Friday : or the other island /
Michel Tournier.
- London : Harper Collins Publishers, St James's Place, 1969.
- 224 p. ; 20 cm.
In this brilliant reorientation of Robinson Crusoe, Michel Tournier draws on present-day knowledge of psychology and anthropology to indicate not only the nature of the hold Defoe's story has on us, but how it might have turned out if written by a different man in a different age. As in Defoe's novel, Robinson's first thought is escape from his desert island. He builds a boat, only to find he cannot launch it. He builds a house, domesticates animals, draws up laws, appoints himself governor in the manner of European colonizers everywhere, and creates his own mystical life. Then the coming of Friday calls all this in ques tion. Why should society take the form we know? When a disastrous accident, inherent in Robinson's civilization, destroys it, he is forced to begin again. This time his civilization, like his sexuality, has a new basis, approximating more to what we know of solar myth. In this the primitive Friday is more advanced than his master. Tournier's entertaining, significant novel has an inescapable relevance to the present predicament of our civilization, which no reader can fail to note.