I agree with the introduction for the edition of this 1719 novel in that the text is rich for diverse interpretation. It’s at one point a meditation on solitude and loneliness, and also about the things that society owes to its citizens. It’s also a treatise on race, racism, slavery, and imperialism. And mostly, for me, it’s an accidental lampoon on English chauvinism.
All of this does not mean that it’s particularly enjoyable to read. This is my second reading, and the reason I picked it up again, some ten years since the last time I read is that I bought a decent copy for fifty cents at a library sale and I felt underwhelmed by my previous reading and wondered if maybe I gave it short shrift. Maybe I did, but but also, this book is an historical artifact and important in a lot of ways, but not a great novel in the literary sense.
I am not a snob or anti-old literature. I love love love Don Quixote and find it decidedly vibrant and fun. Same goes for most Shakespeare and a lot of his contemporaries. So I think it’s just the novel itself.
It’s incredibly self-serious, to the point that because it’s not being ironic, it’s entirely ripe for being taken for a real piss.
It’s also a flawed narrative in some key ways. For one, there’s two breaks in the entirety of the book. So I ended up reading it in two sittings, which was not preferable. And of course, the main issue is that it’s unironically deeply racist at its heart.
I bought a parodic retelling by the French novelist Michel Tournier, called Friday, and JM Coetzee has a book called Foe, so I am hoping those books do something to further complicate this reading.
A thing that I DO find fascinating is that he shipwrecks off the coast of America, and it’s 1629 just in time for Jamestown and puritans. Which all puts a little perspective to the tale.
(Photo: https://www.amazon.com/Robinson-Crusoe-Oxford-Worlds-Classics/dp/0199553971/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=robinson+crusoe+oxford&qid=1551648511&s=gateway&sr=8-1)