"ROBINSON CRUSOE"
Sir.-Your film critic’s able review of Robinson Crusoe offers food for thought. There is a mystery attached to the original story which has never been explained. How came Defoe, the grimy journalist and servant-girl’s novelist, to write a book that has achieved worldwide success? One may cite Defoe’s career, his secondary novels, his journalistic instinct, and the whole Alexander Selkirk business; but these account only for a clever book-they do not explain the unique "autocracy of + Robinson Crusoe. Here is a story that has touched mankind; yet it has no heroine, no loveinterest, and not a single passage or episode to evoke tears or laughter. It is generally considered to be the best of all stories for boys, yet it was written primarily for adults. As generation succeeded generation of readers, the book’s lack of psychological interest withdrew it more and more from adult attention, while its details, strung on one significant thread of fate-its preoccupation with the plain facts of everyday routine existence-proved an irresistible magnet to the juvenile mind. It is clear that in the writing of this story Defoe was influenced by personal experience. He had known loneliness, and a debtor’s prison may well have seemed to him as a desert island. When bidding farewell, in 1712, to the readers of his Review, he wrote: "I have learnt more philosophy in the schoo] of affliction than at the academy, and more divinity than from the pulpit; in prison I have learnt to know that liberty does not consist in open doors, , . I have seen the rough side of the world as well as the smooth, and in less then half a year I have tasted the difference between the closet of a king and the dungeon of Newgate." Here, surely, is the basis of Crusoe’s melancholy. His figure, with its goat-skin cap, its umbrella and its parrot, has known only one temporary rival in later history-that of Charlie Chaplin, with bowler hat, twirling cane and toothbrush moustache, But Crusoe remains an imperishable memory.
L. D.
AUSTIN
(Wellington).
Permanent link to this item
Hononga pūmau ki tēnei tūemi
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19550128.2.12.6
Bibliographic details
Ngā taipitopito pukapuka
New Zealand Listener, Volume 32, Issue 809, 28 January 1955, Page 5
Word count
Tapeke kupu
342"ROBINSON CRUSOE" New Zealand Listener, Volume 32, Issue 809, 28 January 1955, Page 5
Using this item
Te whakamahi i tēnei tūemi
Material in this publication is protected by copyright.
Are Media Limited has granted permission to the National Library of New Zealand Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa to develop and maintain this content online. You can search, browse, print and download for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from Are Media Limited for any other use.
Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
Copyright in the Denis Glover serial Hot Water Sailor published in 1959 is owned by Pia Glover. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this serial and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the Listener. You can search, browse, and print this serial for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from Pia Glover for any other use.
Log in