Pirate Freedom: Is Chris Blackbeard?

Robin B. Smith · 28 Apr 2015, 21:04 · from 2015-April.txt.gz

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From: robinbsmith at gmail.com (Robin B. Smith)
Date: Tue, 28 Apr 2015 16:04:30 -0500
Subject: (urth) Pirate Freedom: Is Chris Blackbeard?
In-Reply-To: <BAY172-W3351FAB80C6C80ED82EBFDFE80 at phx.gbl>
References: <BAY172-W3351FAB80C6C80ED82EBFDFE80 at phx.gbl>
Message-ID: <CAPrwg+y+zhYiSsk5efRK_sZaWpGPJejoLY63GzrmZy4WWr3wOg at mail.gmail.com>

Please keep in mind that I'm putting this forth as an hypothesis to be
considered, off of just some loose thinking.

I haven't had a re-read to scrutinize and make a better case for this
conjecture, but here's the gist: after returning as Ignacio to the past,
and past the events within the book, he recovers the treasure and lives out
his life of Pirate Freedom as Blackbeard (inventing the Edward Teach
biography, etc.)

- based on the chronology worked out by Ed Edson, there seems to be a
suggestion by Chris that at the time of writing (2017) that he will have
died 300 years prior, 1717, roughly the date of Blackbeard's death and the
end of the golden age of piracy -- this struck me as a clue, especially
since he make a point of also including the date of Blackbeard's death
within the text

- Blackbeard is mentioned once (if I recall correctly) by Chris in the text
and then is listed in the glossary; in the glossary he is stated to be
Edward Teach, which I feel could not-too-implausibly be a trick by Wolfe to
obscure--explicitly giving the name of Blackbeard to throw detectives off.

- Blackbeard's MO of making a show and trying to minimize killing seems to
align pretty nicely with Chris's own feelings

- Wolfe likes elaborating history with fiction -- I'm specifically inspired
by The Devil in a Forest; he could have conceived of this as a grand
opportunity to weave his own threads into the tapestry of piracy (along
with a counter-intuitive chance to do time-travel)

- It feels like something Wolfe might get a kick out of doing

I'm well aware that this is not much of a case nor is it strictly based on
evidence, and it does have some faulty lines of reasoning. I'm going on my
feeling here, for the book and for Wolfe, and it is at least fun to
consider (so please, don't immediately discard it out of hand).


On Tue, Apr 28, 2015 at 3:26 PM, Robert Pirkola <rpirkola at hotmail.com>
wrote:

> I can say fairly certainly that Chris is not Blackbeard.  Textual evidence
> strongly suggests that
> *Pirate Freedom* takes place (in its bulk) in the late 1670's.  Edward
> Teach is generally thought to have been
> born in 1680 or thereabouts so it seems impossible.  Having read a great
> deal on pirates lately, I have not
> been able to pinpoint any that scream out as being "who Chris is".  My own
> thoughts are that he is
> not meant to be a stand-in for any particular historical pirate.
>
> On April 28, 2015 Robin B. Smith wrote:
> since Pirate Freedom was brought up here, before I go off and start a new
> email chain, I've been wondering: has it been discussed that Chris may be
> Blackbeard? (I did some cursory searching previously, but found no
> discussion of that point expressly)
>
>
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>



-- 
Robin B. Smith
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