BotM June: TREASURE ISLAND by ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > BotM June: TREASURE ISLAND by ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

Hieronymous Alloy: Jan 30, 2009; Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!; Morbid Hound

Welcome goonlings to the Awful Book of the Month!
In this thread, we choose one work of ~~literature~~ absolute crap and read/discuss it over a month. If you have any suggestions of books, choose something that will be appreciated by many people, and has many avenues of discussion. We'd also appreciate if it were a work of ~~literature~~ complete drivel that is easily located from a local library or book shop, as opposed to ordering something second hand off the internet and missing out on a week's worth of reading. Better yet, books available on e-readers.

Resources:

Project Gutenberg - http://www.gutenberg.org

- A database of over 17000 books available online. If you can suggest books from here, that'd be the best.

SparkNotes - http://www.sparknotes.com/

- A very helpful Cliffnotes-esque site, but much better, in my opinion. If you happen to come in late and need to catch-up, you can get great character/chapter/plot summaries here.

:siren:

For recommendations on future material, suggestions on how to improve the club, or just a general rant, feel free to PM the moderation team. :siren:

Past Books of the Month

[for BOTM before 2019, refer to archives]

2019:
January: Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky
February: BEAR by Marian Engel
March: V. by Thomas Pynchon
April: The Doorbell Rang by Rex Stout
May: Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
June: 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles C. Mann
July: The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach
August: Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay
September: Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay
October: Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado
November: The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett
December: Moby Dick by Herman Melville

2020:
January: The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
February: WE by Yevgeny Zamyatin
March: The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini by Benvenuto Cellini
April: The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio
May: Black Lamb and Grey Falcon by Dame Rebecca West
June: The African Queen by C. S. Forester
July: The End of Policing by Alex S. Vitale
August: The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, of Great Renown in Nottinghamshire, by Howard Pyle
September: Strange Hotel, by Eimear McBride
October:Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things (怪談)("Ghost Stories"), by Lafcadio Hearn
November: A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear: The Utopian Plot to Liberate an American Town (And Some Bears) , by Matthew Hongoltz Hetling
December: Ignition!: An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants by John Drury Clark

2021:

January: The Mark of Zorro by Johnston McCulley
February: How to Read Donald Duck by Ariel Dorfman and Armand Mattelart
March: Carrier Wave by Robert Brockway
April: The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brian
May: You Can't Win by Jack Black

Current:

Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson

Book available here:

https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/robert-louis-stevenson/treasure-island (free!)

If you can, find a copy of the edition illustrated by N.C. Wyeth (a student of Howard Pyle's!):

About the book

quote:

Treasure Island (originally The Sea Cook: A Story for Boys)[1] is an adventure novel (1881�1882) by Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson, narrating a tale of "buccaneers and buried gold." Its influence is enormous on popular perceptions of pirates, making popular such elements as treasure maps marked with an "X", schooners, the Black Spot, tropical islands, and one-legged seamen bearing parrots on their shoulders.[2]

As one of the most frequently dramatised of all novels, Treasure Island was originally considered a coming-of-age story and is noted for its atmosphere, characters, and action. It was originally serialised in the children's magazine Young Folks from 1881 through 1882 under the title Treasure Island or the mutiny of the Hispaniola, credited to the pseudonym "Captain George North". It was first published as a book on 14 November 1883, by Cassell & Co.

quote:

Stevenson conceived the idea of Treasure Island (originally titled: The Sea Cook: A Story for Boys)[1] from a map of an imaginary island drawn by Stevenson and his stepson Lloyd Osbourne on a rainy day in Braemar, Scotland. Stevenson had just returned from his first stay in North America, with memories of poverty, illness, and adventure (including his recent marriage), and a warm reconciliation between his parents had been established. Stevenson said of the idea of the story that, "it was to be a story for boys; no need of psychology or fine writing; and I had a boy at hand to be a touchstone. Women were excluded and then I had an idea for Long John Silver from which I promised myself funds of entertainment; to take an admired friend of mine, to deprive him of all his finer qualities and higher graces of temperament, and to leave him with nothing but his strength, his courage, his quickness, and his magnificent geniality, and to try to express these in terms of the culture of a raw tarpaulin".[citation needed]

Completing 15 chapters in as many days, Stevenson was interrupted by illness. After leaving Scotland, he continued working on the first draft outside London. While there, his father provided encouragement, as the two discussed points of the tale. Stevenson's father suggested elements that the author included in his account.

Two general types of sea novels were popular during the 19th century: the navy yarn, which places a capable officer in adventurous situations amid realistic settings and historical events; and the desert island romance, which features shipwrecked or marooned characters confronted by treasure-seeking pirates or angry natives. Around 1815, the latter genre became one of the most popular fictional styles in Great Britain, perhaps because of the philosophical interest in Rousseau and Chateaubriand's "noble savage". Treasure Island was a climax of this development. The growth of the desert island genre can be traced back to 1719 when Daniel Defoe's legendary Robinson Crusoe was published. A century later, novels such as S. H. Burney's The Shipwreck (1816), and Sir Walter Scott's The Pirate (1822) continued to expand upon the strong influence of Defoe's classic. However, other authors, in the mid 19th-century, continued this work, including James Fenimore Cooper's The Pilot (1823). During the same period, Edgar Allan Poe wrote, "MS Found in a Bottle" (1833) and the intriguing tale of buried treasure, "The Gold-Bug" (1843). All of these works influenced Stevenson's end product.

However, specifically, Stevenson consciously borrowed material from previous authors. In a July 1884 letter to Sidney Colvin, he writes "Treasure Island came out of Kingsley's At Last, where i got the Dead Man's Chest�and that was the seed�and out of the great Captain Johnson's History of the Notorious Pirates". Stevenson also admits that he took the idea of Captain Flint's pointing skeleton from Poe's The Gold-Bug and he constructed Billy Bones' history from the "Money-Diggers" section ("Golden Dreams" in particular [3] ) of Tales of a Traveller by Washington Irving, one of his favorite writers.[4]

About the Author

quote:

Robert Louis Stevenson (born Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson; 13 November 1850 � 3 December 1894) was a Scottish novelist, essayist, poet and travel writer. He is best known for works such as Treasure Island, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Kidnapped and A Child's Garden of Verses.

Born and educated in Edinburgh, Stevenson suffered from serious bronchial trouble for much of his life, but continued to write prolifically and travel widely in defiance of his poor health. As a young man, he mixed in London literary circles, receiving encouragement from Andrew Lang, Edmund Gosse, Leslie Stephen and W. E. Henley, the last of whom may have provided the model for Long John Silver in Treasure Island. In 1890, he settled in Samoa where, alarmed at increasing European and American influence in the South Sea islands, his writing turned away from romance and adventure toward a darker realism. He died in his island home in 1894.[1]

A celebrity in his lifetime, Stevenson's critical reputation has fluctuated since his death, though today his works are held in general acclaim. In 2018 he was ranked, just behind Charles Dickens, as the 26th-most-translated author in the world.[2]

quote:

Stevenson was a celebrity in his own time, being admired by many other writers, including Jorge Luis Borges, Bertolt Brecht, Marcel Proust, Arthur Conan Doyle, Henry James, Cesare Pavese, Emilio Salgari, Ernest Hemingway, Rudyard Kipling, Jack London, Vladimir Nabokov,[95] J. M. Barrie,[96] and G. K. Chesterton, who said that Stevenson "seemed to pick the right word up on the point of his pen, like a man playing spillikins."[97]

Stevenson was seen for much of the 20th century as a second-class writer. He became relegated to children's literature and horror genres,[98] condemned by literary figures such as Virginia Woolf (daughter of his early mentor Leslie Stephen) and her husband Leonard Woolf, and he was gradually excluded from the canon of literature taught in schools.[98] His exclusion reached its nadir in the 1973 2,000-page Oxford Anthology of English Literature where he was entirely unmentioned, and The Norton Anthology of English Literature excluded him from 1968 to 2000 (1st�7th editions), including him only in the 8th edition (2006).[98]

The late 20th century brought a re-evaluation of Stevenson as an artist of great range and insight, a literary theorist, an essayist and social critic, a witness to the colonial history of the Pacific Islands and a humanist.[98] He was praised by Roger Lancelyn Green, one of the Oxford Inklings, as a writer of a consistently high level of "literary skill or sheer imaginative power" and a pioneer of the Age of the Story Tellers along with H. Rider Haggard.[99] He is now evaluated as a peer of authors such as Joseph Conrad (whom Stevenson influenced with his South Seas fiction) and Henry James, with new scholarly studies and organisations devoted to him.[98] Throughout the vicissitudes of his scholarly reception, Stevenson has remained popular worldwide. According to the Index Translationum, Stevenson is ranked the 26th-most-translated author in the world, ahead of Oscar Wilde and Edgar Allan Poe.[100]

On the subject of Stevenson's modern reputation, American film critic Roger Ebert wrote in 1996,

I was talking to a friend the other day who said he'd never met a child who liked reading Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island.

Neither have I, I said. And he'd never met a child who liked reading Stevenson's Kidnapped. Me neither, I said. My early exposure to both books was via the Classics Illustrated comic books. But I did read the books later, when I was no longer a kid, and I enjoyed them enormously. Same goes for Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

The fact is, Stevenson is a splendid writer of stories for adults, and he should be put on the same shelf with Joseph Conrad and Jack London instead of in between Winnie the Pooh and Peter Pan.[101]

Pacing

:justpost:

Read as thou wilt is the whole of the law.

Please post after you read!

Please bookmark the thread to encourage discussion.

References and Further Materials

quote:

Historian Luis Junco suggests that Treasure Island is in fact a marriage of the story of the murder of Captain George Glas on board the Earl of Sandwich in 1765 and the taking of the ship Walrus off the island of La Graciosa near Tenerife. The pirates of La Graciosa buried their treasure there before they were all killed during a bloody battle with the British navy. The treasure was never recovered.

In his book Pirates of the Carraigin, David Kelly deals with the piracy and murder of Captain Glas and others on board a ship travelling from Tenerife to London by the Ship's Cook and his gang. The perpetrators of this crime also buried the considerable treasure they had stolen but most of it was later recovered. They were all executed in Dublin in 1766. In his research, Kelly proved that Stevenson was a neighbour of the named victim in Edinburgh, and so was intimately aware of what was a scandal at the time, from an early age.

Stevenson and his family were even members of the church congregation set up by the victim's father. Although he never visited Ireland, Stevenson based at least two other books, Kidnapped and Catriona on real crimes that were perpetrated in Dublin. These were all reported in detail in The Gentleman's Magazine, published in Dublin and Edinburgh.[7]

Other allusions to real piracy include:

Five real-life pirates mentioned are William Kidd (active 1696�99), Blackbeard (1716�18), Edward England (1717�20), Howell Davis (1718�19), and Bartholomew Roberts (1718�22). Kidd buried treasure on Gardiners Island, though the booty was recovered by authorities soon afterwards.[8]

The name "Israel Hands" was taken from that of a real pirate in Blackbeard's crew, whom Blackbeard maimed (by shooting him in the knee) simply to ensure that his crew remained in terror of him. Allegedly, Hands was taken ashore to be treated for his injury and was not at Blackbeard's last fight (the incident is depicted in Tim Powers' novel On Stranger Tides), and this alone saved him from the gallows. Supposedly, he later became a beggar in England.

Silver refers to "three hundred and fifty thousand" pieces of eight at the "fishing up of the wrecked plate ships". This remark conflates two related events: first, the salvage of treasure from the 1715 Treasure Fleet which was wrecked off the coast of Florida in a hurricane; second, the seizure of 350,000 salvaged pieces of eight the following year (out of several million) by privateer Henry Jennings. This event is mentioned in the introduction to Johnson's General History of the Pyrates.

Silver refers to a ship's surgeon from Roberts' crew who amputated his leg and was later hanged at Cape Coast Castle, a British fortification on the Gold Coast of Africa. The records of the trial of Roberts' men list Peter Scudamore as the chief surgeon of Roberts' ship Royal Fortune. Scudamore was found guilty of willingly serving with Roberts' pirates and various related criminal acts, as well as attempting to lead a rebellion to escape once he had been apprehended. He was, as Silver relates, hanged, in 1722.

Stevenson refers to the Viceroy of the Indies, a ship sailing from Goa, India (then a Portuguese colony), which was taken by Edward England off Malabar while John Silver was serving aboard England's ship the Cassandra. No such exploit of England's is known, nor any ship by the name of the Viceroy of the Indies. However, in April 1721, the captain of the Cassandra, John Taylor (originally England's second in command who had marooned him for being insufficiently ruthless), together with his pirate partner, Olivier Levasseur, captured the vessel Nostra Senhora do Cabo near R�union island in the Indian Ocean. The Portuguese galleon was returning from Goa to Lisbon with the Conde da Ericeira, the recently retired Viceroy of Portuguese India, aboard. The viceroy had much of his treasure with him, making this capture one of the richest pirate hauls ever. This is possibly the event that Stevenson referred to, though his (or Silver's) memory of the event seems to be slightly confused. The Cassandra was last heard of in 1723 at Portobelo, Panama, a place that also briefly figures in Treasure Island as "Portobello".

The preceding two references are inconsistent, as the Cassandra (and presumably Silver) was in the Indian Ocean during the time that Scudamore was surgeon on board the Royal Fortune, in the Gulf of Guinea.

Under the Black Flag: The Romance and the Reality of Life Among the Pirates by David Cordingly:

https://www.amazon.com/Under-Black-Flag-Romance-Reality/dp/081297722X

Howard Pyle's Book of Pyrates:

https://www.amazon.com/Howard-Pyles-Book-Pirates-Pyle/dp/1530670993

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_General_History_of_the_Pyrates

Suggestions for Future Months

These threads aren't just for discussing the current BOTM; If you have a suggestion for next month's book, please feel free to post it in the thread below also. Generally what we're looking for in a BotM are works that have

1) accessibility -- either easy to read or easy to download a free copy of, ideally both

2) novelty -- something a significant fraction of the forum hasn't already read

3) discussability -- intellectual merit, controversiality, insight -- a book people will be able to talk about.

Final Note:

Thanks, and we hope everyone enjoys the book!

Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 03:51 on Jun 6, 2021

# ? Jun 6, 2021 00:28

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# ? Apr 28, 2024 20:18

Hieronymous Alloy: Jan 30, 2009; Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!; Morbid Hound

This was, essentially, the first big pirate story. Without this, there's no Pirates of the Caribbean; walking the plank, peglegs, parrots, buried treasure -- it's all right here.

# ? Jun 6, 2021 00:30

Hieronymous Alloy: Jan 30, 2009; Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!; Morbid Hound

The official rum of this thread is Captain (Henry) Morgan

quote:

In 1671 Morgan attacked Panama City, landing on the Caribbean coast and traversing the isthmus before he attacked the city, which was on the Pacific coast. The battle was a rout, although the privateers profited less than in other raids. To appease the Spanish, with whom the English had signed a peace treaty, Morgan was arrested and summoned to London in 1672, but was treated as a hero by the general populace and the leading figures of government and royalty including Charles II.

# ? Jun 6, 2021 00:31

Hieronymous Alloy: Jan 30, 2009; Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!; Morbid Hound

*reserved*

# ? Jun 6, 2021 03:50

Cobalt-60: Oct 11, 2016; by Azathoth

"The Sea Cook: A Story for Boys"? Definitely improved the title, there.

I remember reading a graphic novel version of this back in elementary school. The "black spot" scene scared me.

# ? Jun 6, 2021 04:51

ovenboy: Nov 16, 2014

Nice pick! I remember reading this as a kid, but it was translated and perhaps abridged or simplified. It'll be fun to se what I make of it now. Later, my first real foray into English media came with The Secret of Monkey Island, and later Patrick O'Brian's sea-faring books became some of my all time favourites. Looking forward to this!

# ? Jun 6, 2021 08:35

Hieronymous Alloy: Jan 30, 2009; Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!; Morbid Hound

Cobalt-60 posted:

"The Sea Cook: A Story for Boys"? Definitely improved the title, there.

I remember reading a graphic novel version of this back in elementary school. The "black spot" scene scared me.

Yeah, this is a very illustratable story -- there's are several reasons it's been adapted so many times in so many different ways, and one of those reasons is it's a really visual, graphic tale with a lot of images that just leap off the page.

Speaking of, here are some more of Wyeth's illustrations, scenes from early in the book:

A gallery of some of them here:

https://www.nocloo.com/n-c-wyeth-treasure-island-1911/

If anyone has an edition that has all 17 Wyeth plate illustrations *in color*, please post and tell me -- my hardback is the Rhead illustrations, which are fine, and online searches are hopelessly muddled because there are so many different reprint editions, most of which reproduce only a small number of Wyeth's plates, not all 17.

Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 14:38 on Jun 6, 2021

# ? Jun 6, 2021 12:06

Xander77: Apr 6, 2009; Fuck it then. For another pit sandwich and some 'tater salad, I'll post a few more.

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

This was, essentially, the first big pirate story. Without this, there's no Pirates of the Caribbean; walking the plank, peglegs, parrots, buried treasure -- it's all right here.

The book was published at the end of the 19th century, when most of these things were well codified. Without (the 40's movie adaptation of) Treasure Island, we wouldn't have the idea that there's a standard way for pirates to talk, so that's something.

...

Anyways, there's exactly one adaptation that I am obliged to recommend to one and all:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKRG7PF73UA

# ? Jun 6, 2021 18:14

Meaty Ore: Dec 17, 2011; My God, it's full of cat pictures!

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

Yeah, this is a very illustratable story -- there's are several reasons it's been adapted so many times in so many different ways, and one of those reasons is it's a really visual, graphic tale with a lot of images that just leap off the page.

Speaking of, here are some more of Wyeth's illustrations, scenes from early in the book:

A gallery of some of them here:

https://www.nocloo.com/n-c-wyeth-treasure-island-1911/

If anyone has an edition that has all 17 Wyeth plate illustrations *in color*, please post and tell me -- my hardback is the Rhead illustrations, which are fine, and online searches are hopelessly muddled because there are so many different reprint editions, most of which reproduce only a small number of Wyeth's plates, not all 17.

As a matter of fact, I have such an edition. The link you posted above plus the ones in the OP cover most of them, but here's the whole lot for the sake of having them all in one place. Forgive the low quality; I tried my best, but these are cell phone pics of glossy paper and three's a lot of glare and/or silhouettes in some of them. Having to hold down/back the pages wasn't helping things, nor was the contrast in several pictures.

Front cover/dust jacket:

inside front cover (inside back cover is the same):

Frontispiece:

Map of the island:

"Captain Bill Bones":

"Captain Bones Routs Black Dog":

"Old Pew":

"Jim Hawkins Leaves Home":

"Long John Silver and Hawkins":

"Preparing for the Mutiny":

"Ben Gunn":

"Captain Smollett Defies the Mutineers":

"The Attack on the Block House":

"The Fight in the Cabin":

"Israel Hands":

spoiler: He blows Mr. Hands' brains out.

"The Black Spot":

"The Hostage":

"The Treasure Cave!":

Meaty Ore fucked around with this message at 19:32 on Jun 7, 2021

# ? Jun 7, 2021 19:29

Hieronymous Alloy: Jan 30, 2009; Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!; Morbid Hound

Xander77 posted:

The book was published at the end of the 19th century, when most of these things were well codified. Without (the 40's movie adaptation of) Treasure Island, we wouldn't have the idea that there's a standard way for pirates to talk, so that's something.

...

Anyways, there's exactly one adaptation that I am obliged to recommend to one and all:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKRG7PF73UA

Yeah, but I feel they weren't all standardized into a unified whole. There were certainly other pirate tales floating about -- Howard Pyle was publishing pirate stories off of some of the same root material at around the same time; A General History of the Pyrates was published a hundred and fifty years previously.

But my impression has always been that this was still a watershed, landmark book that set and crystallized the genre. There were superhero movies before 2008, but Iron Man crystallized the genre in a new way. Before Treasure Island, pirate stories are all over the place, and conventions are forming, and tropes, and the like, but most of what's out there is based on period accounts and/or part of other genre traditions (chapbook crime, castaway fiction, penny dreadfuls, etc.)

After Treasure Island, pirate tales are their own genre. I don't think we have Captain Hook without Treasure Island.

# ? Jun 8, 2021 18:51

Hieronymous Alloy: Jan 30, 2009; Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!; Morbid Hound

Meaty Ore posted:

As a matter of fact, I have such an edition. The link you posted above plus the ones in the OP cover most of them, but here's the whole lot for the sake of having them all in one place. Forgive the low quality; I tried my best, but these are cell phone pics of glossy paper and three's a lot of glare and/or silhouettes in some of them. Having to hold down/back the pages wasn't helping things, nor was the contrast in several pictures.

Thank you for posting these! Could you post the copyright page? I want to get one!

It may be my Pro-Pyle bias but I feel like you can really see Pyle's influence on Wyeth's artistic style. Some of them are just character portraits but others have that sense of illustrating a moment, not just a person.

# ? Jun 8, 2021 18:56

Meaty Ore: Dec 17, 2011; My God, it's full of cat pictures!

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

Thank you for posting these! Could you post the copyright page? I want to get one!

It may be my Pro-Pyle bias but I feel like you can really see Pyle's influence on Wyeth's artistic style. Some of them are just character portraits but others have that sense of illustrating a moment, not just a person.

Not a problem. Here you go:

Looks like abebooks has a fair number of copies at the moment, and quite cheap as well for the most part. I can vouch for the quality of the volume as well. Very thick, high-quality paper.

My brother and I received each received one of these Scribner volumes with N.C. Wyeth illustrations as Christmas gifts back in 1987 or 88 iirc. Treasure Island was my brother's, and I got Paul Creswick's Robin Hood--which is okay, but it's no Pyle. Fewer illustrations than Treasure Island as well, but just as good. My brother opted not to take his with him when he moved out, so I ended up with it.

edit: oh poo poo looks like I'm in violation of copyright law! In the end we were the pirates all along.

Meaty Ore fucked around with this message at 22:37 on Jun 8, 2021

# ? Jun 8, 2021 22:32

Jack B Nimble: Dec 25, 2007; Soiled Meat

Rereading this, one thing that strikes me compared to a more modern story is that several relatively minor characters, "regular people" take part in heroics (like the block house) that would be the work of someone more, well, heroic in modern media.

# ? Jun 9, 2021 15:07

Xander77: Apr 6, 2009; Fuck it then. For another pit sandwich and some 'tater salad, I'll post a few more.

Jack B Nimble posted:

Rereading this, one thing that strikes me compared to a more modern story is that several relatively minor characters, "regular people" take part in heroics (like the block house) that would be the work of someone more, well, heroic in modern media.

That, and the very notion of the heroes having servants rather than "companions" is out of date. And economy of characters, of course.

# ? Jun 10, 2021 06:01

The North Tower: Aug 20, 2007; You should throw it in the ocean.

Oh weird I just finished Under the Black Flag this week. I enjoyed it a lot and it moves pretty quickly.

Haven�t read Treasure Island before so I�ll start tonight.

# ? Jun 11, 2021 03:47

Hieronymous Alloy: Jan 30, 2009; Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!; Morbid Hound

I'm weirdly tempted to annotate this.

a few notes starting out:

Writing this in the late 1800's and setting it in the 1700's, this is roughly equivalent to, what, someone writing a novel set during the Civil War today?

The Inland Revenue didn't exist until 1849, so it's a bit of an anachronism for it to show up at the beginning, but there was a predecessor, the "board of excise," that existed from the 1600's, so it isn't as big an anachronism to have them show up as it might appear.

When it mentions Doctor Livesey breaking off the stem of his pipe, that's a clay pipe, they did that: https://www.smokingpipes.com/smokingpipesblog/single.cfm/post/the-history-manufacture-and-use-clay-pipes

quote:

How that personage haunted my dreams, I need scarcely tell you. On stormy nights, when the wind shook the four corners of the house and the surf roared along the cove and up the cliffs, I would see him in a thousand forms, and with a thousand diabolical expressions. Now the leg would be cut off at the knee, now at the hip; now he was a monstrous kind of a creature who had never had but the one leg, and that in the middle of his body. To see him leap and run and pursue me over hedge and ditch was the worst of nightmares. And altogether I paid pretty dear for my monthly fourpenny piece, in the shape of these abominable fancies.

quote:

Monopods (also sciapods, skiapods, skiapodes) are mythological dwarf-like creatures with a single, large foot extending from a leg centered in the middle of their bodies. The names monopod and skiapod (σκιάποδες) are both Greek, respectively meaning "one-foot" and "shadow-foot".

Monopods appear in Aristophanes' play The Birds, first performed in 414 BC.[1] They are described by Pliny the Elder in his Natural History, where he reports travelers' stories from encounters or sightings of Monopods in India. Pliny remarks that they are first mentioned by Ctesias in his book Indika (India), a record of the view of Persians of India which only remains in fragments.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopod_(creature)

Another interesting thing is that I hadn't thought of this as a horror novel before but there have already been a few scenes that were genuinely somewhat scary and Stevenson is already doing a great job of building tension. I used to think it was odd that this book was by the same author who wrote Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde but, no, I see it now.

Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 13:26 on Jun 16, 2021

# ? Jun 16, 2021 12:21

Hieronymous Alloy: Jan 30, 2009; Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!; Morbid Hound

The name of the inn, the "Admiral Benbow", is foreshadowing:

quote:

Benbow fought against France during the Nine Years War (1688–97), serving on and later commanding several English vessels and taking part in the battles of Beachy Head, Barfleur and La Hogue in 1690 and 1692. He went on to achieve fame during campaigns against Salé and Moor pirates; laying siege to Saint-Malo; and fighting in the West Indies against France during the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714).
Benbow's fame and success earned him both public notoriety and a promotion to admiral. He was then involved in an incident during the action of August 1702, where a number of his captains refused to support him while commanding a squadron of ships.[3][4] Benbow instigated the trial and later imprisonment or execution of a number of the captains involved, though he did not live to see these results. These events contributed to his notoriety, and led to several references to him in subsequent popular

# ? Jun 16, 2021 18:26

Cobalt-60: Oct 11, 2016; by Azathoth

Halfway through, and my thoughts so far:

This is lot less heroic swashbuckling than I remember, and more of a "boy's own" story. (Which, to be honest, it started out as.)
Likewise, Jim is less of a hero, and more of an idiot...well, a boy. Doing his own thing, blundering into and out of trouble, with nothing but plot armor for protection. (None of the "boy's own" stories ever had death or serious injury actually happen to their stout young heroes, that I know of)
He leans on coincidence too much.

Less fighting than I remember, also less people. Somehow I missed that the entire ship's company was only 2 dozen people.

# ? Jun 18, 2021 16:53

Hieronymous Alloy: Jan 30, 2009; Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!; Morbid Hound

Cobalt-60 posted:

This is lot less heroic swashbuckling than I remember, and more of a "boy's own" story. (Which, to be honest, it started out as.)

I appreciated how Captain Smollet called that poo poo out, "no favorites on my ship!" and "too much of a born favorite!"

I finished it the other night, it was a lot shorter than I remembered it being. The ending was oddly anti-climactic.

A lot of the nautical stuff I'd glossed over in prior readings but it made much more sense now that I've read Aubrey/Maturin multiple times.

I could have sworn there was a walking the plank scene in there somewhere but I was just wrong about that! There wasn't!

# ? Jun 18, 2021 17:12

Xander77: Apr 6, 2009; Fuck it then. For another pit sandwich and some 'tater salad, I'll post a few more.

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

A lot of the nautical stuff I'd glossed over in prior readings but it made much more sense now that I've read Aubrey/Maturin multiple times.

Apparently Stevenson knew how to sail a small ship, but wrote the Espanoila as a large ship without actually changing the way it operates? I.E, a single person couldn't actually sail a ship that size etc?

# ? Jun 18, 2021 23:21

Hieronymous Alloy: Jan 30, 2009; Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!; Morbid Hound

Xander77 posted:

Apparently Stevenson knew how to sail a small ship, but wrote the Espanoila as a large ship without actually changing the way it operates? I.E, a single person couldn't actually sail a ship that size etc?

That makes sense, I was wondering about that at a few points, but I've never sailed anything other than small craft either.

# ? Jun 18, 2021 23:34

Cobalt-60: Oct 11, 2016; by Azathoth

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

I appreciated how Captain Smollet called that poo poo out, "no favorites on my ship!" and "too much of a born favorite!"

I finished it the other night, it was a lot shorter than I remembered it being. The ending was oddly anti-climactic.

A lot of the nautical stuff I'd glossed over in prior readings but it made much more sense now that I've read Aubrey/Maturin multiple times.

I could have sworn there was a walking the plank scene in there somewhere but I was just wrong about that! There wasn't!

One reference:

quote:

How many it had cost in the amassing, what blood and sorrow, what good ships scuttled on the deep, what brave men walking the plank blindfold, what shot of cannon, what shame and lies and cruelty, perhaps no man alive could tell.

How many walked the plank is a good question; like keel-hauling, it's something that existed, but is much exaggerated in pop culture.

I wonder if the copy I read back in middle school was abridged, cause I wound up looking up a LOT more things. Or maybe that's just the convenience of having Wikipedia up in another tab. And my tendency to go down wikiholes looking for things. What did Flint likely die of? Cirrhosis, as indicated by his symptoms of altered mental state (hepatic encephalopathy) and blue skin (cyanosis due to hepatopulmonary syndrome), and, oh yeah, everyone saying he "died of the rum." Which didn't take much doing; alcohol drinking is one of the things about pirates (and everyone) that didn't get exaggerated in pop culture.

Xander77 posted:

Apparently Stevenson knew how to sail a small ship, but wrote the Espanoila as a large ship without actually changing the way it operates? I.E, a single person couldn't actually sail a ship that size etc?

A two-mast schooner like the Hispaniola can be sailed by 5 people, according to one site I found. The crew get the ship to South America with 7 people (5 able-bodied), at some difficulty. It can be BADLY sailed (and was) by two, I'd imagine.

# ? Jun 19, 2021 03:20

Hieronymous Alloy: Jan 30, 2009; Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!; Morbid Hound

There's a long discussion of Treasure Island near the front of David Cordingly's Under the Black Flag:

quote:

There were five of them staying there: Stevenson�s parents, his American wife, Fanny, and her twelve-year-old son, Lloyd Osbourne, who was Stevenson�s stepson. To pass the time, Lloyd painted pictures with a shilling box of watercolors. One afternoon Stevenson joined him and drew a map of an island. He was soon adding names to the various hills and inlets. Lloyd later wrote, �I shall never forget the thrill of Skeleton Island, Spyglass Hill, nor the heart-stirring climax of the three red crosses! And the greater climax still when he wrote down the words �Treasure Island� at the top right-hand corner! And he seemed to know so much about it too�the pirates, the buried treasure, the man who had been marooned on the island.�2 In an essay which he wrote in the last year of his life, Stevenson revealed how the future character of the book began to appear to him as he studied the map. It was to be all about buccaneers, and a mutiny, and a fine old Squire called Trelawney, and a sea cook with one leg, and a sea song with the chorus �Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum.�

Within three days he had written three chapters, and as he wrote each chapter he read it out to the family, who, apart from Fanny, were delighted with the results and added their own suggestions. Lloyd insisted that there should be no women in the story. Stevenson�s father devised the contents of Billy Bones� sea chest, and suggested the scene where Jim Hawkins hides in the apple barrel. During the course of the next two weeks Stevenson had a visit from Dr. Alexander Japp, who was equally enthusiastic and took the early chapters along to the editor of Young Folks magazine. He agreed to publish the story in weekly installments, but after fifteen chapters Stevenson abruptly ran out of inspiration and could write no more.

quote:

What is so striking about Treasure Island in terms of piracy is that the characters and the maritime details are totally convincing. Unlike Captain Marryat, who must have met a few pirates but could only produce stage characters in his book, Stevenson had never come across any pirates in his life, and yet he was able to create a cast of vicious and murderous men and to conjure up an authentic atmosphere of double-dealing and casual violence. The murder of Tom Morgan by Long John Silver is carried out with a practiced ease which leaves Jim Hawkins fainting with horror. Jim�s confrontation with the evil Israel Hands is the stuff of nightmares. Equally effective are the descriptions of the Hispaniola at sea, rolling steadily before the trade winds and �dipping her bowsprit now and then with a whiff of spray.� In 1890 W. B. Yeats told Stevenson that Treasure Island was the only book in which his seafaring grandfather had ever taken any pleasure, and it is easy to see why. Not only does Stevenson use seaman�s language with conviction, but he also understands the finer points of sailing and ship handling. This can be explained by his upbringing. His father and his grandfather were both distinguished lighthouse engineers and frequently voyaged around the Scottish coasts and islands on tours of inspection. It was originally intended that Stevenson should follow in their footsteps, and he did spend three years training as an engineer, sometimes passing the summer vacations cruising in the yachts of the Lighthouse Commission. In June 1869 he accompanied his father in the yacht Pharos on a visit to the Orkney Islands, and in 1870 inspected lighthouses on the Pentland Firth and in the Hebrides. Although he abandoned plans for a career in the lighthouse service, he continued to travel extensively, frequently by sea. In the summer of 1874 he voyaged around the Inner Hebrides in the yacht Heron with two friends, and in 1876 he traveled by canoe through the rivers and canals of northern France (later to be written up in An Inland Voyage). Two years before writing Treasure Island he made a return voyage across the Atlantic, though not in vessels in any way resembling the schooner Hispaniola: the outward journey from the Clyde was in the passenger ship Devonia and the return voyage was in the Royal Mail liner City of Chester. Several years later, when he had become an established writer, he voyaged extensively among the Pacific islands.

For those interested in doing further reading, I highly recommend Under the Black Flag -- I thought about making it the BOTM instead, but figured I'd start with the easier read. It's basically the definitive historical work on the fact of piracy vs the fiction; he combed through hundreds of years of period records to figure out what was true in our popular perception and what wasn't.

To summarize as relevant here --

1) Pirates keeping pet parrots, totally real and absolutely a thing. They were a relatively easy pet to keep on shipboard and had a high resale value in England so lots of mariners would keep pet parrots.

quote:

It was common for seamen who traveled in the tropics to bring back birds and animals as souvenirs of their travels. Parrots were particularly popular because they were colorful, they could be taught to speak, and they were easier to look after on board ship than monkeys and other wild animals. They also commanded a good price in the bird markets which were such a feature of eighteenth-century London. In September 1717 Michael Bland put an advertisement in The Post-Man which announced that �Parrotkeets with red heads from Guiney, and 2 fine talking Parrokeets from Buenos Ayres, and several young talking Parrots� were being sold at The Leopard and Tyger at Tower Dock near Tower Hill. In the next issue of The Post-Man, David Randall went one better: he announced the sale at the Porter�s Lodge, Charing Cross, of �Parrokeets which talk English, Dutch, French, and Spanish, Whistle at command, small Parrokeets with red heads, very tame and pretty.�14

2) wooden legs -- fairly common among period mariners.

3) Long John Silver being the cook -- it was typical in the Royal Navy to give sailors who had lost a limb a cook's commission as a form of "disability," since it was a job you could still do without needing to move about the ship much.

quote:

"Stevenson knew what he was doing when he cast Long John Silver as a cook. It was standard practice in the Royal Navy to select the cook from among disabled seamen. In his irreverent account of shipboard life in the early eighteenth century, Ned Ward described the cook as �an able fellow in the last war, and had been so in this too, but for a scurvy bullet at L�Hogue, that shot away one of his limbs, and so cut him out for a sea-cook.�13 Thomas Rowlandson, the celebrated caricaturist and painter of Georgian England, was responsible for a charming series of watercolors illustrating the various ranks and trades in the navy. His picture of the sea cook shows him balanced on a wooden leg as he stirs a steaming cauldron with a long spoon."

4) pirate dress and clothing is, oddly, fairly accurate in popular fiction and art, partly because there are lots of period accounts of pirates dressing kinda extravagantly.

quote:

"Above all they were distinguished by their clothes. In the early years of the eighteenth century most landsmen wore long coats and long waistcoats over knee breeches and stockings. Seamen on the other hand wore short blue jackets, over a checked shirt, and either long canvas trousers or baggy �petticoat breeches,� which somewhat resembled culottes. In addition, they frequently wore red waistcoats, and tied a scarf or handkerchief loosely around the neck.20

Most pirates wore variations of this traditional costume, which was hard-wearing and practical, though some wore more exotic clothes stolen from captured ships, or made from the silks and velvets which they plundered. Kit Oloard dressed �in black velvet trousers and jacket, crimson silk socks, black felt hat, brown beard and shirt collar embroidered in black silk.�21 John Stow noted that two pirates facing execution in 1615 gave away their fancy clothes, including breeches of crimson taffeta, velvet doublets with gold buttons, and velvet shirts with gold lace. Pirate captains seem to have adopted the clothes of naval officers or merchant sea captains, which at this period followed the style of English gentlemen. When he fought his last sea battle in 1722, the pirate captain Bartholomew Roberts was, according to Captain Johnson, �dressed in a rich crimson damask waistcoat and breeches, a red feather in his hat, a gold chain round his neck, with a diamond cross hanging to it.�22"

# ? Jun 19, 2021 11:29

Xander77: Apr 6, 2009; Fuck it then. For another pit sandwich and some 'tater salad, I'll post a few more.

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

3) Long John Silver being the cook -- it was typical in the Royal Navy to give sailors who had lost a limb a cook's commission as a form of "disability," since it was a job you could still do without needing to move about the ship much.

Ah. Sure, but Silver was a quartermaster during his actual pirate days, wasn't he?

# ? Jun 19, 2021 14:45

Hieronymous Alloy: Jan 30, 2009; Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!; Morbid Hound

As I read further in Under the Black Flag, there are more interesting accuracies in Treasure Island and in other pirate fiction than I was expecting.

The Black Spot? The idea of a "Pirate's Code" ? A bit dramatized, but the basic idea was fairly accurate historically:

quote:

The most significant difference between pirate and other ships was the manner in which the pirate company was organized, and the code by which the pirates operated. Unlike the Royal Navy, the merchant navy, or indeed any other institutions in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the pirate communities were, as already noted, democracies. A hundred years before the French Revolution, the pirate companies were run on lines in which liberty, equality, and brotherhood were the rule rather than the exception. In a pirate ship, the captain was elected by the votes of the majority of the crew and he could be deposed if the crew were not happy with his performance. The crew, and not the captain, decided the destination of each voyage and whether to attack a particular ship or to raid a coastal village. At the start of a voyage, or on the election of a new captain, a set of written articles was drawn up which every member of the ship�s company was expected to sign. These articles regulated the distribution of plunder, the scale of compensation for injuries received in battle, and set out the basic rules for shipboard life and the punishments for those who broke the rules. The articles differed from ship to ship, but they all followed similar lines.

quote:

One of the earliest descriptions of the pirates� code of conduct appears in Exquemelin�s Buccaneers of America, which was first published in 1678. Exquemelin tells how the pirates called a council on board ship before embarking on a voyage of plunder. At this preliminary gathering it was decided where to get hold of provisions for the voyage. When this was agreed, the pirates went out and raided some Spanish settlement and returned to the ship with a supply of pigs augmented by turtles and other supplies. A daily food allowance was then worked out for the voyage; Exquemelin notes that the allowance for the captain was no more than that for the humblest mariner.

A second council was then held to draw up the code of conduct for the forthcoming voyage. These articles, which everyone was bound to observe, were put in writing.

quote:

The application of this code of conduct can be observed in the journal of Basil Ringrose. In July 1681 they captured the Spanish ship San Pedro off the coast of Chile. She was laden with wine, gunpowder, and 37,000 pieces of eight in chests and bags. �We shared our plunder among ourselves,� Ringrose noted in his journal. �Our dividend amounted to the sum of 234 pieces-of-eight to each man.�33

For most of the voyage the buccaneers were led by Captain Bartholomew Sharp, �a man of undaunted courage and of an excellent conduct.� He was a natural leader, and was skillful at the practical and theoretical aspects of navigation, but in January 1681, following weeks of storms and hardships, the men become mutinous. By a majority decision they deposed Captain Sharp and elected John Watling, a tough seaman and a former privateer. Sharp was compelled to relinquish his command, and the crew signed a new set of articles with Watling. Three weeks later Watling was killed during an attack on a coastal fort, and Sharp was persuaded to resume his command of the expedition.

Xander77 posted:

Ah. Sure, but Silver was a quartermaster during his actual pirate days, wasn't he?

And that's interesting too!

quote:

The captain�s authority was further limited by the powers which were given to the quartermaster. He too was elected by the crew, and is described as being �a sort of civil magistrate on board a pirate ship.�35 He was the crew�s representative and �trustee for the whole.� His job was to settle minor disputes, and he had the authority to punish with whipping or drubbing. He was expected to lead the attack when boarding a ship, and he usually took command of captured prizes.

So Silver's position as quartermaster rather than first mate is perfectly explained. He's the one dude who wasn't afraid of Flint.

# ? Jun 20, 2021 15:17

The North Tower: Aug 20, 2007; You should throw it in the ocean.

I�ve always heard of the difference being the Captain is like the CEO and the quartermaster is the COO.

Listening to this via the Librivox recording and the guy�s pretty decent. Just got to the part where the voyage starts and this guy who blabbed everything sure seems like a real dumbass. I�m sure everything will work out okay.

# ? Jun 21, 2021 07:59

Cobalt-60: Oct 11, 2016; by Azathoth

Final thoughts
Good read, but nothing particularly good. Maybe it seems bland because it originated modern pirate stories. No scenes stand out, and as for characters...nothing particular interesting except the "title" character, Long John Silver. Who I consider one of the better literary villains. Smart, charismatic, always with a plan; the only reason he failed is because his "crew" were idiots and because Jim Hawkins was the protagonist. I want to read more of his adventures. And his wife's; I like to think she was as clever as him. How they came together, and how they made their way through 18th century England, a cripple and a negro, outwitting anyone who underestimated them.

Also, I didn't know that "Dead Man's Chest" was invented by Stevenson; all the lyrics and tune got added later, as well as fabricated lore, attempts to tie it to various actual pirates or places, and explanations of how you'd fit 15 men on a sea chest...or coffin.

Edit: Also, I'm looking for a way to work "holus-bolus" into a conversation.

Cobalt-60 fucked around with this message at 03:10 on Jun 22, 2021

# ? Jun 22, 2021 02:15

Hieronymous Alloy: Jan 30, 2009; Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!; Morbid Hound

Need suggestions for next month!

# ? Jun 23, 2021 01:44

Fritz the Horse: Dec 26, 2019; ... of course!

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

Need suggestions for next month!

how bout The Log from the Sea of Cortez by John Steinbeck?

quote:

The Log from the Sea of Cortez is an English-language book written by American author John Steinbeck and published in 1951. It details a six-week (March 11 � April 20) marine specimen-collecting boat expedition he made in 1940 at various sites in the Gulf of California (also known as the Sea of Cortez), with his friend, the marine biologist Ed Ricketts. It is regarded as one of Steinbeck's most important works of non-fiction chiefly because of the involvement of Ricketts, who shaped Steinbeck's thinking and provided the prototype for many of the pivotal characters in his fiction, and the insights it gives into the philosophies of the two men.

The Log from the Sea of Cortez is the narrative portion of an unsuccessful earlier work, Sea of Cortez: A Leisurely Journal of Travel and Research, which was published by Steinbeck and Ricketts shortly after their return from the Gulf of California, and combined the journals of the collecting expedition, reworked by Steinbeck, with Ricketts' species catalogue. After Ricketts' death in 1948, Steinbeck dropped the species catalogue from the earlier work and republished it with a eulogy to his friend added as a foreword.

It's one of my favorites that I haven't read in a decade or more. The marine ecology is really great, Ricketts is a philosopher and this is set during WW2 so there is a fair bit of philosophy and politics. It's nonfiction and essentially a journal so it's very readable in small chunks.

I don't see it available free anywhere, but it's $1.50 for an e-book on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Log-Sea-Cortez-Penguin-Classics/dp/0140187448

# ? Jun 23, 2021 06:30

Hieronymous Alloy: Jan 30, 2009; Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!; Morbid Hound

https://twitter.com/alloy_dr/status/1409155797486030850?s=20

# ? Jun 27, 2021 15:26

Meaty Ore: Dec 17, 2011; My God, it's full of cat pictures!

I just got finished with the book myself. It reads quick, though I tended to get bogged down after Jim sneaks out of the stockade--I had other more pressing things to do, plus Jim isn't that interesting on his own.

Silver is definitely the stand out character in the story, and I think it's interesting that while he seems to epitomize the stereotypical adventure story pirate, he also defies the stereotypes to a degree. He has an education, he's patient, shrewd, thrifty, and has a distaste for drunkenness. The only real question I had regarding him was whether or not he was behind the others pursuing Bill Bones and the map, or if he was doing well enough on his own to let it go and only took advantage of its reappearance, thinking to make an easy fortune. He certainly had plans for public legitimacy after the voyage, and in his conversation with the other mutineers seemed just as glad to have his days of piracy more or less behind him.

Anyways, I voted for Under the Volcano for next month; while Steinbeck's book intrigued me, I'm not sure I'd want two books in a row about sea voyages.

# ? Jun 28, 2021 01:01

Cobalt-60: Oct 11, 2016; by Azathoth

Silver was the "one legged man" Billy Bones paid Jim to look for, although I don't know if that was general wariness or specific fear related to the treasure. Pew and the gang who came to the inn knew of the map, so I assume Silver did. Not certain what his motivation was, hiding away, although alcoholic paranoia played a role. For that matter, why did Flint bury the treasure...

# ? Jun 28, 2021 10:13

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# ? Apr 28, 2024 20:18

Hieronymous Alloy: Jan 30, 2009; Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!; Morbid Hound

https://twitter.com/alloy_dr/status/1411399485167648770?s=20

# ? Jul 3, 2021 20:00

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > BotM June: TREASURE ISLAND by ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON