Volume 31, Number 1 · February 2, 1984
Trouble in Paradise
By Luc Sante
The Galapagos Affair
by John Treherne
Random House, 223 pp., $15.95
One of the signs that the world has grown smaller is that Robinson Crusoe is no longer the archetype of popular literature it once was. Almost from its publication, in 1719, the machinery of imitation and pastiche ground out a voluminous yield. Among the best-known examples are Johann David Wyss's Swiss Family Robinson (1812) and the several variations wrought by Jules Verne; the very last might be those two films of the early 1960s, Space Family Robinson and Robinson Crusoe on Mars. The lure of Robinsonism certainly depended on the romance of the unspoiled and faraway; what distinguished it from mere noble savagery was the premise of civilized beings in an uninhabited locale. The blank slate allows for society-building in its pure state, a kind of victimless colonialism.
Review, 1650 words
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