Customer Reviews

Erewhon and Erewhon Revisited (Everyman's Library)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I must say, when I picked up 'Erewhon' at the public library two and a half months ago, I thought 'hmm, I vaguely recall this title' and 'Well, I laughed out loud at some parts of Butler's translation of 'The Iliad.' Should be a great read!'

To be fair, Butler's own 1901 preface to the combined edition apologizes for his youthful errors. I don't know what age he was when he translated Homer, but he must have been much older, and much more confident. His prose creaks with the layers of dried horse-glue that he's applied in polishing his extensive sentences. He is trying to satirize 19th Cent. English churchmen, Oxbridge dons and so forth, which is interesting academically, but... rather dry. Dry, dry, dry!

I did jot down one quote, which deals with the tendency of people to more jealously guard their purses than their ideas (or something like that) which made me smile. But that's one in 300 pages.

This work smells of youth. It's overthought and under-felt. Not one of the characters (including the narrator) inspires even a moment's empathy. And I'm a guy who cried at the 'Lavender blue, dilly-dilly' passage in 'London' a few years back. It doesn't take much to touch my outwardly stern, inwardly caramel-coated Norwegian-American psyche!

I agree with the other reviewer who said other 'dystopian' works have been done better. I might add, Orwell gets more laughs.

Does he get away with Arowhena? Yes, because he tells us several times through the work that he does. (Yawn.) How does he escape Erewhon? Who cares? I'll never find out, I stopped after 280 pages.

Back to the joys of Homer for me.

I've tried several times to read and enjoy this piece of fantasy freshman English types have been forced to drudge through for the last century. I've never succeeded. I tried it as a young man, forced to write papers on it and hated it. I've tried it as a horrid old codger, discovering tome by tome that books I once found awful have now grown merit and become a source of joy. Not so with this one.

Likely as not Erewhon was imaginative when it was written. Today it's been superceded by thousands of better reads with the same theme. There's nothing here that won't be found more interestingly expressed on any library or bookstore shelf in America.

Anyone willing to question tradition without any biases should read these books with an open-mind. I am not going to tell you about the books because you should read them yourself. They may offend many christians but thats what the truth does to some people I guess.