Letter from Hudson Getting away from it all by Stefan Beck

I look’d now upon the world as a thing remote, which I and sneezeweed—and on the westward-facing had nothing to do with, no expectation from, and indeed shore a narrow beach, shaded by a gnarled ma­ no desires about: In a word, I had nothing indeed to ple, collected tideworn bricks from die long- do with it, nor was ever like to have; so I thought it defunct Empire Brick Company. Seagulls, look’d as we may perhaps look upon it hereafter, viz. as spiders, bees, die occasional monarch butterfly, a place I had lived in, but was come out of it; and well and clouds of flies like airborne dandruff were might I say, as Father Abraham to Dives, Between the only fauna to be found. The seed pods of me and thee is a great gulph fixed. the water chestnut, black and spiny and seem­ —Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe (1719) ingly designed by H. R. Giger, either bobbed in die surf like enemy mines or washed up to The female narrator of Foe, J. M. Coetzee’s be stepped on, drawing blood and torrents of 1986 reimagining of Robinson Crusoe, wonders profanity. As I’ve said, it wasn’t much of an “by what right” her island prison belongs to island—but at the right time of day, widi the the man called Cruso: “by the law of islands? flood tide rolling and the sun glittering on the is there such a law?” I was untroubled by water like television stadc, it was beautiful. such nuances of maritime code when I laid It was the bricks that put me in mind of claim this summer to my own desert isle in that greatest of castaways, Robinson Crusoe. the Hudson River. I had appropriated a kayak My hammock was from Walmart, but the from the tool shed of my cousin’s ex-wife (by bricks, being fruits of the sea, made me day­ what right: said cousin’s enthusiastic encour­ dream about how chance and ingenuity might agement) and soon landed on an island near provide for the improvement of my island. the mouth of Stockport Creek, ringed with I wanted to build a hearth; after collecting undulating green masses of the invasive Eu­ bricks for a few days I had enough at least to ropean water chestnut. It was state land, so I make a bench (with a driftwood board) and a could not pretend, like Defoe’s hero, that I was decent fire ring. Then came the oddly intoxi­ “king and lord of all this country indefeasibly.” cating idea of being trapped on my island, of Yet it was a meager little plot, without even a living on fish and birds and berries, of lash­ charred log or a crumpled Bud Light can to ing together crude structures with branches suggest that anybody used it, so I hung a ham­ and reeds. It was difficult to imagine myself as mock in lieu of a flag and called the place mine. Crusoe—what with planes passing overhead, Be pleas’d, as Crusoe might say, to take a cargo ships scudding by, and Amtrak trains sketch of my island as follows. On three sides blaring their way along the shoreline—but I it was choked with weeds and wildflowers— could content myself with reading about him cattails, elderberries, goldenrod, purple loose­ and the literary heirs to his splendid and not- strife, jewelweed (a remedy for poison ivy), so-splendid isolation.

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To the proposition that no man is an island, cal island: William Golding’s dystopian novel I wanted to ask: Says who? Lord of the Flies (1954). Everyone knows who Robinson Crusoe is, but few have read Defoe; The genre inaugurated by Daniel Defoe’s yet every schoolchild in the United States, per­ breathlessly titled Life and Strange Surprizing haps in the Anglophone world, has actually Adventures of Robinson Crusoe ofTork, Mariner: read about Ralph, Jack, and Piggy, the conch, Who lived Eight and Twenty Tears, all alone in the specs, “sucks to your ass-mar,” and the in­ an un-inhabited Island on the Coast of America, delible image of a pig’s head impaled on a stick. near the Mouth of the Great River of Oroonoque; If ever a book served as bad publicity for Having been cast on Shore by Shipwreck, wherein nature—both human and of the “red in tooth all the Men perished but himself (hereinafter just and claw” variety—it is Lord of the Flies. Early Robinson Crusoe, for God’s sake) was first called on we are shown a “bank covered with coarse the “robinsonade” by the German writer Jo­ grass, torn everywhere by the upheavals of hann Gottfried Schnabel in 1731. Its popularity fallen trees, scattered with decaying coconuts has never ebbed. Some of the best-known early and palm saplings. Behind this was the dark­ examples include Schnabel’s Island Stronghold ness of the forest proper.” The darkness of (1731), Johann David Wyss’s Swiss Family Rob­ the forest proper is die novel’s true subject, inson (1812), R. M. Ballantyne’s Coral Island whether the literal forest and its promise of (1857), Jules Verne’s Mysterious Island (1874), an elusive but malevolent “beastie” or the for­ and Henry De Vere Stacpoole’s Blue Lagoon est of man’s postlapsarian soul. These twin (1908). (This is a small sample, of course, and forests are so much at the forefront of Lord of an exhaustive survey might even include pre- the Flies that it is a book almost devoid of sub­ Crusoe works such as Homer’s Odyssey, the text. Though richly imagined and beautifully Book of Jonah, and Shakespeare’s Tempest.) written, it is marred by symbols and symbolic Nearer the present day we find examples of episodes—such as the hallucinated dialogue the robinsonade that do not cleave so strictly between Simon and the pig’s head—that are to Defoe’s program. Paul Theroux’s Mosquito heavy-handed even for a genre that comes Coast (1981) follows die unforgettable crank widi much of its symbolism ready-made. It Allie Fox on his quest to separate himself and nevertheless says most of what it attempts to his family from civilization, with disastrous re­ in an effective and memorable way. sults. Hatchet (1987), Gary Paulsen’s Newbery If someone has read Lord of the Flies in Honor-winning young-adult novel, is also a high school, and he almost certainly has, he robinsonade without an island, diough it treats probably remembers it first as an allegory die same issues of survival and ingenuity as about the darkness of human nature and sec­ Defoe’s classic. Where Paulsen substitutes the ond as a frank defense of civilization against Canadian wilderness for an island, the science barbarism. It drives home the point to its fiction writer Andy Weir, the author of 2011’s mostly young readers that they are no less sensation The Martian, substitutes the whole predisposed to being nasty and brutish for of the red planet. The recent film adaptation of being short. (This is intended as a warning, The Martian, starring Matt Damon, suggests but given the behavior in most American that the public has not tired of Crusoe’s story, middle and high schools it is just as likely even if it must be set in space. being read as a permission slip.) Meanwhile, This is not to say diat die traditional coconuts- civilization asserts itself again and again in the and-cannibals island robinsonade has lost its sa­ book. When it is decided that there should vor. Cast Away (2000), whose only characters be a “chief,” anarchy being untenable, Jack were Tom Hanks and a volleyball, was a major nominates himself on the grounds that he is box office and critical success, as was the long- “chapter chorister and head boy” and “can running television show Lost (2005-2010). And sing C sharp.” Ralph, when he is made chief the one robinsonade that every American of by vote, proposes the use of the conch—the any age has encountered takes place on a tropi­ book’s most enduring symbol of law and or-

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der—because “like at school” the stranded “that a pack o f British boys—you’re all Brit­ boys “can’t have everybody talking at once.” ish, aren’t you?—would have been able to The book’s two most poignant invocations put up a better show than that.” of civilization are also its most pitiful and most superstitious appeals to civilization’s power. Reading this ending as a young person, I felt The first is when Ralph reassures the boys: “My rather uncomplicated relief, coupled with a father’s in die Navy. He said there aren’t any vague sense of embarrassment for the boys. I unknown islands left. He says the Queen has don’t recall taking notice of the ironic reversal a big room full of maps and all the islands in Golding effects with tiae scene: diat the officer, the world are drawn diere. So the Queen’s got turning away from the boys, gazes at the “trim a picture of this island.” (His expectation is evi- cruiser” that symbolizes the adult barbarism dendy that no island will be left unsearched.) of warfare. With this reversal, Lord of the Flies The second is when Ralph addresses one of goes from an advertisement for civilization to the younger children, or “litduns,” at assembly: a sort of nihilistic denial that it is possible at all. This denial is not particularly compelling, “Now tell us. What’s your name?” though, for it is easy to see how civilization has “Percival Wemys Madison. The Vicarage, enabled the Ralphs and Piggies of the adult Harcourt St. Anthony, Hants, telephone, tele­ world to keep the Jacks and Rogers in check, phone, tele—” rather than ending up beheaded by them on As if this information was rooted far down a beach. in the springs of sorrow, the litdun wept. His Ultimately, Lord of the Flies succeeds as a face puckered, the tears leaped from his eyes, his simple defense of civilization and not as a sly mouth opened till they could see a square black critique of it. In fact, the highly imperfect sort hole. At first he was a silent effigy of sorrow; but of civilization that rescues the boys from dieir then the lamentation rose out of him, loud and incipient savagery might be preferable to the sustained as the conch. one that Ralph, Percival, et al. yearn for—that “Shut up! Shut up!” is, a truly godlike one that sees all, knows all, Percival Wemys Madison would not shut up. and solves (or presumes to solve) all. It is the A spring had been tapped, far beyond the reach ascendancy of just that kind of civilization- of authority or even physical intimidation. The technocratic; heavily automated; contemptu­ crying went on, breath after breath, and seemed ous of individuality and privacy; materialistic; to sustain him upright as if he were nailed to it. spiritually vacuous; infantilizing—that makes even the most dystopian robinsonade read not Ralph’s belief in the omnipotence of the as a terrifying misadventure but as a glimpse adult world is embarrassing in a boy as oth­ of a condition almost, dare I say it, enviable. erwise sage and resourceful as he is. Percival’s “This is real exploring,” says Jack in Lord of faith, suddenly and utterly frustrated, in the the Flies, as some of the boys make an early power of what amounts to a magic spell—the survey of the island. “I bet nobody’s been here words he must recite to an adult if ever he before.” It is in moments like these, some­ should find himself lost—is downright heart­ times benign, sometimes ecstatic, that the breaking. We see not only that these boys novel conveys the awe and joy of a pure en­ are naive and frightened but also that they counter with nature. Swimming, figuring out are badly prepared to deal with the darkness how to make sound with the conch, learning dwelling in some of their own peers. That to hunt with a spear—these are the activities darkness, the entirety of Lord of the Flies seems that arouse the reader’s acute envy. W hat if to tell us, is always present and always just one were able to disappear from the radar of barely held in check by the strictures of civi­ modern life and indulge in this simple exis­ lization. “I should have thought,” says the tence all the time? What if one could forget British naval officer who at last rescues the the ns A and Google, targeted marketing and boys from the island and from each other, iPhones, and immerse himself in what is real,

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solid, substantial in every sense of the word? chanick art. I had never handled a tool in my What if meaningless work could be replaced life, and yet in time by labor, application and each day by high-stakes challenges? contrivance, I found at last that I wanted noth­ That is die fantasy held out to today’s reader ing but I could have made it, especially if I had by Robinson Crusoe. Living without human had tools; however I made abundance of things, contact—to say nodiing of clothing, medi­ even without tools, and some with no more tools cine, a varied diet, a sex life, and so on—for than an adze and a hatchet. decades is admittedly not the rosiest pros­ pect. But what Crusoe’s life lacks in all that, Crusoe’s gradual accumulation of skills and it makes up for in a host of odier ways, and knowledge is impressive to see. He builds a these have special resonance for anyone sunk fortified dwelling. Having learned to trap and in twenty-first-century existential dread. He husband goats, he makes primitive candles has time to think without interruption—no from their tallow and prehistoric-sounding texts, no “pings,” no requests to “reach out” apparel from their skins. His larder is stocked or “circle back.” His labors tax his mind and with the corn and barley he grows and the rai­ body to the utmost, but they are for his benefit sins he makes. Rafts, canoes, and pottery also and his alone. He learns something new every belong to his repertoire. To Defoe’s celebra­ day. He works with his hands. He grows to tion of human resourcefulness and imagina­ understand nature. If this isn’t exacdy selling tion, his tribute to stoic self-reliance, he adds it, he also drinks a ton of rum. meditations on the management of fear. This ability is front and center in Lord of the Flies, Robinson Crusoe is at the outset a caution­ too (“Of course we’re frightened sometimes ary tale. Crusoe goes to sea against the advice but we put up with being frightened”); it is of his fadier: “He told me it was for men of easy to imagine how indispensible it is in the desperate fortunes on one hand, or of aspir­ face of prolonged isolation. ing, superior fortunes on the other, who went Fear is one thing, though, despair quite an­ abroad upon adventures, to rise by enterprize, other. Andy Weir’s The Martian, though in and make themselves famous in undertakings most respects patterned on Robinson Crusoe, of a nature out of die common road . . . that is very much of its time—our time—in lack­ mine was the middle state . . . which he had ing the theological or spiritual dimension of found by long experience was the best state Defoe’s book, which grapples with despair at in the world.” Crusoe’s rejection of contented every turn. Mark Watney, the Crusoe of Weir’s mediocrity leads first to his being made a slave novel, reckons with fear using science and ra­ and later to his being shipwrecked, alone, on tionality. Yet die original ofWatney, who takes his own island. The guilt he feels at having let a more expansive view of reality, must also ask pride and ambition ruin him will be all but himself what, if anything, his life means. It is incomprehensible to a modern reader, but it instructive to view the two books side by side. introduces a fascinating religious dimension Defoe’s brims with questions of providence, to the narrative. punishment, and gratitude, while Weir’s takes That said, most of Robinson Crusoe is about a grimly materialist view of man’s role in the doing, not thinking. Crusoe manages to re­ cosmos. Weir’s is entertaining, even inspiring, trieve supplies from the wreck of which he is but it is never spiritually enlarging in die same the sole survivor, but these only go so far. If way Defoe’s is. he wants to live, he will have to work: Robinson Crusoe is a tutorial in gratitude. Upon washing ashore, Crusoe composes a pro I must needs observe, diat as reason is the sub­ and con list (die headings are in fact good and stance and original of the mathematicks, so by ev il) with which to put his misfortunes in stating and squaring every thing by reason, and perspective: “7 am cast upon a horrible desolate by making die most rational judgment of things, island, void of all hope of recovery ” on the one evert' man may be in time master of every me- hand, but “7 am alive, and not drown’d as all

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my ship’s company was” on the other. This urge and a pronounced sense of humor—granted, to “look more upon the bright side of [his] a sense of humor that recalls Michael Scott condition, and less upon the dark side; and to from The Office (2005-2013) —and this, too, consider what [he] enjoy’d, rather than what is a tool that only human beings possess. Like [he] wanted” begets an unintentionally comic die astonishing astronauts ofTom Wolfe’s The and then refreshing refrain. It is Crusoe’s ef­ Right Stuff (1979), Watney is a model man, fort to see the good in his circumstances that one of the best the human race has to offer. keeps him from going mad, and that permits Unlike Robinson Crusoe, Watney will die the reader to imagine how a life with less—less if he cannot escape from Mars. He has to go company, fewer possessions—might in fact be home, the home where bureaucracy, technol­ more rewarding. ogy, and transparenq' prevail. This means that By contrast, The Martian teaches the reader The Martian lacks something today’s reader that reliance on technological solutions is al­ can find in the traditional robinsonade: the ways die best course. What matters to Mark pleasure of imagining himself in the world as Watney is getting back to Earth—a goal that a full and active participant and yet somehow any Earthling can easily relate to, and an ex­ not quite of it. There is a unique joy to being cellent subject for a science fiction novel, but alone on a beach, far from tire reach of civilized not by any means a transcendent program. concerns, contemplating how he might take Where die traditional robinsonade offers the full and lone command of his affairs. There modern reader a fantasy of removal from the is something seductive about the prospect of scrutiny of surveillance, The Martian fosters falling away from the world as the rest of the a happy dependence on the Eye in the Sky world knows it. Whether or not this impulse that many have come to loathe. Mark Watney is an entirely healthy one is an open question, survives primarily through his own ingenu­ but it is impossible not to feel at times. ity—he spends every second of every day trou­ bleshooting or fixing things—but he would Paddle down the Hudson River near my town never make it home without the intercession and you see the evidence of this impulse ev­ of, for instance, spying technology, satellite erywhere. Peer through the reeds and trees of support, other astronauts, and even a more the great dredge island Middle Ground Flats or less hostile foreign government. and you will see shacks and camps at regular This is not to denigrate Weir’s achievement. intervals, lovingly handmade and in varying Considered purely as a paean to ingenuity, states of disrepair, hung with American flags it far outstrips Robinson Crusoe and indeed and, in at least one case, the fiercely indepen­ any island robinsonade. The problems Wat­ dent Gadsden flag. Or glide beneath a trestle ney contends with —cultivating potatoes in bridge to enter the Furgary (as in “Where the his own waste in the limited space of a tiny Furg-ar-we?”), a veritable village of crumbling habitat; breaking down substances (such as fishing shacks; its resident Crusoes, though rocket fuel) into their constituent elements; long since evicted, have never given up on keeping his solar panels functioning widi the presenting it. Its name amounts to a question sun blotted out by an apocalyptic dust storm— Crusoe had countless opportunities to ask: are vastly more complex than catching goats Where are we? What are we doing here? But or learning to make his own boards or boats. more to the point, why would we ever want Among Mark Watney’s tools are good cheer to be anywhere else?

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