James Stout

Yeah.

Once he arrives in the Caribbean, he is horrified that he will be sold to a plantation and into a life of, quote, bondage, misery, stripes, and chains.

But here again, he meets with this crazy good luck.

It's this weird situation where he's in like this horror, the worst, least lucky situation he could be in.

But within that situation, he has crazy luck.

Like, I don't know how else to describe it.

Because it's like one in 10 million, right?

Like this happened to millions and millions of people.

One of them had this unique set of circumstances and was uniquely intelligent to be able to take advantage of it in the way that he was.

Right.

Take advantage is the wrong word, but like.

Yeah, but like even people who would have been as smart but maybe aren't good with languages probably wouldn't have had the success he has, right?

That's a separate kind of – Like he's just a bunch of shit happens.

And he's a good writer.

He is a really good writer.

Yeah.

Maybe not – I don't know about this point, but yeah.

Yeah.

No, but there's not much shit from that period that I can assign in whole to undergraduates in 2025 and have them be like, wow, that's fucked up.

Like it makes people feel things still centuries later.