Released 31.10.25

The Conversation

In this episode, the Ernest Bernbaum Professor of Literature at Harvard University talks about his latest, critically acclaimed biography Storyteller: The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson, published by Yale University Press.  The conversation brings to life the gifted prose artist who gave us Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, as well as the travel writer who published numerous other essays and stories before his early death at forty-four. He talks about how the most accomplished writers have been Stevenson’s warmest admirers. They’ve included Proust, Nabokov, Borges,  Calvino. Leo gives us a masterclass on Stevenson’s style  — the ‘kinetic’ energy of his stories, his nose for a cliche.

Over the course of the conversation, Leo takes us on a journey to reveal Stevenson’s restless, Bohemian soul, as well as Stevenson’s ability to be entirely present in the moment — “a Buddhist kind of experience of letting go of your conscious self and just being” as he drifted in a kayak down the inland waterways of France.  

This was the Victorian who resisted convention, who ventured from the dour city of his childhood to hike the hills of the Cevennes, ride the railroads across America, and sail the South Seas. “I loved a ship,” wrote Stevenson, “as a man loves burgundy or daybreak.” And by his side, a remarkable, free-spirited woman, Fanny, whom Leo brings out of the sidelines not only in his charismatic biography, but in a generous, erudite, beautiful conversation  about ‘the art of travel’ at its literary best. 

Books discussed:

Leo Damrosch
— Storyteller: The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson

Robert Louis Stevenson
— Treasure Island
— Kidnapped
— Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
— An Inland Voyage
— Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes
— The Amateur Emigrant
— Catriona
— Weir of Hermiston
— The Merry Men 

George Orwell
— Down and Out in Paris