The Loneliness of Robinson Crusoe

So here's the thing about the original, unabridged Robinson Crusoe: the prose is dry, pedantic, and archaic; its Calvinist Christianity is ham-fisted and didactic; the novel's swash-buckling tales of adventure on the high seas merely bookend 100+ pages of rather tedious description of island survival; the colonial/imperialist elements are problematic at best (the first word he teaches Friday is "Master"); the charachter of Crusoe is frankly unsympathetic, for he was first shipwrecked on a slave trading voyage, and though he often repents of his sins, he never evinces the slightest shred of self-awareness by condemning his time as a slave trader, even after being enslaved 2 years himself in North Africa!  Truthfully, I found myself skimming this text more often than reading it closely.

Nevertheless, even a cursory read will still tell you why the figure of Robinson Crusoe still resonates so profoundly 3 centuries later: for under-girding this novel is well of profound, radical loneliness.  It is an abject solitude that even in our hyper-social, hyper-connected age--no, scratch that, especially in our hyper-social, hyper-connected age--one does not need to be trapped on a deserted island to feel...