Book Review: A Tale of of a Tub by Jonathan Swift

I've been struggling with molding these book reviews into a more blog friendly framework. Struggling with, and failing, in my opinion. At least it's something different, is the way I look at it. However- all that ends today with this write up of Jonathan Swift's 1704 classic "A Tale of a Tub."

You see, in 1704 the world was experiencing a proliferation of "new media" similar to what we're seeing today on the internet. Now, it's blogs; then it was pamphlets. A rise in literacy coupled with wider access to printing technology and lowered printing costs combined to create a newly democratic era of opinion. SOUND FAMILIAR?

"Tale of a Tub" is putatively a ham handed parable about a man with three sons, Peter, Martin & Jack. The man is god, his sons represent the Catholic Church, the Church of England and Protestants. Interspersed with the "story" chapters are numerous digressions, where the narrator- who is, in fact, supposed to come off as an idiot- makes numerous observations about the "culture of criticism" circa 1700 or so. You need to have some background in the era to appreciate quips about ancient vs. modern man or to chuckle out loud about the narrator's analysis of the history of criticism, but underneath the oblique references is some trenchant humor about the ease with which the newly empowered feel about venturing their (moronic) opinions about anything & everything.

In fact, it's easy to see how one might adapt this format into a similar critique of today's "snarky" blog culture. Every man and woman a critic, and every critic a know it all. In "Tale of a Tub" Swift calls' these folks stupid and it makes me wonder- where is our Jonathan Swift?

Book Review: Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe

DANIEL DEFOE



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Hard to believe that there was a time when Robinson Crusoe wasn't deeply embedded in the western pysche. As I sit here on my couch, it's easy to come up with a dozen contemporary reference points: Lost, that shitty Tom Hanks movie...um... well you get the idea. Two contemporary reference points. Like Moll Flanders, Defoe wrote Robinson Crusoe as a "biography", and like Flanders, people believed it. In fact, for many it is the character, not the author that people know and remember.

Regardless, Crusoe is an important precursor to the novel and after reading the book, its easy to see why. Defoe's protagionist is recognizable as a modern hero. Before I started Crusoe I had the vague idea that the book would start and end with him marooned on a desert island. Not so. Crusoe starts out as a young lad in the UK. He wants to go to see, his dad tells him to stay home. He goes anyways. He hooks up with some Portugese traders, gets captured by a Moorish pirate, escapes, is rescued off the coast of Africa, ends up in Brazil, starts a plantation, goes on an expedition to capture slaves(!) AND THEN he gets shipwrecked.

So. He's on the island, and he builds his own little world. The meat of the book alternates between his explaining his various innovations (builds a goat pen, farms some rice, builds a house) and making exhortations to god about his miserable fate/how lucky his is not to be dead.) This goes on for roughly 24 years(only 150 pages of text, tho.) Meanwhile I'm thinking, "Didn't he have a sidekick? Friday? Isn't Friday in this book?"

And then- voila- Friday shows up- Crusoe rescues him from some Carribean cannibals- and from there Crusoe's solitude is broken. Despite the archaic spelling/grammar & syntax Crusoe is a quick, easy read. It's almost like reading some kind of literary archetype- a kind of narrative that lies at the center of who we are as modern individuals.

I think individualism is at the center of Robinson Crusoe. Crusoe's solitude is an early example of an internal, subjective narrative. We all live in Crusoe's world now, but it's easy to see why it was such a smash in 1719- it must have spoken deeply to the rise in individualism that coincided with with the rise of other aspects of modernity in the 18th century.

BooK Review: Moll Flanders by Daniel DeFoe

Moll Flanders was first published in 1722. It was written by Daniel Defoe, three years after he had a huge success with Robinson Cruesoe. Defoe didn't start writing fiction until his mid-50s- before then he was a journalist/rabble rouser/terrible business man (the chapters in Moll Flanders that describe the debtors prison of Newgate are written with such accuracy because Defoe himself spent time at Newgate).

Flander's is written in the form of an actual biography- writing fiction at that time and place was considered a sin. There are no chapter breaks, spelling and punctuation are intermittent. At first I was worried that the utter lack of form and structure would make Moll kind of a bummer but the unfamiliarity of the form was counterbalanced by the... bawdiness? The ribaldry? The lewdness?

I tell ya'- Us Magazine and TMZ got nothing on ole' Moll Flanders. Moll is an orphan. She's taken in by a local town official. Both of the son's of the family fall in love with her, one takes her for his whore/mistress, the other one wants her to marry him. Then she gets married to her brother (unkowingly!). She moves to Virginia, moves back, falls for a banker, but marries a wealthy gentleman but it turns out he has no money, becomes a thief, gets caught and moves back to Virginia.

It's no wonder that this story has been made and remade time and time and time again into movies, tv mini series and made for tv movies. Time and time again I found myself thinking, "this was published in 1722?" It's no wonder the Puritans were disgusted with English culture and left for America!

Reading Moll Flanders rather put my conscience at ease about societie's obsession with the tawdry details of "tabloid" culture. Apparently, it's been the same way since the very birth of the novel itself. Perez Hilton, TMZ, Jerry Springer & Moll Flanders. It just takes time for the appreciation to grow!