Rob Roy

 Okay, so I went back to read Sir Walter Scott's Rob Roy. I haven't read him since high school when I made my way through Ivanhoe and Quentin Durward while failing to make my way to Kenilworth or The Talisman or The Lady in the Lake.. This novel has almost nothing in common with the Liam Neeson movie. The novel is getting long in the tooth; I 'm not sure what I say will endear the novel to anyone else.

The novel is too long. The titular character doe snot appear as himself until about half way through the novel when the action moves from England to Scotland. I suggest starting with Chapter XIX - I cannot imagine anyone in the past two hundred years really caring about how Francis Osbaldistone (Osbaldistone really?) and why he had to go to Scotland.

Scott's plotting makes Dickens read like Agatha Christie. I cannot think of an apt comparison over characters, my reading has not been broad enough: Dickens can animate his caricatures in dialog to bring them to life whereas Scott's declaim themselves into caricatures. 

Scott does do action quite well. Perhaps this explains his popularity over Jane Austen.

Still Scott persists. He gets referenced in Alexandria Summer. An Arab jockey is compared to Ivanhoe. 

He understands the importance of money in the 1715 Jacobite uprising - the lack thereof causing its failure. Mark Twain blamed Scott for the South starting the Civil War with his notions of chivalry and lost causes. I suspect Twain had in mind Ivanhoe not Rob Roy. If they had read Rob Roy, they might have known that valor alone did not make for a successful rebellion.

But Scott also knows his numbers. He puts forth population numbers and statistics on wealth which is not likely to be seen in a modern MFA novel.

Scott has three groups - the English, the Scottish Lowlanders, and the Highlanders - who all speak a different language. All three had to  communicate with one another - talk about decoding the Other.

Finally, I was a bit surprised at the violence. Albeit his actors are the wild Highlanders, they are led by a woman.

She gave a brief command in Gaelic to her attendants, two of whom seized upon the prostrate suppliant and hurried him to the brink of a cliff which overhung the flood. He set up the most piercing and dreadful cries that fear ever uttered, - I may well term then dreadful for they haunted my sleep for years afterward....

Chapter XXXI

And I will close with this:

...Speak out, sir, and do not Maister or Campbell me; my foot is on my native heath and my name is MacGregor.

Chapgter XXXIV

Something to think on for when I am back on my home grounds.

sch

2/29/20