Recently I enjoyed re-visiting that old classic, "Robinson Crusoe" and this time around, at this time of my life, I found it full of wonders that I missed completely when reading in it my childhood and was probably focused on adventure aspects of the story. For one thing, it was surprisingly meditative and lots of Robinson's solitary thoughts appealed to me (I was also aware of novel's old-fashioned charm and certain 300 years old ways of thinking did not bother me - reader has to understand the time when Defoe has lived in and it completely different moral and religious atmosphere). I must be literary the only one of all my friends and acquaintances who has actually searched for - and read - this famous novel's sequel, published immediately after "Robinson Crusoe" which turned out to be runaway best-seller and hit all over the Europe.
"The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe" continues exactly where we left Robinson Crusoe last time around - he was in England with his faithful servant man Friday and he even managed to get married to a warm-hearted and supportive wife, but contrary to what we would expect from someone who lived trough such dangerous times and adventures, life did not teach our protagonist any lessons. He is completely absorbed in his wanderlust and must admit to himself that ordinary civilian life has no joy for him. There is something very interesting that he says about himself, which I was completely surprised to read because here is Daniel Defoe writing 300 years ago but his words completely describe my own thoughts - I have been roaming the world now for years and more or less sailing trough various lands and continents with great passion - A restless desire it really was, for when I was at home I was restless to go abroad; and when I was abroad I was restless to be at home - this is completely true and I had often talked about it with colleagues who experienced exactly similar feelings, we all yearned to finally end our jobs and return home but once we were back home, ordinary life seemed so boring and predictable that we just couldn't wait to go back traveling.
Sequel naturally does not have the same impact, for various reasons, primary because this time around Robinson Crusoe is not alone anymore. He is now a wealthy man who is constantly surrounded with people (constantly buying and selling one thing or the other) and although he still falls into various adventures, they actually happen to others, not so much to him. For example, the large part of this sequel is about what happened on his island and its inhabitants that he left there - while Defoe obviously delights in going on about smallest details, it does gets a bit long-winded and it drags the novels down. In the second part of the book Crusoe finally gets going and he actually roams the world, from Madagascar to China, travels on camels trough Siberia and eventually returns to England at the age of 72, but we are not completely convinced this is the end of his journeys because he appears truly unrepentant and too set in his ways. Perhaps Defoe wrote it too fast to cash in in huge success of the original and if he waited a little longer he might have approached the sequel differently, I found the sequel a bit exhausting (where original was truly enjoyable) and there were lots of instances where 300 years between Defoe and contemporary reader were showing - mostly where Crusoe was concerned with religion, saving souls of local natives ("heathens" and "barbarians") and even going so far to actually put the whole darn caravan in serious danger by destroying idols of some Tartar village. Crusoe/Defoe himself was completely convinced that burning someone else "false idol" was brave and right thing to do but we read it differently today and it kind of bothers us because we have different, far more accepting perspective of world's different religions. Another curiosity is Defoe's decidedly unfavorable perception of Chinese empire - when his character visits wonders of Peking, Great Wall of China and everything that so impressed European travelers, Crusoe is dismissive about them all and constantly compares them to what he feels is much greater wealth and civilization of Europe (England precisely) - now we know that Defoe himself never actually traveled to China so its interesting to wonder where he got these ideas. Interesting curiosity but not as half as thrilling as the first part.
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