Customer Reviews

Robinson Crusoe - Special Redux Edition

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

 

 

This is just a bad idea from the word go. Robinson Crusoe is considered a classic of literature. Of course, for your Kindle, you can download it for free from the Project Gutenberg web site, or here at Amazon from The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808), again at no charge.

In both cases you will get the real book. The Project Gutenberg version runs 124,000+ words, that is to say, a real book (THE real book). Here ABS tells you that they have cut it to 50,000 words, and on their web site they say 60,000. Neither is acceptable. You might as well buy the Cliff Notes.

On their web site they say "Dialogue is now 'attributed' with quotes". Well, it is in the Project Gutenberg version too.

"'God,' says editor Robert M Blevins in the foreword, 'still has a part in the book, but a smaller one and more fitting to the actual adventure..." This combination of arrogance and lack of understanding of the mindset of an Englishman in that era regarding religion leaves me (almost) speechless.

"The Special Redux Edition corrects many of the flaws in Defoe's version, including a restructuring of events, since Defoe often related things out of order in the original". Gee, thanks. Placing events out of order is an author's selected device: sometimes to add tension, sometimes to create an air of mystery, sometimes to simulate the rambling manner in which real people tell stories. But forget all that, let's sort true authorship down to 1, 2, 3 and be done with art.