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May. 30th, 2024 09:43 pmOur next stop after Wales was Edinburgh, which is such an absurdly beautiful city that I really desperately wanted to be reading a book Set In Edinburgh while I was there. I googled 'Edinburgh novels' and popped up a listicle of some sort that put Stevenson's Kidnapped at number three or thereabouts.
"Oh!" I said to myself, "I had always said I would reread Kidnapped while I was in Scotland anyway, the time is clearly now!"
As some of you are now doubt already shouting in your heads, THIS LISTICLE OUTRIGHT LIED TO ME. Not one single chapter of Kidnapped takes place in Edinburgh. The book ends right when Our Lad David Balfour is on the verge of setting foot in Edinburgh for the first time ... I spent five solid minutes convinced that my copy had somehow been truncated ......
Oh, well; False Novel of Edinburgh or not, I did have a grand time rereading Kidnapped for the first time since [checks notes] 2008. Past Becca's impressions often can't be trusted, but my notes from 2008 read "I am really impressed by how David got to be wrong a lot" and indeed this is perhaps the most charming thing about Our Lad, who sets out boldly in search of his fortune, meets his evil uncle, immediately recognizes that his uncle wants to murder him, smugly thinks to himself "I'm far too smart to get murdered!" and promptly instead gets boat-napped. God bless! Perhaps my favorite chapter is the one in which David is trapped and starting on a desert island ( spoilers )
I'd completely forgotten how long it actually takes for David to get round to meeting up with Alan Breck Stewart, but he does steal the show whenever he's around. I kept thinking about The Black Arrow while reading this, and how Stevenson likes to drop his protagonists into the middle of messy political situations and then bat them from faction to faction like a ping-pong ball. A Stevenson lad is always valiantly trying his best to remain loyal to the people he personally likes regardless of his philosophical or political disagreements with them, but as far as politics go he'll swap sides like old hats as soon as he gets distracted. I do find this a really charming and pretty nuanced worldview; Stevenson so clearly thinks the Big Romantic Causes are sort of silly, but never falls into the trap of 'all x are evil.' All x are equally likely to contain potential friends and enemies, and if x and y hate each other, the Stevenson Lad will just have to sort out the social complications of that on his own.
Meanwhile, as far as Edinburgh books go, I probably ought to have read some Sir Walter Scott instead, and I do plan to reasonably soon -- certainly we saw enough homages to him in Edinburgh, including of course the famous Scott Monument, Second Largest Monument To a Writer In the Whole World, which always looked to me a bit like it was going to pick up its columns and start crab-scuttling around the city. (The funniest thing about going from Edinburgh to Orkney was the abrupt transition from the City of Sir Walter to our tour guide in the Orkneys going "ah yes, I think some writer fellow got himself involved in [that bit of Orkney history] .... William? William Scott?" -- but more on Orkney anon.) If anyone's got a favorite Waverly novel, I'm taking recs!
"Oh!" I said to myself, "I had always said I would reread Kidnapped while I was in Scotland anyway, the time is clearly now!"
As some of you are now doubt already shouting in your heads, THIS LISTICLE OUTRIGHT LIED TO ME. Not one single chapter of Kidnapped takes place in Edinburgh. The book ends right when Our Lad David Balfour is on the verge of setting foot in Edinburgh for the first time ... I spent five solid minutes convinced that my copy had somehow been truncated ......
Oh, well; False Novel of Edinburgh or not, I did have a grand time rereading Kidnapped for the first time since [checks notes] 2008. Past Becca's impressions often can't be trusted, but my notes from 2008 read "I am really impressed by how David got to be wrong a lot" and indeed this is perhaps the most charming thing about Our Lad, who sets out boldly in search of his fortune, meets his evil uncle, immediately recognizes that his uncle wants to murder him, smugly thinks to himself "I'm far too smart to get murdered!" and promptly instead gets boat-napped. God bless! Perhaps my favorite chapter is the one in which David is trapped and starting on a desert island ( spoilers )
I'd completely forgotten how long it actually takes for David to get round to meeting up with Alan Breck Stewart, but he does steal the show whenever he's around. I kept thinking about The Black Arrow while reading this, and how Stevenson likes to drop his protagonists into the middle of messy political situations and then bat them from faction to faction like a ping-pong ball. A Stevenson lad is always valiantly trying his best to remain loyal to the people he personally likes regardless of his philosophical or political disagreements with them, but as far as politics go he'll swap sides like old hats as soon as he gets distracted. I do find this a really charming and pretty nuanced worldview; Stevenson so clearly thinks the Big Romantic Causes are sort of silly, but never falls into the trap of 'all x are evil.' All x are equally likely to contain potential friends and enemies, and if x and y hate each other, the Stevenson Lad will just have to sort out the social complications of that on his own.
Meanwhile, as far as Edinburgh books go, I probably ought to have read some Sir Walter Scott instead, and I do plan to reasonably soon -- certainly we saw enough homages to him in Edinburgh, including of course the famous Scott Monument, Second Largest Monument To a Writer In the Whole World, which always looked to me a bit like it was going to pick up its columns and start crab-scuttling around the city. (The funniest thing about going from Edinburgh to Orkney was the abrupt transition from the City of Sir Walter to our tour guide in the Orkneys going "ah yes, I think some writer fellow got himself involved in [that bit of Orkney history] .... William? William Scott?" -- but more on Orkney anon.) If anyone's got a favorite Waverly novel, I'm taking recs!
