I read and reread "Robinson Crusoe" many times in my childhood and teen years. Now that I spotted it among the first 100 books of "1001 Books to Read Before you Die" list here on GR, I just had to mark it as Read.;)

رابینسون کروزو یک ماجراجویی معنوی‌ست رابینسون در جزیره‌ای که فقط خودش گیر افتاده با هوش خودش و کمترین امکانات قلمروی خودش رو بنا می‌کنه که نزدیک به سی سال از عمر خودش رو تنها در جزیره زندگی می‌کنه. این تنهایی و آزادی باعث میشه که اون روح گناه کار خودش رو تطهیر کنه. این داستان خودپروری و شکرگزاری و امید رو به ما نشون میده.

Five stars for the first 2/3, two stars for the rest.

I thought most of this book was gripping. The early adventures are exciting, and shot through with the dread of ominous prophesy. The infamous long sections on the island where nothing happens and we get detailed logistics of house-building and tool-making... I found these all fascinating. The industriousness and cleverness Crusoe displays as he turns whatever he can to his meager advantage are inspiring-- literally, I was inspired. The religious meditations on redemption and deliverance and greed are sincere and moving.

How do you build up Western civilization from scratch? In this novel we witness an evolution that starts with its narrator sleeping in the trees like an animal, finds him discovering agriculture almost accidentally, and depicts his painstaking recreation of many staples we take for granted, including shovels, baskets and umbrellas. I may lose my credibility by confessing that, in fact, this book sometimes reminded me of a video game, in which you start helpless and alone, and slowly "power up" until you come to dominate the land. There are even some attempts at humor, although they are somewhat buried in the historical distance of the novel's voice.

But then...  It all goes downhill, at least for this reader. I'm not one of those upset by the depiction of the "savage wretches", or the arguments for the superiority of Western civilization over the Indians' made again and again in the last part of the book. Nor am I more than a little annoyed that his friend Friday willingly and immediately became, without anyone thinking twice about it, the white Western Crusoe's slave. This novel is a product of its time and place, and it's not hard to see the thing from the narrator's point of view-- who among us did not feel alienated by the descriptions of the natives' cannibalism, and a kinship with the good English captain saved by Crusoe?

No, my problem with the book's last act is that is was boring, ordinary and ill-plotted. The magic of Crusoe imprisoned on his island in complete isolation for decades was gone. Instead we suddenly get a lot of guests: first Friday (interesting for a while), then a Spanish sailor, then Friday's father (what?), and finally the party is really spoiled by the English captain and his crew, engaged in a mutinous rebellion we don't care much about.

There is a deadness of mood that afflicts all of these final proceedings: the plotting to seize the English ship, the return to England and Lisbon, the completely random encounter with wolves in the French mountains, even the return to the island. It's like the last 100 pages are just a first draft. The facts are spelled out, but the timing feels off, and, even worse, we feel almost no emotional connection with the narrator. The incredible event of his rebirth into society after decades of solitary torment is barely described. We who attended him over the years, who witnessed his ongoing struggles with God, the protracted miracle of the production of bread, and the slow transformation from a roguish youth into a wise philosophical middle-aged man-- we feel we deserve more.


Incidentally, as it's always interesting to see how language evolves over the centuries, I'm happy to say that this book is filled with words that are used slightly differently from what we're used to. Like the narrator hidden behind a tree, wondering if he should "discover" himself to his enemy ("dis-cover"). It adds entertainment, and some feeling of linguistic depth, to the experience of reading Robinson Crusoe.

Now and then it's good to go back and read a book written three hundred years or so ago. The mind-shift necessary you need to make to enjoy the book keeps your brain limber, cleans the mental attic of the literary clutter that has accumulated- that a book needs to be fast-paced, that the dialogue needs to be witty and revealing, that long descriptions are boring. So you read a book that doesn't meet any of the standards someone has told you a good book should meet and you still enjoy it because somehow you allowed yourself to enter and accept the author's and the book's world. I say this because I think Robinson Crusoe is a book that doesn't quite transcend its time, like say Don Quixote, a book that is both of its time but also magically contemporary. Robinson Crusoe's world is the world of 18th century England, a world where a person's highest achievement is the use of reason to make life more comfortable. Crusoe's challenge is twofold. Externally, he needs to use his reason to survive. Internally, he must use his reason to conquer fear and despair. This account of Robinson Crusoe's internal journey was an unexpected pleasure. It is a journey that we can all identify with - the journey from anger at our hardship to resignation and acceptance to tranquillity and peace to end finally in gratitude for life itself, despite the hardship, which is as good a way as any to define joy. Crusoe is aided in this journey by the Bible he rescued and by prayer, but really the mental transformation is more the result of reason, of the ability of Crusoe to direct his thoughts, through constant practice, in one particular direction and away from another. Defoe's gods are, when all is said and done, reason and will. There were a lot of things about this book that I would "fix" if I were an editor and this came across my desk in 2014. I would throw in some kind of sexual desire or sexual fantasies of some kind of which there are unrealistically none in this book. I would have Defoe admire trees and plants and animals a little more for their beauty and less for their potential use as shelter or food. Of course Friday would be treated as an equal to Crusoe and not as a servant. But this book was written in 1719 and not 2014. It belongs there so when you read it let yourself go, surrender yourself to that time and those thoughts and enjoy and take simply what the book gives.

⭐⭐⭐⭐
Un clásico muy bello que me recomendaron hace muchos años y tenía pendiente.!
Me ha gustado tanto que la última mitad del libro literalmente la he devorado.
Le puse 4 estrellas porque me pareció un poco lento, pero me ha entretenido mucho y está muuuy bien escrito. No se le puede poner menos!

L'archetipo

Riletto dopo oltre quarant'anni,, esperienza radicalmente diversa.
C'è dentro tutto: religione scienza e tecnica; paura ed attrazione verso l'ignoto ed il diverso; economia, innovazione e lotta di classe; tolleranza e solidarietà; e poi, potere della scrittura e nascita del romanzo moderno.
Se noi occidentali proviamo a risalire sul come si sono formate le nostre opinioni più consolidate,, condivise ed avversate, risalendo a ritroso, alla fine passiamo di qui.
Proviamo ad immaginare tutta la produzione culturale come un immenso gioco di specchi che si riflettono l'un l'altro: questo è certamente uno dei più potenti.

There are reasons that some books are considered classics—even after many years, they still have things to say to us. Robinson Crusoe is one of those stories. I first encountered it as a child, in comic book form (anyone else remember Classics Illustrated?) and I remember reading it numerous times and then day dreaming about how I would survive on a desert island. And of course, it is often asked “If you could take only one book (or five, or whatever number) of books with you to entertain you while so stranded, which one(s) would it be?” Poor old Robinson Crusoe seems to have only had the Bible, which is rather low on entertainment value, although it does have good bits.

Now the graphic edition of RC, although fairly true to the original, was very abridged (and rightly so, for the juvenile crowd). As is so often the case, I found it fascinating to read the adult version in comparison. I’ll say right up front, that if archaic spellings and language annoy you, you would be best to stick to the modernized versions.

Originally written in the early 1700s, Robinson Crusoe is a peek back in time into the attitudes and values of that day. No one questions that Christianity is the best religion (although there is a tug-of-war between Catholicism and Protestantism). Slavery and class inequality are just facts of life. European culture trumps all other cultures. Members of non-European cultures are barbarians and savages, suspected of all kinds of indecent behavior right from running around unclothed up to and including cannibalism. Dafoe really got into describing the “cannibal feasts” happening on the shores of Crusoe’s island. This kind of thing has been happening since the dawn of time—dehumanize those who are not like you so that you can feel morally superior. After all, we get the word barbarian from the Ancient Greeks, who perceived anyone who didn’t speak Greek as saying “Bar, bar, bar….” Witches and Jews, among many other persecuted groups have been subject to the same accusations. The target moves, but the argument remains the same.

I think Dafoe meant Robinson Crusoe to be a way to steer the worldly reader into the fold of Christianity. The young Crusoe is unconcerned with things spiritual and out to experience what the world has to offer him (travel, booze, money—the good stuff). It really isn’t until he has been alone on his island for many years into his 28 year stay that he finally “finds religion.” And he still doesn’t really examine his beliefs until he is trying to teach them to his rescued “savage” Friday. SPOILER ALERT (if such a thing exists for a 300 year old work of fiction) he ends up rescued, returned to “civilization,” and wealthy—well rewarded for his faith. I think if Robinson Crusoe was alive in the 21st century, he would be an avid admirer of books like The Secret, where the power of positive thinking can get you whatever your little heart desires!

Part of the story I never knew before: Crusoe’s defying his parents to go see the world, his time in Brazil before his shipwreck, and his trip back to England after his rescue. I was also very struck by the difficulty of shifting money from place to place and having someone to trust with finances. Not that our big banks have proven to be eminently trustworthy, but at least they have made international commerce less of a crap shoot than it used to be.

An interesting look at a time and cultural space that no longer exists.

There can not be many classics WORSE than this book. It might be decently written. And it might be a classic. For that I'll give it 2 stars instead of 1. But it's boring! I really don't know why this is a classic.

But you won't waste much time reading it. It'll take you 3 hours to read it, tops. This isn't really a book but more of a pamphlet.

HOW TO WRITE YOUR OWN ROBINSON CRUSOE:
#1 Create the start of a plot line that sounds very interesting. For instance, a man being marooned on an island and having to struggle for survival.
#2 Think of descriptive sentences. "His hair was long and coarse from a diet consisting mainly of cheese and pine nuts." Then cram a bunch of those together in an unsatisfying way: "The cheese came from the goats that he had learned over time to domesticate and keep in a small pin which was left alone except when the tiger came to prowl. He gathered the pine nuts from a tree that he had to examine to make sure wasn't poisonous first. He only did a half decent job at the inspection as he suffered from severe bloating as a reaction to the nuts. Later he found trees that would serve better as a main nutritional suplement."
#3 Let the reader keep thinking that you will develop the interesting plot line.
#4 End the book without developing a plot line at all, but keeping it sufficiently short and resolved enough that the reader won't all-together care.

tThere is something inherently absurd about any sort of qualitative evaluation (a la "how many stars do I give this on goodreads?") by a twenty-first century reader of a book like Robinson Crusoe. Published in 1719, it embodies a rather paradoxical identity crisis of being a novel that was written before novels really existed. It doesn't play by the rules -- simply because there were no rules when it was written. There are a lot of unfamiliar things that will put off, or even disgust, the modern reader. No, there really isn't anything along the lines of what we'd call "character development." Yes, Robinson is going to kill a bunch of "savages" and try to impart the word of God those he chooses not to kill. For readers who have trouble suspending their twenty-first century sensibilities, these are dangerous waters indeed.

tBut if you can get past all the imperialist hoo-ha and the passages that are just flat-out dull (I mean, there are quite a few), there's something about this book that is truly amazing -- and still would be, even if you attempted to scrub off the Important-with-a-capital-I stamp that the crusty old keepers of the literary canon have branded upon it. Robinson Crusoe is, at its core, a simple and affecting story about what it means to be human. Had I read that sentence I just wrote three weeks ago, I would have thought it a hollow cliche, but maybe because it is such a cliche, there are really so few books that invite us to consider our humanity in its most basic and elemental form. You can't read this book without putting yourself in Crusoe's shoes; would I be going to all this work just to harvest some corn, or would I have completely given up the will to survive by now? At what point is a single, isolated human life not worth living anymore? You ask yourself a lot of humbling questions while reading this book. Maybe Robinson's lack of character enables us to see ourselves in him more readily; plenty of people must have felt compelled to do this, or else we'd have the sad, sad fate of living in a world without Gilligan's Island (among a number of other TV shows.) The story of Robinson Crusoe ripples through our culture immeasurably.

tDoes this make up for the fact that sometimes it's insanely boring? For me, kind of. For everybody? Probably not. Maybe for you, if you are one of those awful people who think pirates jokes are indiscriminately funny, in which case, God help you. Regardless, I enjoyed this book quite a bit.

Eh, it's a bit boring. A guy writes about his time on an island for twenty years, that's essentially it. But it's okay, he somehow practically builds a paradise villa, has a zoo, a bakery, numerous crops, an entire ships worth of supplies, he has more food on that island than I probably have in my entire house!

Robinson Crusoe is one of literature classics and for me, a reference in the construction of the novel I'm writing (and that I would love to share with all of you very soon). I love the stories of survival, travel and where the sea plays a vital role in the development of the story. Robinson Crusoe is the shipwrecked prototype we all have in our minds and it isn't a coincidence that is the most famous. It's an excellent novel and I recommend it to all those who, like me, love the kind of stories in which human nature is put to its limits.

Spanish version:
Robinson Crusoe es un clásico de la literatura y para mí un referente en la construcción de la novela que estoy escribiendo. Adoro las historias de supervivencia, de viajes y en las que el mar juega un papel fundamental en el desarrollo de la historia. Robinson Crusoe es el prototipo de náufrago que todos tenemos en nuestras mentes y no es casualidad que sea el más famoso. Es una novela excelente y la recomiendo a todos aquellos que como yo, les gusten este tipo de historias extremas en las que la naturaleza del ser humano se pone al límite.

Hoo-boy!
I'm surprised and amazed and dismayed by the ex post facto muy-contempo correct-nosity readings below...shouldn't be, I guess, but am.
Gee whillikers, kids, uhm, here's one of the great social and, perhaps even more, spiritual documents of Western Civ, and it's a ripping read that declared ongoing archetypes, and it's getting dissed for...for being a bit blind to its own time. Which of us won't end up wishing for at least that when our tombstone gets knocked over?
'sides which, how many first novelists can say they wrote the actual first novel? Hmmm?