pirates

Today I finished Steinbeck’s first novel, Cup of Gold (1929). About forty pages in, I realized I had attempted to read this book before. Clearly: it had not made much of an impression.

Those first forty pages are hard. They’re mostly about a puddle-headed Welsh boy’s relationship with his slightly insane relatives and a man named “Merlin.” Please note that Cup of Gold is a story about a real-life pirate whose real-life name was Henry Morgan. When I pick up a book whose cover prominently features pirates, I want me some pirates, damnit, not Welsh mysticism. Which is probably why I never got more than forty pages into Cup of Gold on my earlier try, and might explain, a little bit anyway, why Cup of Gold is on absolutely no one’s Best of Steinbeck list.

The boundless knowledge of Wikipedia tells us “Steinbeck wrote Cup of Gold for the film business.” Which is one explanation, I guess. Two films (Captain Blood and Black Swan) depict Morgan in heavily fictionalized form, although neither of these appears to have been based on Cup of Gold. As a pirate story it’s a little too inward-looking, and a little light on the actual piracy.

Like all good historical novels, though, Cup’s... historicity is suspect. The relationship between Steinbeck’s Morgan and the genuine article is about as to that of Ridley Scott’s Gladiator and Caeser Commodus. Apparently there really was a person (or perhaps two persons) named Henry Morgan and that this person certainly sacked some cities in Cuba and Panama and eventually became governor of Jamaica, as depicted by Steinbeck. The way Steinbeck tells it, Morgan lusted mightily for the sea from the early days of his very mystical Welsh childhood. (The source of this lust is only sketchily attributed — but I think Steinbeck generally wrote archetypes more than characters.) Drawing upon all the resources of being a character in a Steinbeck novel, Morgan parlays indentured servitude into a career in piracy. From the start of his career Morgan has his eyes set, absurdly, on the sack of Panama City (the eponymous “Cup of Gold”), and through pretty exclusively the power of narrative fiat he achieves it. Again: none his motive for this is explained, but the last twenty pages make pretty clear that Steinbeck was aiming for something a little more than a mere explanation of things that happened.

Steinbeck picks up a lot of themes, only to carry them halfheartedly or turn them entirely in the space of a page or two. To pick a single example: Morgan’s desire to sack Panama is conflated with his obsession over La Santa Roja, a reputedly beautiful woman who lives there. The first half of the book concerns this lusty young buck literally itching to literally rape Panama (in the symbolic person of The Red Saint); he is a man entirely of action and devoid of introspection. When ultimately confronted with The Red Saint, his personality jumps the shark and we go from Treasure Island to Winter of Our Discontent. In one page.

Even in a stinker like Cup of Gold — and let’s not kid ourselves, if Steinbeck hadn’t written it, it wouldn’t be in print today — Steinbeck displays a few of his uncanny talents that he went on to deploy to greater effect in later works. He excels at portraying the book’s landscapes — the brooding Welsh hills, the plantations of Jamaica, the pestilential swamps of Panama. This is perhaps my favorite of Steinbeck’s qualities, a trait I think a lot of Western American (particularly Californian) authors share. He has a neat motif about mythology and honesty that he plays about three times, in the form of Morgan’s recollections of his first love. Finally, he tops the book with a weirdly touching death scene. I like it when a book ends with the protagonist dying.

Next: Pastures of Heaven (1932) ... but first I have to read Haruki Murakami’s After Dark, because I always read every new Murakami paperback. After that is Dale Basye’s Heck: Where the Bad Kids Go, because the author is a friend and also it is a good book. But after that: Pastures of Heaven.