Myself and the Other Fellow: A Life of Robert Louis Stevenson

I just wanted to add my comment here because I loved this book and didn't want it to end. I lived with these people, surprised at every turn their lives took in this well-written and incredibly engaging narrative. What characters and what a journey!

When choosing a book to read this summer, I felt it would be a welcome change from the usual weighty novels I have chosen historically to select an intense nonfiction work. Perusing some recent acquisitions, I selected this book because I wished to learn more about Robert Louis Stevenson as a person. I set out to find out about the person behind the famous Treasure Island and the creator of the characters Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Claire Harman managed to craft an extremely comprehensive and dense biography of this complex man that not only tracked his life achievements and the basics of his youth, education, work experience, and so forth, but was able to delve into his family history and how it affected him. Harman makes very extensive use of primary source material, be it letters or Stevenson's own published writings. At times this is extensive almost to a fault- once or twice I wanted to see fewer quotations, supplemented by more of her writing. Apart from the occasional over-reliance on quotes, the only problem I had at first was her use of a number of different terms for RLS, in a family possessing several members with some components of his name for theirs. The biographer analyzes how this writing reflects his personality and the events of his life, and speculates as to the inspirations for several of his characters. I was particularly interested when she highlighted some parallels between his own personal thoughts, fears, and dreams, and what later ended up in some of his more famous works. She did not, however, simply spend time on his writings and letters, but was sure to dig into his personal relationships, friendships, and even loves and how they affected him. His health also becomes a key topic of discussion, and it is interesting to watch as Harman tracks RLS' health in relation to the state of his family relations and friendships. And by health, Harman does not limit herself to exploring the physical side of his condition, but also examines his emotional health and how it affected him over time with changing circumstances. She emphasizes religious views especially when discussing his conflicts with his parents, for they feared for his spiritual health in addition to his physical well-being. Of course it would have been unfair if the situations he experienced were examined only from his perspective. Harman makes sure, however, to include the points of view of those around him, the other parties involved. It is much more useful to have both sides of the story presented than to be left with only partial knowledge of the circumstances. I enjoyed the biography for the most part, however it was easy to get bogged down at times. Perhaps it is because Harman makes me want to slow down and enjoy every moment, grasp every detail of his life individually. Her attention to so many of the forces influencing him going back generations before his birth through his everyday life, however, grants those who undertake the task of reading this

RLS was born lucky, and inspite of his early demise, died lucky as well. That point comes through repeatedly in this well crafted and well researched account of an author who seemed more to happen upon his craft than cultivate it. You come away from this book that until the very last part of his life, what RLS was cultivating was a network of enablers who would molly coddle his feints of affliction. There's enough material here to keep a team of shrinks busy for decades, but essentially, through his father's generosity and vicarious desires to be something other than a member of the family firm, and his mother's indulgent mothering, RLS would have died quick had he not been heir to remarkable fortunes that kept him, if not always in high style, at least kept him going. And yet, there was this other side of him that sought his own mark in the world, be it standing in as father to his wife's children, taking up the cause of indigenous peoples, exploring the vulnerability of psyches quite like his own. I found RLS to be an engaging character and an intriguing champion in the last 5 or 6 years of his life. He is credited in this book with arriving at the split personality crucible years before Freud copped on, at cultivating realism and post-modern fiction before even modernism had arrived, and yet he will be in the minds of most of us, always the author of Treasure Island. I must say that I have re-read KIDNAPPED with a very different interest after reading the analyses Harmon effects. It's also clear that RLS was trapped by TI and even by the Hollywoodization of Jeckyll & Hyde - it isn't what Spencer Tracey would have you believe. RLS was also among the first celebrities who was victimized by the press and papparazzi, pirated by bootleggers (odd, eh?), and hounded by an adoring fan based that fetishized his personality. Perhaps he was the first Beatle. In any case, as celebrated as other writers had been, RLS seemed to break through to some other level of ecstacy in the minds of his fans, which also seemed to be the turning point when he decided to be less of a victim himself. In any case, if you have any interest in RLS, this is a very worthy study and one that will have you re-consider his efforts, particularly his later ones.

This is an exhaustive work. I give it 4 stars because it is an accomplishment for the writer, but for the reader it is a major commitment. She has sifted through a lot of info and put it in good order. The quotes, passages and ideas Harman unearths from her research of his letters and the reports of others show RLS to be a modern thinker with keen powers of observation. He seems very unfazed by the Victorian mores of the times. I was most interested in the Pacific Islands part. From the early life (beyond the health needs for which a warm climate can do wonders), you can understand RLS's fascination. With such wide experience for the times in which he lived, his life to this time could have been a prelude to much more fascinating works. I wonder what he would have written had he lived beyond his 44 years.