Author: Daniel Defoe
Publisher: Books on Tape
Rating: WARTY!
Read in a rather strained voice by Jim Weiss.
I learned a few things from this novel. For example in 1719, 'nor' was not paired with 'neither' and no one cared what they ended a sentence with. I learned that Crusoe's original name was Robinson Kreutznaer, that the long form of 'viz' is 'videlicet', and that the original title of this novel was:
The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, Of York, Mariner: Who lived Eight and Twenty Years, all alone in an un-inhabited Island on the Coast of America, near the Mouth of the Great River of Oroonoque; Having been cast on Shore by Shipwreck, wherein all the Men perished but himself. With An Account how he was at last as strangely deliver'd by Pyrates.
That aside, this novel was one of the most tediously interminable and boring novels I've ever had the misfortune to read in my life (I guess the title should have told us that, but no one uses the original title any more for good reason). I swear that the more of these so-called 'classics' that I read, the less do I understand how they ever became classics. Unless 'classic' is merely a euphemism for 'shit'.
Published in 1719, the novel is of interest in that it's a historical novel which was actually contemporary when it was written - or nearly so. The novel is set a half century before, in the 1650's.
The problem is that it's nothing more than a litany of Crusoe's repeated maritime disasters - and not just the one for which he's known. There was a troubled voyage from Hull to London, wherein he was shipwrecked. He set out again, this time on the high seas and was captured by pirates, becoming a slave for two years, whereupon he escaped and ended-up founding a plantation after winding-up in South America.
He sets out to bring slaves from Africa and gets his sorry ass shipwrecked again, and for my money he could have rotted there. The way slaves are talked about - exactly as they were treated unfortunately - as pieces of equipment, as commodities, as tools, as machines, as possessions - is truly sickening. And all of these slavers and slave owners were religious people - they believed in the Christian god, or the Islamic god, or the Judaic god. All of them.
His man, Friday, is given that name by Crusoe who then tells Friday that his own name is "Master"! I know this was how things were back then, and if the novel had some literary merit, I would view it a bit differently, but it has no literary merit. It's nothing more than a tedious recital of things he did: salvaging material from a wrecked ship, putting up a 'tent', digging out a cave, planting corn. Planting more corn. What a great corn yield he had. He must plant more corn. It's corny to the max.
When he's not obsessing on corn, he's obsessing on his fowling pieces (shotguns) and how many pounds of shot and powder he has to hand. I wished he would just shot his mouth.
I cannot recommend this drivel.
