Discussion - Week Two - Argall - Part I, p. 106 - 236

[Jim]

This discussion covers Part I, p. 106 – 236 begins: ARGALL (?? - ??)

[Zadignose]

I'm enjoying it as I go, and I wish I had long periods of available time in which to sit down and read this in multiple-hour binges, rather than 10-30 minute increments with interruptions. Anyway, Vollman is a good storyteller, and the dialect is addictive. Who wouldn't want to write this way?

I didn't know much at all about John Smith's pre-Jamestown life until picking up this book, so it's rather amazing what kind of adventures he either got up to or pretended to have gotten up to.

Vollman makes an interesting choice in referring to all Privateer and Buccaneer ventures as Pirating and Piracy--and, fair enough, that's what they were essentially. Basically he's removed the whitewash in that, from what I understand, Privateering was a preferred term for licensed "prize taking" as an extension of warfare against enemy merchants. It was probably just as brutal as the later generations of illegal piracy, but it enjoyed legal sanction. Also, from the little I've read, Privateers and Buccaneers lived under more authoritarian structures, similar to merchant and army ship hierarchies, whereas "Pirates" were in some ways the first modern democracies!

Anyway, we get the point. Everyone was scrabbling, scrapping, and scrambling to make a ducat at mercenary soldiering and high-seas robbery. (And then, okay, it seems some of the characters here actually were involved in illegal pirating also, though as far as I can tell they weren't targeting English vessels, and weren't yet guilty of mutiny or treason against English captains).

I'll ramble more later. I've highlighted and noted something in virtually every page of the book so far, but it would take more time to figure out what really to talk about. Speaking about one's reflections on a work in the midst of reading it, on first exposure to the work of a particular author, and doing so in the midst of a discussion void, is an odd experience. Carry on.

Oh yeah, one more point, which is more of a comment on history than on the novel. It's a pretty pathetic history, ain't it? The story of the first Roanoke settlement is quite grim, even if you only go so far as to sympathize with English folks and don't worry about the salvages. This is something I had read about previously, but now it's vivid again.

[Zadignose]

I'm busy and running off somewhere, but I thought I'd note something for future discussion. It's somewhat obvious that I will not be able to avoid discussing politics. At this point it is clear that the author is anti-militant and anti-nationalist, and thus he expresses this perspective by ironically praising the opposite perspective. He even does leap forward to highlight comparison to more modern conflicts. This may, at times, be overplayed, but at the same time I think the author makes a fair effort to see things from the perspective of the actors. While portraying Wingfield in a rather pathetic and ridiculous light, he also understands him to some degree so that we don't merely mock him, we can sympathize with the tragedy of his misapprehension. Or something like that... lunch time!