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. 3 0 The New Criterion October 2015 Letter from Hudson 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- The New Criterion October 2015 3i Letter from Hudson 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.