, it does if you're a pirate, which basically means that as a pirate you have a statistically much higher chance of finding treasure than any archaeologist ever would.
It was, indeed, a most pleasant portion of the island that we were now approaching, A heavyscented broom and many flowering shrubs had almost taken the place of grass, Thickets of green nutmeg trees were dotted here and there with the red columns and the broad shadow of the pines and the first mingled their spice with the aroma of the others.
The air, besides, was fresh and stirring, and this, under the sheer sunbeams, was a wonderful refreshment of our senses, p.
I find this a bit unfortunate and if someone had presented me with this hard and fast evidence I would have ticked the pirate box and not the archaeologist box on my careers worksheet at school.
Instead, I have to make do with reading Treasure Island and fantasising about my ideal bespoke treasure island emeralds growing on trees I know this is an arboreal unlikelihood but it's my fantasy so back off lagoons filled with sapphires, gold dubloons in huge heapy piles at the foot of azure blue waterfalls and knuckle sized diamonds to be chipped off the walls of underground caverns.
Stevenson's Treasure Island is much less of a Disneyesque fantasy and Jim Hawkins, narrator and salty sea dog in the making, is forced to pit his wits against the wiliest of all pirates, Long John Silver in a race to retrieve the booty.
After finding an oilskin map in a dead mans chest nice Robert, very nice Jim sets off to find some trustworthy or gullible adults.
Jim must be in possession of some serious powers of persuasion because within minutes the good squire and his associates are rustling up a ship no mean feat when a schooner could set you backand your chance of surviving the voyage was slim, tightening their buckanneering belts and getting ready to hit the high seas.
It turns out the ships cook is more than he seems though and not to be underestimated I wonder if JF Lawton, the writer of Under Siege was a Treasure Island fan, after all he served up Casey Rybeck, the most underestimated ships cook of all time.
Caribbean capers ensue as Long John Silver serves up a melting pot of mendacity in an attempt to get his hand on Captain Flint's treasure.
Jim Hawkins proves he's tougher than a soused herring that's been at the bottom of a barrel for a year and successfully repels the Island siege before hoisting the main sail, jibing ho and heading for Britain.
The other pirates are left marooned as a punishment and their skeletons will be unearthedyears from the time of telling during the construction of a Sandals adult holiday resort.
Personally I think I'd rather be marooned than go to Sandals, Arr, me matey!
I've finally downed the children's classic, Treasure Island,
Sadly, these pirates weren't nearly as sexy as I was expecting, Where were all the sweaty pirate abs I've come to expect from the plethora of trashy romance novels I've gobbled down over the years
Not here, that's for damn sure.
And mainly because of the overabundance of bodice rippers on my bookshelf, I felt like I maybe needed to expand my maritime horizons, and it seemed that going with a classic sailor story wouldn't be a bad way to accomplish that goal.
Unsurprisingly, this is a pretty boring book by today's standards, And if this was what they gave kids to read back in the day, I'm no longer shocked that people found long walks and/or journaling about said long walks a valid form of entertainment.
When I'm done churning this butter, should I whittle for a bit before we have a family singalong around the fire
Going to be totally honest, I don't understand the yearning for a simpler lifestyle, as this scenario sounds like my own personal version of Hell.
Alright!
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson and why you should read it,
It's short! ltnot as much of a time suck as sitelinkCount of Monte Cristo
It's a classic! lt therefore, you will sound classy
It's got pirates! ltremember: dirty rumbloated pirates, not shirtless Fabio pirates
You can learn new drinking songs! ltYo ho ho and a bottle of Zima, bitches
That all sounds great.
But what is Treasure Island about, Anne
The gist is that our young hero, Jim Hawkins, has the shittiest luck ever.
His dad dies and leaves a tweenage Jim and his mother with a ramshackle inn to run, complete with a scary drunken sailor Billy Bones who's not too keen on paying his tab as a tenant.
He's what the kids these days call a scallywag,
Why does it matter that Bones is continually dodging rent
Well, after Billy Bob meets his maker with the help of a few of his old sailing pals, Jim and his mother have to rifle through his things to get payment.
AND JIM FINDS A MAP, ltto a place called Treasure Island
choir vocalizes
Back in the day, if you found a map it was apparently adventure time.
You and your neighbors would rent a ship, hire a sketchy crew, and set out for parts unknown full of high hopes that you'd be coming back with gold doubloons! The reality is that you'd be lucky to come back alive without scurvy or syphilis.
And dark thoughts like that are why I would have made a terrible pirateadventurer, . .
The adults of course make some really bad decisions when it comes to securing an efficient crew, They have a competent captain, but instead of listening to him, they hire a fairly obvious villain as the cook and then proceed to take his advice over the captain's.
This ensures they have quite a surly group of sailors to man the SS Mutiny,
Who is this cook
Long John Silver, ltyes, exactly like the subpar seafood restaurant!
When your cook's name is synonymous with chewy shrimp poppers and diarrhea, you might want to rethink your hiring process.
Luckily for all the grownups, Jim is a brave and hearty lad who manages to save the day! ltnot really
Ok, so this was written back when it was a big deal to keep your word.
Like, if you promised your kidnappers that you wouldn't try to run for it, then you couldn't try to run for it because that would make you a liar.
Which, for some unfathomable reason, was worth more than your life,
SWEAR TO GOD, THESE OLDTIMEY PEOPLE WERE RIDICULOUS,
Naturally, there comes a point in the story where Jim needed to hop a fence and get the hell out of there, but wouldn't because INTEGRITY.
And I suppose we're meant to think he's a better person for it, but all I could think was that maybe Stevenson based his story around a child with special needs.
Except, no. Because the doctor agreed with Jim, so apparently in the days of yore, the good guys couldn't just win, they had to win by a set of idiotic rules.
Which is nuts! What are you teaching our kids, Robert!
Looking someone dead in the eyes whilst giving a firm handshake
and lying through your teeth is a fucking lifeskill that every child needs to have perfected by adulthood in order to survive.
But whatever, This is a fantasy, so it all works out for our heroes,
They return home with their honor intact, a good bit of wealth, no STDs, and only a little bit of PTSD that kicks in whenever they hear a parrot squawk.
Read it, As far as classics go, you could do a lot worse than this one,
Michael Prichard Narrator,
Robert Louis Stevenson