Review: "The Last Bookaneer," Matthew Pearl

By Paul Carrier

Bookaneer. No, it isn’t a misspelling of buccaneer, although it is a play on that word, referring as it does to a specialized type of pirate who performs his (or her) dastardly deeds on the periphery of the publishing world, rather than on the high seas.

In The Last Bookaneer, Matthew Pearl’s protagonists are swashbuckling 19th-century thieves who steal the newly completed manuscripts or printers’ proofs of popular authors and sell them for a handsome price to unscrupulous publishers who then rush them into print.

This lucrative criminal activity is highly profitable because there is no global copyright treaty; copyright laws only apply in the nations that enact them. Thus, a British author’s stolen works can be legally published without the writer’s consent in the United States, for example, just as an American writer’s book can make it into print without authorization in Great Britain.

As the novel opens in 1890, this glaring legal loophole is about to be closed by a new international copyright agreement, signaling the eventual demise of bookaneering. Its greatest surviving practitioners, Pen Davenport and a rarely seen competitor who goes by the name of Belial, square off to complete one last “mission,” by stealing the final novel of a dying Robert Louis Stevenson as soon as he finishes writing it.

Stevenson and his family are holed up on an estate on the Samoan island of Upolu, where Davenport and Belial ingratiate themselves, the former disguised as a travel writer and the latter as a missionary. Stevenson is fooled by their false identities, but he seems to be writing in fits and starts, raising questions about when — or if — he will complete his final masterpiece.

The legendary author is memorably portrayed here. Tall, lanky, alternately domineering and genteel, sickly but strong-willed, Stevenson reigns over his estate and its many Samoan servants, “a white genius making his life among island natives as a sort of king or chief.” Stevenson goes by the Samoan name Tusitala (Teller of Tales) and is so “entirely singular,” one character observes in The Last Bookaneer, “that learning more about him became a way of trying to prove to yourself he is of the same species.”

Stevenson did, in fact, buy land in Upolu in the late 19th century. He created an estate there, and dubbed himself Tusitala. As in Pearl’s novel, he became involved in local politics, advised Samoan leaders and became highly critical of the colonial powers that vied for control of Samoa. He died there in 1894, at 44, and is buried on the island.

Pearl builds suspense around the bookaneers’ dueling efforts to obtain Stevenson’s last manuscript. Although much of the plot meanders amid subplots and diversions, Pearl ultimately offers up a rollicking tale that veers off in surprising directions, until the reader finally realizes that Pearl is a delightfully deceptive storyteller. Let’s just say that, in the end, much is not what it appeared to be.

I found it difficult to come to terms with Davenport and his assistant, Edgar Fergins, at least initially. Fergins, in particular, is a very likable fellow, yet he and Davenport enjoy Stevenson’s generosity under false pretenses, with the intention of robbing the author and profiting from the sale of Stevenson’s stolen work.  Only later does one of these frauds undergo an epiphany that forces the reader to reevaluate him.

The term “bookaneer” is not in use nowadays; it's not in the online version of the Merriam-Webster dictionary. But Pearl did not make it up. In an 1837 letter that a literary magazine published under the headline "Copyright and Copywrong," British poet, author and humorist Thomas Hood wrote: “If a work be of temporary interest it shall virtually be free for any Bookaneer to avail himself of its pages and its popularity with impunity.”

Although Pearl’s bookaneers are criminals at heart, Davenport and Belial view themselves in a different light. In an impressive display of rationalization, the bookaneers convince themselves that they are disseminating works of literature to the reading public as quickly and cheaply as possible, by outsmarting selfish authors who fail to see that their writings (supposedly) belong to the masses.

The Last Bookaneer is a novel for readers intrigued by Davenport’s assessment of the power of the printed word, at least as it existed in a bygone era. “Books inspire a man to embrace the world or flee it," Davenport says. "They start wars and end them. They make the men and women who write and publish them vast fortunes, and nearly as quickly can drive them into madness and despair.”