2009.04.03
Long John Silver Revisited
"Silver: My Own Tale as Written by Me with a Goodly Amount of Murder"
by Edward Chupack, Thomas Dunne Books, 272 pp, $14.95
Reviewed by Tom Carter
Heave to, my hearties. Here be a book what’s worth a skylark.
Edward Chupack’s “Silver” starts with this most famous of pirates on his way to England and a certain hanging at Newgate. Imprisoned in his own cabin and battling a fever that just may rob the hangman of another pair of boots, Long John Silver begins writing an account of his adventures that led him to his present circumstances. He states honestly that he intends his testament to intrigue, bedevil and perhaps even trigger revenge upon his captors, but that’s perhaps where the testament’s honesty ends. Central to the story is a Bible owned by his shipmate Edward filled with ciphers that lead to a royal treasure.
This story is tangential to Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic “Treasure Island.” It tells how Silver got his name and became a pirate, his rise from ship’s cook to captain, briefly touches on the events at Treasure Island (told from Silver’s recollections), but this book’s climax happens in the period after Silver disappears from the pages of the classic text. Please pay heed to the title: this book is not written for the same audience as “Treasure Island.”
Chupack deftly takes just enough of Stevenson’s familiar Silver to create a character who is fresh and surprising without doing fatal damage to the original. You will also meet a completely different Pew, Bones, Smollet, and even Hawkins, Trelawney and Dr. Livesey (who turns out to be one of the creepiest characters in the book).
Part of the fun of reading Chupack’s novel is trying to square his characters with Stevenson’s. In “Treasure Island,” Silver tacks so close to the wind that readers have trouble figuring him out. Does he have some remains of a soft, compassionate human soul? Is he a total sociopath? Or did Stevenson simply paint him carelessly and inconsistently? Chupack’s Silver is ruthlessly consistent: bloodthirsty, focused, clever and even (obviously) literate. But when Chupack contradicts Stevenson, I found myself not gagging on the error but wondering where between these two tales the truth lay. For instance, Chupack’s Silver admits only to a bad limp; did Hawkins exaggerate the malady to a missing leg simply to enliven his tale? Of course, Silver is a pirate. He may occasionally lie.
I can see that some readers may balk at Chupack’s revision of the characters. If you love “Treasure Island” to the point that you’re still miffed at Miss Piggy as Benjamina Gunn, maybe you’d best steer clear of this tale. But I found the new perspective on the characters great fun.
Another quirk of the book that may potentially annoy readers is Chupack’s rather random and seemingly careless use of nautical terms. I spent a few years at sea on a destroyer, admittedly a far cry from a pirate ship, but I know you don’t grapple another ship at sea by the spring lines or throw something avast the ship. However, Silver says he’s filled his account with hidden ciphers that may lead to his treasure just as Edward’s Bible held the puzzles that led him to his riches. In an author’s note, Chupack hints that readers may do well to search for them. Are the misused nautical terms part of the clues?
I’ll leave it to other readers to study that matter. A book this fun is a goodly enough treasure for me.
