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HOWDY

APPETITE

My tastes are catholic in that I think it's important to have an ever expanding sense of pleasures. There's no genre I dismiss out of hand since I just appreciate good writing and good storytelling.



Reading Groups I Own
Treasure Island
Peter Kerry Powers
BookGlutton Member Anywhere United States

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PUBLIC NOTES

Narrator as reader: This is the same narrative technique that I noticed earlier. Stevenson has a character speak something that to the reader is commpletely non-sensical, though obviously sensical to the speaker. However, it's also nonsensical to the hearers within the narrative, and they comment on the problem of interpretation. HOw to make sense of what has just seemed like gibberish. This is the position of the reader as well. So it creates identification. I'm sure deconstructors have a grand time with it
Treasure Island
Monday, March 24, 2008
race and civilization: The descriptions here are intriguing. On the one hand they are obviously invoking certain kinds of racial markers with the dark skin and (for the nineteenth century) the references to cannibalism and Gunn's animalistic qualities. All things that would have been associated with "primitive" races. Hawkins is first so afraid of this primitive that he prefers the "civilization" of the pirates, however poor we may have seen that civilization to be.
Treasure Island
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
scuppers under definition: According to what I can find on the net, scuppers are openings to let water run off. I take it that "rolling scuppers under" means that the scuppers were tipping down in to the water in the swells.
Treasure Island
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
England: Not sure of the status of England here. Obviously there's some sense that being English counts; but for the pirates there's obviously a great deal of resentment of England
Treasure Island
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Fathers and sons: Again, the theme of displacement.
Treasure Island
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
The Pirate's 401K: Again silver as the frugal bourgeois gentleman. On the other hand, he does hold himself as separate and different from most pirates. Exceptional rather than run of the mill.
Treasure Island
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Narrator as audience: Again. A kind of pattern in Stevenson's narrative technique. We sit breathlessly listening, waiting to hear the words that Hawkins heard before us. hawkins as audience for silver's words. He is our surrogate. Or we are his. Which is it?
Treasure Island
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Narrator as audience: I again feel myself in Hawkins shoes. I don't get the joke either.
Treasure Island
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Irony : I'm struck by Hawkins narrative positioning here. Again, he's admitting what we as the audience are suspecting already, that he's being taken in. thus, we aren't quite in the present tense, but much later, after the story is over. This isn't a diary that is occurring the evening after this event. The narrator knows he's been taken. Yet, at the same time, he doesn't say it directly.
Treasure Island
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
audience anticipation: There's an interesting way in which Hawkins becomes both narrator and reader for us here. He wondered, reading Trelawney's letter , whether Silver was the one legged sailor. We also wonder. I'm interested in the effect here. Certainly creates a further identification, but we already identify with Hawkins. In any case, it creates a wave-like effectt of increasing and releasing audience tension, something I encourage my student writers to strive for.
Treasure Island
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Fathers and son: There's a lot going on in this book with fathers and sons. Who is the "real" father? Who is the real son. Hawkins took the place of the sickly father, but in some respects the pirate, and then Dr. Livesey took the place of the father. Now Hawkins himself is being displaced from his "natural" role.
Treasure Island
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Bankers and piracy: Again, this linking of economic efficiency and precision with the image of piracy, though we don't really know that yet, do we. Again, I wonder how the foreshadowing would have worked in an earlier age. Now, we see the name Long John Silver and we go Oho, aha. I know that name. Of course, the lost leg might spell it out to the audience as well, but maybe not.
Treasure Island
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
INDENT: Strickly speaking this ought to be indented. I wonder if it is in the original and the formatting was just left out when uploaded. In any case, I got lost in my reading here and took a while to realize I was still in the midst of the letter.
Treasure Island
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Pirate as accountant: I find this image of the fearsome Pirate as cold-eyed and efficient businessman interesting. To what degree is this a commentary on pirates and to what degree a commentary on businessmen?
Treasure Island
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Father figures: I'm interested in the degree to which the boy is controlled and compelled by a bunch of alternative fathers, even while his biological father is something of a non-entity in many respects.
Treasure Island
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Autobiography: I've been thinking a lot about the false autobiographies in the news, the faux holocaust survivor and the faux LA gangmemeber. In our own age we are compelled to turn fictions into memoirs. In some way this is also true of Stevenson. I've read somewhere that early readers of novels were deeply disturbed to find that novels hadn't actually happened to people. I think this was a big The reality effect isn't enough. REaders want it to be real in fact. The need to present fiction as report.
Treasure Island
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Repetition: I'm intrigued by the repetition of this song. I wonder what's up with that. It's a kind of rune, and the narrator's calling attention to it suggests the need for interpretation
Treasure Island
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Johnny Depp: I can't read this without thinking about Johnny Depp. I wonder what role latter day incarnations of the pirate story have in shaping how we read this "classic" work. Is the work something by itself, or do we mostly see Disney characters?
Treasure Island
Monday, March 10, 2008
Poetry?: I'm kind of wondering if this was originally lined out as poetry. it certainly reads in iambs and rhyme, but I'm not sure about hte original. Not sure how Book Glutton uploads these things either.
Treasure Island
Monday, March 10, 2008

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