I don't often give one-star reviews; I try not to waste time reading books that might merit them.

I didn't like the excerpts of Gulliver's Travels that were assigned in grade school; when assigned the whole thing at university, I thought perhaps my capacity to appreciate it might have grown.

Nope.

Despite numerous juvenile adaptations, this is most definitely NOT a story fit for children. It's scarcely fit for anyone: its "story" gets in the way of its satire, and its satire gets in the way of its story. Swift should have stuck to essays.

Gulliver's Travels is interesting as a historical work, but as an example of "classic English fiction" it has been grossly misfiled.

Swift was an oddball.
Should this still be required reading in schools? (Why don't we all simply read MORE in school? More of everything.) At the very least, keep this one on the reading list.

Not only is this book fun for the whole family, if you read between the lines, it's disturbing - like all the best children's classics. Reading it as an adult is recommended too. The social commentary is well-put and the adventure is intriguing.

The language is, of course, rather dusty, but Swift manages to keep the story moving without too many videlicets.

Taking place in a time when every inch of the world was not available for viewing on Google Earth, when mystery still suffused our understanding of the planet and its inner workings, it offers an escape from the mundane. This book convinced many people of the existence of Lilliputians and Houyhnhnms once upon a time. It is convincing in a way, as it is often impossible to tell when Swift is giving it to you straight. His other short satires and that pamphlet about eating babies provide plenty of examples.

It is unfortunate that most of his other voluminous writings do not ooze magic and fantasy as does this one, though they make use of the absurd and grotesque. He was a jokester at heart, but also an important literary figure. His style is integral to the development of the sarcastic novel throughout history, of which there are now innumerable examples.

It should continue to be read for the fact that it succeeds at firing up the imagination. You are forced to confront the unimagined, to wrestle with the meaning of humanity's place in the cosmos. It will make you smile along the way, and it is challenging enough to develop that oft-neglected part of the brain which provides a constant stream of commentary on our everyday life. By reading books like these, children might be prevented from speaking with the mental shortcuts provided by media. There is something to be said about sophistication, and Gulliver's Travels has just enough of it to whet the blade of the wit.

I taught this book, portions of it, for a couple decades in a sophomore survey of "world"/mostly Western lit. (Fine with me, since I only teach languages I can read--Russian, Latin, Fr and Ital, sometimes English. I'd say GT is Swift's second-best book, behind Battle of the Books and a Tale of a Tub ( I think they were published together, but do not recall.) Those are brilliant and learned--two qualities he did his best to suppress as he invented the novel, along with Defoe and Fielding.

Swift is a remarkable writer, the first English radical to master satirical irony that made his radicalism palatable, even delightful. Of course, he's savage on America--" I have heard, from an American of my acquaintance, that the human child, in its first year, is a tasty morsel..." His savage satire on British treatment of Ireland, in A Modest Proposal. Apologies to Dr Swift, for reducing his prose to mine; I am too lazy to reach him down off the shelf now at 1 AM, after a day of splitting beautiful, red-steaked juniper wood for kindling this winter.

GT I have a long history with, since it was the ONLY book required of entering freshman to read the summer before freshman year at the best college in the country, back then: Amherst. When we all arrived on campus, Prof G Armour Craig spoke in Johnson Chapel on how GT was a fair approximation of four years at college: arriving feeling swollen with the pride of our HS achievement; sophomores feeling tiny in comparison with all their competitors, and with what they'd learned freshman year; juniors, choosing a major, entranced with "science," new knowledge they major in; seniors, growing doubtful of human achievement, their fellow yahoos.
Turned out, Armour Craig was my freshman writing teacher, daily provocative assignments, "Did you ever lie? Tell of a time when you lied." Next day," What were you doing with language when you lied? How was it possible to use words that did not convey meaning?" Etc. For every class, for the whole semester--and the whole year. Craig's colleague, Ted Baird would enter his class the first day in Appleton Hal, ground (literally) floor, and say, pointing at the window, "What's that?" Some hapless freshman, "A window?" TB, "No, it's a door--can't you see I just entered through it?" Then he'd throw his hat in the wastebasket, "What's that?" Student," A Wastebasket." TB, "No, it's a hatrack--can't you see I placed my hat there?"
I also recall brilliant fellow freshmen in freshman comp (and Humanities, where Rolfe Humphries taught my freshman humaniteis class--his own translation of Vergil, at the time used all over the country (a visiting Harvard freshman was amazed a senior prof taught freshman, but at AmColl, they all did--really taught, read our papers. Now they're all "student-centered" --and avoid reading student papers.) One fellow freshman fixed the Hubble space Telescope; one became the 12th most published scientist in the world, with 800+ publications.

"And he gave it for his opinion, "that whoever could make two ears of corn, or two blades of grass, to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and do more essential service to his country, than the whole race of politicians put together."

I don't think there will ever be a time when Gulliver's Travels doesn't feel like a perfect mirror of humankind. I remember the first time I read it, as a child. I was immeasurably impressed with the sudden insight that things are small or great depending on comparison with other things, and that there are no absolute values. That knowledge, combined with the idea that you learn to understand yourself by seeing your peculiarities through the eyes of people who do not share your social and cultural background, helped me navigate my globetrotting childhood. When I reread the Travels as a grown-up, I focused more on the political satire, finding pleasure in discovering that the typical idiocies of my own time apparently had their correspondences centuries ago. Somehow, that made life easier to bear.

But now I am beginning to wonder. Are the yahoos degenerating further? When will they hit rock bottom? And could we maybe ship off some of our worst yahoos to Lilliput, where they can claim they are great without lying?

Thank Goodness there are authors like Swift, who are capable of making humanists in despair laugh on dark November nights after reading the never-ending misery called news. Oh Lordy, I wish they were fake.

But they are likely to mirror the world - without the wit and irony that Swift added to make life endurable, enjoyable even! That is a quality in an author that is always needed, now more than ever!

Yahooooooooooooooooo!

انسان ها یاهوو هستند و تا ابد یاهوو خواهند ماند.

خیلی قشنگ بود :)

A bit slow. However liked the fact, that humans adapt to situations and so did Gulliver when he was among the short heightened individuals. He picked up their ways and even started enjoying his time with him. When he finally went back to his own people he dreaded it the most as he became fond of the short heightened people during his stay with them.

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If you've never heard of Jonathan Swift before, perhaps this will jog your memory... In one of his other famous works, A Modest Proposal, he offers a suggestion that we should eat babies in order to survive.



Whaaaaat? You're probably thinking I'm a nut job for talking about this. But a few things to remember...

1. Swift is Irish. So it's OK. They can say those sort of things and get away with. And so can I. Because I'm Irish. Oh... and it's all satire. So let's relax a bit. :P

2. A Modest Proposal is not the point of this review. Swift's other famous work, Gulliver's Travels, is the point of this review.

3. Swift wrote these novels / essays about 300 years ago. Yes, you read that correctly. 300 years ago.

4. The government controlled everything. He was a rebel. But a good one. And his works are absolutely fantastic. On to Gulliver's Travels.

5. This may be where the word "yahoo" comes from. LOL

This is one where I just don't want to ruin the story. Gulliver encounters several new species of people on his travels, most notably the Brobdingnag folks and the Lilliputians. Basically, the land of really tiny people and really huge people. But don't think this is a non-politically correct book, where he's saying negative things about giants, midgets, short people, tall people, etc. It's satire and 300 years old. It's the language of the past. He's commenting on society's values, the things people say/do, who's hovering over whom, etc. He's actually "standing up for the [wo]man."

It's such an absurdist story that you undoubtedly enjoy it. Yes, its language is a little stilted. And it's written in a way where sometimes the classics can be painful. I admit it. I love them, but I admit it. If you need something satirical, read a few chapters. Pick the first two voyages. It's a bit lengthy, but you'll get the drift even skimming a little bit. Everything he has to say is still mostly pertinent to how we feel about government today, just different priorities and levels of occurrence. But when you can input all the things we're feeling and thinking into a entirely new made-up race or breed of people, showing the silliness of what is going on in politics and culture, it's a good laugh worth experiencing. It was one of the fastest published and absorbed works of literature in history. People ate it up! America wasn't even a country when this was published!!!



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For those new to me or my reviews... here's the scoop: I read A LOT. I write A LOT. And now I blog A LOT. First the book review goes on Goodreads, and then I send it on over to my WordPress blog at https://thisismytruthnow.com, where you'll also find TV & Film reviews, the revealing and introspective 365 Daily Challenge and lots of blogging about places I've visited all over the world. And you can find all my social media profiles to get the details on the who/what/when/where and my pictures. Leave a comment and let me know what you think. Vote in the poll and ratings. Thanks for stopping by. Note: All written content is my original creation and copyrighted to me, but the graphics and images were linked from other sites and belong to them. Many thanks to their original creators.

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This book, along with Robinson Crusoe and The Scarlet Letter, forms an unholy trinity of the driest, dullest classics I've ever read. I'm not intimately familiar with the British political system in the 18th Century - hell, I'm not even vaguely familiar with it - nor do I particularly care to be, so obviously the satire went flying right over my head. But even with that in mind, the book could still have been entertaining. It just wasn't. There was way too much measuring, way too much minutiae, and for someone who constantly used the phrase "I will not trouble the reader with" ... you troubled me with a lot of shit.

I'm thrilled to have finally finished this, after starting it three weeks shy of a year ago. I almost cried tears of pure joy when, thinking I had another twenty pages to go, I turned the e-page to find a biography of Swift. My pain had ended. Halle-fucking-lujah!

It is difficult to describe what Swift's masterpiece means to me. Gulliver's Travels is a book that I will probably be grappling with for the rest of my life, and I mean that in a good way. It is a savage jeu d'esprit, a book about religion with no mention of God, a philosophical end-game written in unadorned prose, a deeply pessimistic statement on human nature, a lacerating attack on the primacy of Reason in Englightenment thought, a pacifist tract, and, yes, one of the funniest books ever written. An earlier Penguin edition had a foreword by British critic (and MP!) Michael Foot that is one of the most penetrating pieces of literary analysis I have ever read.

My understanding of Gulliver's Travels was that it is a children/young adult adventure story. I really don't know how I formed this opinion, but it was how I viewed this book until now. I was very much surprised to find that this is no children/YA story, nor an ordinary adventure story. It is a prosaic satire directed at human nature and human conduct. There is adventure of course, but only to provide the background to work on satire.

The story consists of four different voyages of Gulliver and the many adventures that he encounters in the process. Swift uses Gulliver's experiences during these adventure and his trials to satirize the human nature and human conduct generally. There is no branch that escapes Swift's satire. The human greed for power and avarice are two areas that meet heavily with his satire. Under the first category, European governments (including his own), their politics, their diplomacy and international relations comes under heavy blows. Under the second category, many individuals ranging from politicians, lawyers, doctors to common man and woman suffer from his lashes.

The story is written in a "Voltairean" style. It was partly interesting, partly boring, partly annoying and partly offensive. I cannot really say that I "liked" the story, but this odd combination kept me going through it. And when I finished reading my heart was set for a 3 star rating which means that I must have enjoyed it enough to view it in a favourable light. According to Wikipedia, Swift has claimed to have written the book "to vex the world rather than divert it'. I certainly think he achieved his objective. :) And for my part, I think I've done fairly well and paid him his due. :)

Tiny manifestations of human social models

One of the earliest forms of satire, just as Twains Yankee and Cervantes Don Quichote, but not that good
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3...
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...
That´s simply because Swift isn´t such a talented, solid writer as Cervantes and not as ingenious as Twain. Swift tries to

Make some clever allegories about the stupidity of imbalanced power structures
And yes, it´s witty and somewhat deep, but it´s just not really absorbing because Swift hasn´t the same intuition and talent for creative writing, leading to permanently losing focus while reading. What is interesting is the

Description of different cultures of that time
I didn´t dig that deep, but history nerds will definitively find interesting connections and be able to compare and drivel for hours. As with many century old classics, a bit of racism and discrimination can´t be kept out of the mix, but it´s modest in comparision to other works like for instance the terrible Robinson Crusoe. All in all, it´s a short, not as exhausting work as the mentioned Don Quichote and can rather be seen as an average, entertaining short story collection with one, uniting character. I´ve seen that Swift has

Written some other satirical stuff
That hugely varies in quality and thereby
ratings. Sadly it´s kind of tricky to choose the good ones, but no matter how good or bad the stuff is, it shows the immense power of satire, the most important way to criticize and open minds. Because people don´t like being bored by proselytizing progressive forces, no matter how true, right, and good their intentions are, they prefer

Subtle subtext behind the seemingly trivial and superficial satire
That´s what the really good high class comedy does, hiding the message of being aware of the malfunctionings and grievances of societies by ridiculing the ones causing them. Swift does this far too direct in the reader´s face and kills many subtilities that way. That´s also the reason why the censors of the time immediately recognized the messages and exterminated everything that was deemed too hot and critical, reducing the old editions of the work to a children´s book after having eliminated everything that could get the rulers angry.

Because of the rarity of witty classic writing and because it´s not that long and easy to consume it´s still no bad choice for skimming and scanning action, especially if one is interested in the theory of humor and how traditions, nationalism, patriotism, sociology, etc yada yada yada, of that time worked.

Tropes show how literature is conceptualized and created and which mixture of elements makes works and genres unique:
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...

يا الله على جمال الرواية كلها، وجمال الهوينهم بالذات!