It's crunch time for my
Victorian reading challenge! Way back in January, I swore I would read 12 Victorian books by year's end. Well, as usual, I've waited until last minute & I have just a couple of weeks to read
Jane Eyre,
Wives & Daughters, &
Lady Audley's Secret. Yikes! If only
Queen Victoria: Demon Hunter counted (I'm finding that really amusing)...but I have to read more books written during the Victorian era, not faux Victorian zombie lit. At least I have finished
Kidnapped.I always feel the book should be titled
Kidnapped!, as though it were a tabloid headline. But really, Robert Louis Stevenson's classic novel is anything but sensational & lurid. I was excited to realize that Stevenson was a Victorian writer, because I read & re-read
Treasure Island as a kid, & I thought
Kidnapped would be more of the same. However, while it is in a similar vein to
Treasure Island, it's a very different book.
According to the introduction by John Seelye that opened my edition,
Kidnapped (written in 1886, three years after
T.I.), was the "second of Stevenson's so-called 'boys' books'.
Kidnapped...is a carefully constructed fiction, with intentionally strong connections to historical circumstance, namely the aftermath of the
Jacobite Rebellion in Scotland." Seelye suggests that
T.I. was more of a slapdash affair, geographically inaccurate, purely a fantasy. He also refers to Stevenson's criticism of Henry Fielding's
Tom Jones, set in the same era but with nary of mention of Jacobites, & Stevenson's debt to Sir Walter Scott for his romantic history
Waverley, set during the same period. One of the characters in the book refers to the protagonist's journey as a kind of Scots
Odyssey. So you can see that, even with clocking in at just over 200 pages,
Kidnapped really packs a literary wallop.
Set in 1751, it's the story of the adventures of David Balfour: as the opening page attests, "how he was kidnapped & cast away; his journey in the Wild Highlands; his acquaintance with
Alan Breck Stewart & other notorious Highland Jacobites; with all that he suffered at the hands of his uncle, Ebenezer Balfour of Shaws, falsely so-called." & that pretty much sums up the action, right there. I think the novel's title is misleading-the kidnap is actually a small part of the plot, though a vital part. A lot of the novel concerns David's travels, alone & later with Alan Breck (which, in less capable authorial hands, could have degenerated into a kind of 'buddy movie' material).
What I so enjoy about Robert Louis Stevenson is his writing style. David Balfour & Alan Breck Stewart are vividly portrayed characters who quarrel & make up; help each other & betray each other, all while saying "Hoot!" & "Wheesht!". The uneasy camaraderie that develops between these two characters is very realistic. (Ebenezer Balfour is a bit of a hobgoblin, but a real baddie is called for in the narrative.) Everything Stevenson writes about is so detailed & intense, so compelling, that the reader is irresistibly drawn into the action, despite, in my case, knowing nothing about the Jacobites. Stevenson, showing geographic due diligence this time, takes you through a detailed tour of Scotland, from Queen's Ferry to the Isle of Mull & back again; through wood, heather & moor, under less than pleasant conditions (mainly cold & wet). David also meets
Cluny Macpherson, another famous Jacobite, hiding out in a kind of wattle & moss treehouse known as "Cluny's Cage" & Stevenson takes you through a bit of the history of clans, or at least which clans don't get along & the fact that the wearing of tartan had been outlawed.
I would highly recommend the entertaining works of Stevenson & I think I will be reading more of his adventure stories in the future. Meanwhile, if you really like
Kidnapped, you should consider its 1893 sequel,
Catriona, though John Seelye says it is a lesser work. At the end of
Kidnapped, Robert Louis Stevenson indicates, however, that "all went well with both [David & Alan Breck], in the limited and human sense of the word 'well'; that whatever befell them, it was not dishonour, & whatever failed them, they were not found wanting to themselves."
The Pueblo Imagination: Landscape & Memory in the Photography of Lee Marmon with writings by Leslie Marmon Silko, Joy Harjo, & Simon Ortiz This is a lovely book, featuring primarily the photographs of Lee Marmon (father of Leslie Marmon Silko), but interspersed with essays by Silko & poetry & prose by Simon Ortiz & Joy Harjo. Most of the photographs are black & white & were taken in the Laguna & Acoma Pueblos. These photographs, many of people, paint an evocative picture of pueblo life from the 1940s-90s. Marmon's landscape photography is also very beautiful. The book begins with a "Photographer's Statement" by Lee Marmon (almost a short autobiographical essay), followed by a "Preface" by Leslie Marmon Silko which helps to set the scene. Silko's essay "Rain" is next-the longest piece of writing in the book. "Rain" talks about many Native American tales, with characters such as Corn Woman & the Twin Brothers. The short pieces by Ortiz & Harjo make up the rest of the writing in the book. Part memory, part poetry, these pieces seem to speak to & about the photographs they face. All in all, a very special introduction to the Native American culture in New Mexico. 
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