thedrifter
05-17-09, 08:23 AM
Author recasts Long John Silver as hero
By Rege Behe
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Author John Drake thinks Robert Louis Stevenson's novel, "Treasure Island," was a precursor of a certain beloved franchise that's back in the limelight.
"It's got an adventure onboard a wonderful machine, the ship Hispaniola," Drake says. "It takes you to a strange place where strange things happen, and there's interesting people and an interesting plot. It's almost like an edition of 'Star Trek.' "
And just like the most recent addition to the "Star Trek" franchise, Drake has created a prequel. His novel "Flint & Silver" is the first in a planned trilogy that fills in the back history of "Treasure Island."
Why go back and tamper with a story that has excited boys since it was first published in book form in 1883 after being serialized in the British children's magazine Young Folks?
Simply, Drake wanted to know how Long John Silver lost his leg and why the spirit of Capt. Joe Flint haunts Robert Louis Stevenson’s tale. His mission was fueled by his zest for the material and a desire to remain true to the spirit of the original book.
Thus, Drake read "Treasure Island" at least five times, taking copious notes.
"If what I write is not true to 'Treasure Island,' it will be consciously different for a reason I will express," he says. "I've done my best to tie 'Flint & Silver' into 'Treasure Island,' but I have consciously made some differences."
Those diversions start with Long John Silver himself. In Stevenson's work, he is an ambiguous character who initially installs fear in the novel's protagonist, Jim Hawkins, before coming to the rescue of the boy. In "Flint & Silver," Drake casts him as a pure hero, the novel's moral compass.
"That has to do with my background," Drake says, referencing a British children's series featuring Dan Dare, a pilot of the future. "I'm 64, and I grew up in a time when heroes were heroes. ... Those people were true blue and honorable."
That's in direct opposition to the heroes of graphic novels, Drake says, the morally ambiguous character such as Batman or Spider-Man who tend to blur the line between good and evil.
Silver's status is not the only different tack Drake takes. While Stevenson's story was written for his 13-year-old nephew, "Flint & Silver" is decidedly adult in nature.
The author understands salty language and adult situations might rankle those who love 'Treasure Island."
"If it is a bit vulgar, maybe it's me," Drake says with a laugh. "Maybe I'm like that. But I wanted a rough, tough adult book, so I wrote it."
That saltiness and the use of profanity is actually more accurate than Stevenson's sanitized work, according to Drake.
"It wasn't just pirates, but seafarers' speech was incomprehensible and filthy," he says. "When seafarers of those times spoke, they used a language, a vocabulary and expressions that were totally alien to the world of land-locked humanity. You couldn't understand them anyway, and on top of that, they were in an exclusively male, exclusively rough, environment. For comparisons, think of U.S. Marines hitting the beach, or the blokes that work on oil rigs. I would strongly guess the speech of those men is not polite."
Drake did stay true to one convention that is a bit surprising: In "Flint & Silver" the pirates pay obeisance to the articles, a set of transcribed rules that are a nautical combination of the Bible and the Magna Carta. Drake says pirates were "considerably more democratic in politics either than Britain or the American colonies." They also had good reason to be. Pirates were former merchant seamen or culled from the royal navies of England, Spain, Portugal or France, and were used to "ferocious discipline."
"If you think about it, it's not surprising," Drake says. "Imagine a pirate ship with 100 men onboard. They're all armed; each of them would have a couple of pistols in his belt and a cutlass and musket as well. They're armed all the time, and one man, the captain, he cannot make 100 armed men do what he wants. So it has to be democratic. That's what was behind the articles, that and the indispensable necessity in any ship that ever put to sea that there should be discipline when the ship is underway and the weather turns nasty."
Drake has finished the second book in his trilogy, and is working on the third installment which will pique interest in Western Pennsylvania. Think pirates on the Allegheny, and not the ones who call PNC Park home. Silver and Flint take supplies to Col. George Washington and end up at the confluence of the Allegheny, Monongahela and Ohio rivers.
"In my innocence, I thought these rivers, the Allegheny and the Monongahela, are they going to be big enough for barges," Drake says. "And then I looked them up. You could put the Queen Mary on those rivers."
Rege Behe can be reached at rbehe@tribweb.com or 412-320-7990.
Ellie
By Rege Behe
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Author John Drake thinks Robert Louis Stevenson's novel, "Treasure Island," was a precursor of a certain beloved franchise that's back in the limelight.
"It's got an adventure onboard a wonderful machine, the ship Hispaniola," Drake says. "It takes you to a strange place where strange things happen, and there's interesting people and an interesting plot. It's almost like an edition of 'Star Trek.' "
And just like the most recent addition to the "Star Trek" franchise, Drake has created a prequel. His novel "Flint & Silver" is the first in a planned trilogy that fills in the back history of "Treasure Island."
Why go back and tamper with a story that has excited boys since it was first published in book form in 1883 after being serialized in the British children's magazine Young Folks?
Simply, Drake wanted to know how Long John Silver lost his leg and why the spirit of Capt. Joe Flint haunts Robert Louis Stevenson’s tale. His mission was fueled by his zest for the material and a desire to remain true to the spirit of the original book.
Thus, Drake read "Treasure Island" at least five times, taking copious notes.
"If what I write is not true to 'Treasure Island,' it will be consciously different for a reason I will express," he says. "I've done my best to tie 'Flint & Silver' into 'Treasure Island,' but I have consciously made some differences."
Those diversions start with Long John Silver himself. In Stevenson's work, he is an ambiguous character who initially installs fear in the novel's protagonist, Jim Hawkins, before coming to the rescue of the boy. In "Flint & Silver," Drake casts him as a pure hero, the novel's moral compass.
"That has to do with my background," Drake says, referencing a British children's series featuring Dan Dare, a pilot of the future. "I'm 64, and I grew up in a time when heroes were heroes. ... Those people were true blue and honorable."
That's in direct opposition to the heroes of graphic novels, Drake says, the morally ambiguous character such as Batman or Spider-Man who tend to blur the line between good and evil.
Silver's status is not the only different tack Drake takes. While Stevenson's story was written for his 13-year-old nephew, "Flint & Silver" is decidedly adult in nature.
The author understands salty language and adult situations might rankle those who love 'Treasure Island."
"If it is a bit vulgar, maybe it's me," Drake says with a laugh. "Maybe I'm like that. But I wanted a rough, tough adult book, so I wrote it."
That saltiness and the use of profanity is actually more accurate than Stevenson's sanitized work, according to Drake.
"It wasn't just pirates, but seafarers' speech was incomprehensible and filthy," he says. "When seafarers of those times spoke, they used a language, a vocabulary and expressions that were totally alien to the world of land-locked humanity. You couldn't understand them anyway, and on top of that, they were in an exclusively male, exclusively rough, environment. For comparisons, think of U.S. Marines hitting the beach, or the blokes that work on oil rigs. I would strongly guess the speech of those men is not polite."
Drake did stay true to one convention that is a bit surprising: In "Flint & Silver" the pirates pay obeisance to the articles, a set of transcribed rules that are a nautical combination of the Bible and the Magna Carta. Drake says pirates were "considerably more democratic in politics either than Britain or the American colonies." They also had good reason to be. Pirates were former merchant seamen or culled from the royal navies of England, Spain, Portugal or France, and were used to "ferocious discipline."
"If you think about it, it's not surprising," Drake says. "Imagine a pirate ship with 100 men onboard. They're all armed; each of them would have a couple of pistols in his belt and a cutlass and musket as well. They're armed all the time, and one man, the captain, he cannot make 100 armed men do what he wants. So it has to be democratic. That's what was behind the articles, that and the indispensable necessity in any ship that ever put to sea that there should be discipline when the ship is underway and the weather turns nasty."
Drake has finished the second book in his trilogy, and is working on the third installment which will pique interest in Western Pennsylvania. Think pirates on the Allegheny, and not the ones who call PNC Park home. Silver and Flint take supplies to Col. George Washington and end up at the confluence of the Allegheny, Monongahela and Ohio rivers.
"In my innocence, I thought these rivers, the Allegheny and the Monongahela, are they going to be big enough for barges," Drake says. "And then I looked them up. You could put the Queen Mary on those rivers."
Rege Behe can be reached at rbehe@tribweb.com or 412-320-7990.
Ellie