Comments by Distinguished Guest Amit Majmudar:
Ah, Robert Louis Stevenson. He (like Verne, Dumas, and Conan Doyle) has the most fortunate fate a writer can have: He is loved. He isn’t read just because he’s assigned, and he isn’t revered because august critics hype him in monographs and book-length studies. He does, simply, irresistible writing, perennially of interest.
This has, in part, to do with his origins in “boy literature.” His most successful novels had boys for heroes, and many of his best poems were written for children. This childlike delight in simplicity and a good story and speed, matched to a matchless imagination (on display in this poem), has made Stevenson a permanent writer in spite of the century-long “high literary” obsession with obscurity. This poem is also a fine companion to Masefield’s—the longing for escape.
I have found that his poetry does not work as well when he speaks to adults, with the exception of his self-penned epitaph, my favorite among the self-penned epitaphs in our literature. (I prefer it to both Yeats’s and Shakespeare’s.)
Stevenson also has the enviable privilege of being one of the favorite writers of Jorge Luis Borges.
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