Subject: (urth) Pirate Freedom

From: James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 25 Mar 2010 22:02:33 +0000

Finished Pirate Freedom. Now I can get on to The Sorcerer's House.

Going through the discussions from 18 months ago I only have this to add:

Discussions of the Catholic/Christian morality in Chris-as-pirate are
quite beside the point. PF belongs on the shelf next to The Wizard
Knight for more reasons than chronology. In TWK, Wolfe's primary
impetus IMO was to take the case --as an attorney might--for the
chivalric ethos. For example, "What's the deal with To-The-Death
dueling over an insult to one's reputation? Isn't that a little
extreme?" Able's argument in The Wizard was actually quite compelling.

Here Wolfe makes the case for 17th century pirates -- basing his
defense on the New World politics at the time. If you blanched at
Chris' justification for taking part in the slave trade, I recommend
to you "Democracy in America" (1832) by Alexis de Toqueville where the
Frenchman argues quite convincingly that the institution of slavery
perniciously enslaves (and impoverishes) the culture that engages in
it...making it all but impossible an individual citizen to act piously
in that regard.  By the same token, Wolfe argues that the entire
economy of the New World at the time was based on rank piracy from the
Spanish crown down to the Spanish farmers. In becoming a pirate, Chris
essentially goes to war against the status quo...or at least the most
significant status quo that he encounters: The Spanish.

Also, Wolfe very adroitly shows what other historians have noted:
pirate ships were the only true democracies in the world at the
time.This in itself is an assault against the politics of the time
that I believe honestly inclined Wolfe to the pirates' case.  I'm
reminded what i heard Wolfe say last year:

"The form of government I favor is Democracy. America is not a
democracy. It is a republic. That means that every so often we choose
people to rule over us. And once we have, you can bet THEY KNOW IT."

At no time, does Wolfe let us forget the type of people who became
pirates. He shows most of them them as drunks and reprobates. Violent
men who sold their lives cheaply and thought as little of the lives of
others. Of course, he also shows that the system they parasited
--although filled with more respected "Christians"-- was every bit as
cruel and callous. He also portrays the position of English privateers
who saw themselves as patriots.

For half a chapter, there is some post-911 lecturing in Chris'
reflections on the assault on Maracaibo and on harsh treatment/torture
(here Chris' pirates alternately playing analogous Islamic terrorists
and then the CIA). I can certainly understand it if anyone found the
narrator's arguments uncompelling, but Wolfe's sympathies cannot be a
surprise to anyone.

On the issue of time travel:

It is not likely that Wolfe intended to rationalize Chris' time-travel
any more than Baum attempted to rationalize Dorothy's trips to Oz. I
when I began reading the novel, I assumed the monastery was a ship
that casually sailed through Time in the same way Chris's ships moved
from port to port. The ending shows that is not so. The Time travel is
something directly connected to Chris (to which his future self is
able to hitch a ride). Maybe it is God, or maybe it was his Father,
but primarily it is just a way to get a modern narrator into that
world and to bring him back to report to us.

J.