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generalheff 's review for:
Robinson Crusoe
by Daniel Defoe
I recently began another Daniel Defoe book, Moll Flanders, and abandoned it because it was so unbelievably dull. I persisted through this more famous novel and can safely say I am not a Defoe fan. I finished this book as yes, it is better than Moll Flanders, but only marginally.
In my criticism of Defoe's later book, I remarked on how turgid the writing style is. The dialogue is exasperatingly long-winded and almost everything takes an inordinate amount of time to relate to the reader. One particular irritant is how Crusoe constantly harps on about his own misfortune. I literally opened the book at a random page and was confronted with "I, poor miserable Robinson Crusoe ... came on shore on this dismal island, which I called the Island of Despair".
He also incessantly remarks, in some sort of compulsively masochistic self-flagellatory display, on how he deserves his fate, ultimately because he sought adventure and ignored his boring father's admonishments not to go to sea. "But I, that was born to be my own destroyer, could no more resist the offer than I could restrain my first rambling designs, when my father's good counsel was lost upon me." And so on and so on. It is unending; it is excruciating.
In stark contrast to Moll Flanders, however, this book at least has the benefit of an interesting story: who doesn't want to hear about how a man survives 26 years on a tropical island and of his myriad adventures? That this novel is the originator of a well-worn trope in use today is testimony to the power of the story.
Yet this simply isn't enough to elevate this book above what it is: a valuable stepping stone on the development of the English-language novel but one to be quickly superseded by better works of fiction. It made me appreciate how difficult the challenge of writing characters is. Even Robinson himself is barely invested with any spice or flavour; he is the sum of his actions and no more. The rest of the cast - assorted sailors, natives and so on - are utterly characterless beyond the 1-dimensional descriptions from Crusoe. Friday is his ever faithful servant; sailors washed onto his island are either braggarts or honest men and that's it.
This book, in sum, has fully made me value authors with the skill and artistry to write believable individuals. As a non-author myself I cannot quite pinpoint what makes a Dostoevsky character so vivid and present to me as against the cardboard cutouts of this early experiment in novel writing. Whatever makes a good writer of other books, I can only recommend this to the enterprising literature student interested in the evolution of the novel. It is not a book worth reading in its own right.
In my criticism of Defoe's later book, I remarked on how turgid the writing style is. The dialogue is exasperatingly long-winded and almost everything takes an inordinate amount of time to relate to the reader. One particular irritant is how Crusoe constantly harps on about his own misfortune. I literally opened the book at a random page and was confronted with "I, poor miserable Robinson Crusoe ... came on shore on this dismal island, which I called the Island of Despair".
He also incessantly remarks, in some sort of compulsively masochistic self-flagellatory display, on how he deserves his fate, ultimately because he sought adventure and ignored his boring father's admonishments not to go to sea. "But I, that was born to be my own destroyer, could no more resist the offer than I could restrain my first rambling designs, when my father's good counsel was lost upon me." And so on and so on. It is unending; it is excruciating.
In stark contrast to Moll Flanders, however, this book at least has the benefit of an interesting story: who doesn't want to hear about how a man survives 26 years on a tropical island and of his myriad adventures? That this novel is the originator of a well-worn trope in use today is testimony to the power of the story.
Yet this simply isn't enough to elevate this book above what it is: a valuable stepping stone on the development of the English-language novel but one to be quickly superseded by better works of fiction. It made me appreciate how difficult the challenge of writing characters is. Even Robinson himself is barely invested with any spice or flavour; he is the sum of his actions and no more. The rest of the cast - assorted sailors, natives and so on - are utterly characterless beyond the 1-dimensional descriptions from Crusoe. Friday is his ever faithful servant; sailors washed onto his island are either braggarts or honest men and that's it.
This book, in sum, has fully made me value authors with the skill and artistry to write believable individuals. As a non-author myself I cannot quite pinpoint what makes a Dostoevsky character so vivid and present to me as against the cardboard cutouts of this early experiment in novel writing. Whatever makes a good writer of other books, I can only recommend this to the enterprising literature student interested in the evolution of the novel. It is not a book worth reading in its own right.