f7d9395c_atings_and_reviews___Gwern_net__Review
[Title] Perseverance island: or, The Robinson Crusoe of the nineteenth century [Author] Douglas Frazar [Rating] ★★★ [Year] 0 [Read] 2014/12/13 [Review] 
(130k words; 2h) I read the Project Gutenberg HTML edition with illustrations. An obscure Robinsonade proper, I was recommended it when a reader mentioned it as a counterpoint to my complaint that in Robinson Cruse, Crusoe is furnished with almost an entire ship of supplies and an island of abundance. Indeed, the preface of PI runs In all works of the Robinson Crusoe type, the wreck is always near at hand, the powder dry and preserved, and the days for rafting the same ashore calm and pleasant. This unfortunate had no such accessories; and his story proves the limitless ingenuity and invention of man, and portrays the works and achievements of a castaway, who, thrown ashore almost literally naked upon a desert isle, is able by the use of his brains, the skill of his hands, and a practical knowledge of the common arts and sciences, to far surpass the achievements of all his predecessors, and to surround himself with implements of power and science utterly beyond the reach of his prototype, who had his wreck as a reservoir from which to draw his munitions. This sounded promising. While detailed how-tos and manuals can be crushingly boring, a good narrative can weave them in and be both educational & interesting. (Neal Stephenson manages this sometimes.) It starts off sensibly enough, with the expected disaster as part of a sequence of gradually worsening events that eventually strands him on an unknown island. Our protagonist is part of a colonization mission, but don’t worry, he doesn’t get a colony’s worth of equipment dumped on him: just his clothes, a few books, and an anchor. This seems like a good start. It’s surprising when he manufactures nails out of his shoes, but boots did use to have nails in them and it’s clever, so no foul there. He immediately secures his priorities of food and water, perhaps in a little more baroque fashion than expected (I didn’t really follow the pipe set up), and then he makes a… “lamp-tower”. No, not for signaling passing ships. Just so he doesn’t have to rekindle fire with his flint and nails. And the lamps are powered by oil. (The oil is from the livers of sharks he spears. Of course?) This is the first sign of trouble with the narrative. The second sign comes when instead of immediately exploring the island like any sane person would, days pass as he is made to refine his landing spot and create a dwelling and begin manufacturing tools and planting seeds. …OK? He explores the island and finds an absurd number of resources. Besides the sharks and turtles he’s feasted on, he finds wild goats (and why haven’t they denuded the island?) and even more: “Wild goats, quail, tortoise, tobacco, wild ducks, trout, sweet potatoes, mussels…Find coal and sulphur, seals, more turtles, gulls, etc.” I’m not sure what sort of tropical island yields all that and coal and sulphur. But wait, there’s more: there’s also saltpetre, iron, pearl oysters, gold mines, penguins, and sea serpents! And that’s not even covering all the stuff he makes; he apparently is some sort of superhuman genius master of all trades who can make anything on the first try without ever injuring himself. Mithridates over on Amazon puts it well: The book does not live up to this vaulted goal - but rather dissolves into utter ridiculous and pathetic shows of limitless (and impossible) manifestations of human ingenuity (or rather magical conjuring experiments of every necessary mineral, metal, technology). These progression of these chapter subject headings illustrates my point -Hat Making, Knife Hammer and Spear, Discovery of Coal, Discovery of Sulphur, Steel, Cement, Iron, Astrolabe, Rifles, Submarine (Goat Powered), Steam Yacht, and eventually Chess and Backgammon (With a Goat). I understand that this is a ‘realistic’ form of fantasy writing but there are extremes to the ingenuity of man and the availability of an island with all the resources of the world. So is Frazar actually exploring the ingenuity of man? Or rather what man could do in a fantasy world? Anyone can do anything in a fantasy world… But that said, I suppose the genre had been relatively sucked dry by his illustrious predecessors - Verne and Defoe - and showing the humanity of goats was Frazar’s cherished original idea. (One wonders what Frazar would have made of I am a Pencil…) If Frazar had dropped half of the elements and contented himself with just one of the peak technologies (steam boat would have made the most sense, although I think readers would still object at the idea of a desert island with both coal and iron reserves), the realism might have been preserved. But as it is? It’s ridiculous as any semblance of a realistic narrative. A castaway would have made a lighthouse on the bluffs of the island, and then been busied with maintenance of his food supplies, clothing, and shelter, lacking much practical experience in primitive methods of maintenance, resources, tools, economies of scale or the benefits of specialization. He would not accomplish 1/100th of what the protagonist supposedly does on his own in a decade or so. I must defend the honor of the goats, however: the narrator is perfectly clear the goats do not actually play chess or backgammon, and he has merely trained them to shake dice - which seems well within their capabilities. Reading through the rhetoric, what I think this is supposed to be is a veiled metaphor of mankind, and particularly 1800s England and America. For example, these passages together very much sound like a progressive manifest destiny: …portrays the works and achievements of a castaway, who, thrown ashore almost literally naked upon a desert isle, is able by the use of his brains, the skill of his hands, and a practical knowledge of the common arts and sciences, to far surpass the achievements of all his predecessors, and to surround himself with implements of power and science utterly beyond the reach of his prototype, who had his wreck as a reservoir from which to draw his munitions…I did not gather all these things about me without many bitter hours of loneliness and despair; but their constructions and the reading of my book, which I consulted almost nightly, kept me often from miserable repinings. I felt that I was gaining, and that I had not yet done making nature, ingenuity, and industry improve my condition and increase my comforts…On that terrible day in November I was cast on shore, with scarcely any food, no hat, no coat, and without water. With no aid but that given me by God, and by the use of my own hands and brain, I was to-day sitting in front of my home, erected by myself alone. In this short space of time, one year, I had wrested from Nature many things, showing the supremacy of mind over matter, and knowledge, over ignorance and sloth. I had in this year made fire without the aid of matches, distilled salt water to procure fresh, made myself implements of defence, and erected towers of perpetual lamps, made myself flint, steel, and tinder, bows and arrows, fish-hooks and lines; discovered coal, sulphur, saltpetre, and iron, and captured goats, fish, seals, birds, etc., and at the end of the year found myself sitting at my house door surrounded with my flock of goats, my garden and farm planted, my mill and smelting-house in running order, my canoe at my feet in the quiet water of the cove, and everything about me that could please or charm the eye. From absolutely nothing I had created everything; that is to say, the ground was now so laid out that in the future I saw no end to the daring attempts that I should make, and could make with every chance of success. I felt, now that the year was ending, that my hardest work was done; that I had so much now to do with, that all that I should now undertake would be comparatively easy; but then, on the other hand, my ambition was so great that I could see things in the dim future that would tax the strength and brain of any man to consummate, but which from my temperament and loneliness I knew I should be forced to attempt. The pirate passages particularly highlight this: My courage arose as I gazed upon the skeleton before me, and I moralized thus: You must have lived in an age when God had not granted to mortals the permission to discover and utilize many of the arts and sciences of my day; you did not live when steam was the motive power, when the lightnings of the heavens were made obedient to man to convey his demands and requests, when the paddle-wheels of floating steamers beat the waters of all the oceans of the earth. All of these things, and many others, were unknown to you. My case is not as bad as yours was, if you were shipwrecked. I, of this century, on this same island, have gathered about me, from nothing, strength and power. You, seemingly, have had only this rude hut over your head. I have chances of escape; I doubt if you ever had any from the first day of your arrival, for I cannot conceive of your having willingly remained upon this desert isle. And now, poor mortal, passed away so long ago, let us see if you can do anything for me, your living prototype. …I saw plainly that I should have to blow open the hull to get at what I wanted and expose it. In the meanwhile I was fascinated with the thousand and one old-fashioned shapes about the hull that struck my eye,—the peculiar long brass eighteen pounders, some of which lay beside her, covered with barnacles, but yet showing their shape and general formation; the blunt bows of what the pirate captain had termed a fast-sailing vessel; the comical anchors, and peculiar formation of the decks, that to me, as a sailor, were very interesting. She looked to me more like Noah’s ark than the vessel of a civilized nation. How rapidly and almost imperceptibly had we advanced in this science since this tub was called a vessel, fast, strong, and staunch; and how many hours would she have been able to keep in sight a modern clipper-ship, much less overtake her. In comparison to the latter she seemed like a ship’s jolly-boat. And so indeed she was, being about 300 tons, as against the 2,000 and 2,500 tons ship of my day and time. Inasmuch as the pirate captain died in 1781, not that long ago, and had been shot through the chest & left to die, these are rather self-satisfied comments on the narrator’s part and hence, Frazar’s. (The achievements of Western civilization are great indeed, but they owe little to God, much to other civilizations, started well before the 1800s, and are the result of countless men striving rather than a few.) So is it good or bad? We might say that one’s liking will depend on how well one likes a transition from realism to steampunk. Despite the wordcount, it’s not a long read because it’s written in the inflated prose style of the 1800s, and I for one didn’t pause to look up every technical term to figure out the exact details of the industrial processes.
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