Status
Available
Genres
Publication
FOLIO (1972), Edition: Enlarged, 288 pages
Description
Friday, winner of the 1967 Grand Prix du Roman of the Académie Française, is a sly, enchanting retelling of the legend of Robinson Crusoe by the man the New Yorker calls "France's best and probably best-known writer." Cast away on a tropical island, Michel Tournier's god-fearing Crusoe sets out to tame it, to remake it in the image of the civilization he has left behind. Alone and against incredible odds, he almost succeeds. Then a mulatto named Friday appears and teaches Robinson that there are, after all, better things in life than civilization.
User reviews
LibraryThing member debnance
I decided to read Friday as a companion novel to the Robinson Crusoe book my online book group was reading. I saw that it was listed as one of the 1001 Children’s Books You Must Read Before You Grow Up.
I spent the entire time reading this book thinking two things: (1) this is a brilliant,
So I’m not terribly sure what Tournier would have kept in the children’s version and what he would have left out. The book I read was brilliant and innovative and philosophical and very, very French. Robinson Crusoe is alone on the island and he suffers from this aloneness. He tries to recreate the world he left behind on the island when he meets an islander named Friday and fails. Gradually, Crusoe changes and becomes more and more like Friday, so much so that he flees his rescuers when they finally arrive.
Warning: This is not a children’s book. At one point, Crusoe makes love to the island. He later sees that plants are growing up out of the island and he believes these are his offspring. I think children would find all of this very, very odd.
I spent the entire time reading this book thinking two things: (1) this is a brilliant,
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thoughtful book and (2) this is not a children’s book. I was relieved to learn later that the Friday I meant to read is a children’s adaptation of this book by the same author; this was the original grownup version.So I’m not terribly sure what Tournier would have kept in the children’s version and what he would have left out. The book I read was brilliant and innovative and philosophical and very, very French. Robinson Crusoe is alone on the island and he suffers from this aloneness. He tries to recreate the world he left behind on the island when he meets an islander named Friday and fails. Gradually, Crusoe changes and becomes more and more like Friday, so much so that he flees his rescuers when they finally arrive.
Warning: This is not a children’s book. At one point, Crusoe makes love to the island. He later sees that plants are growing up out of the island and he believes these are his offspring. I think children would find all of this very, very odd.
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LibraryThing member justine
re-telling of Robinson Cruseau with Friday as hero
LibraryThing member thorold
Where J M Coetzee's Foe is a playful reworking of the Robinson Crusoe story informed by late-20th-century ideas about gender, colonialism, and how narratives are created, Tournier's version is — as you might expect — a philosophical exploration of where the solitary castaway stands in a
Tournier starts out with a fairly straightforward recap of Defoe's picture of the indefatigable British capitalist gritting his teeth to re-create all the elements of a productive economy — except sexuality — on his uninhabited island, then gradually subverts it, as Robinson becomes obsessed with the technology of production and creates vast excesses of agricultural products he has no use or market for. And of course his Robinson is not an asexual being like Defoe's, but finds himself experimenting with various kinds of sexual relationship with the island of Speranza herself. What could be more 1960s than X-certificate tree-hugging..?
Robinson's rescue of Friday from the human sacrifice he's been designated for is an accident — Robinson has already made the rational decision to side with the stronger party, but his bullet goes astray — but the entry of this new person into the island is the key moment in Robinson's philosophical release from his previous life. Friday starts out as the willing slave, but he has something Robinson lacks, being prepared to commit himself to projects without a utilitarian purpose — in particular, to create playful works of art. This ends up transforming the way both of them see the world. It liberates Friday to return to a new life as a full-fledged adult, and it brings Robinson into a meaningful spiritual communion with the island, free from his capitalist baggage.
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post-Sartre world in which "hell is other people". Does the world have any existence outside our own perceptions if there are no other people to challenge those perceptions?Tournier starts out with a fairly straightforward recap of Defoe's picture of the indefatigable British capitalist gritting his teeth to re-create all the elements of a productive economy — except sexuality — on his uninhabited island, then gradually subverts it, as Robinson becomes obsessed with the technology of production and creates vast excesses of agricultural products he has no use or market for. And of course his Robinson is not an asexual being like Defoe's, but finds himself experimenting with various kinds of sexual relationship with the island of Speranza herself. What could be more 1960s than X-certificate tree-hugging..?
Robinson's rescue of Friday from the human sacrifice he's been designated for is an accident — Robinson has already made the rational decision to side with the stronger party, but his bullet goes astray — but the entry of this new person into the island is the key moment in Robinson's philosophical release from his previous life. Friday starts out as the willing slave, but he has something Robinson lacks, being prepared to commit himself to projects without a utilitarian purpose — in particular, to create playful works of art. This ends up transforming the way both of them see the world. It liberates Friday to return to a new life as a full-fledged adult, and it brings Robinson into a meaningful spiritual communion with the island, free from his capitalist baggage.
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Language
Original publication date
1967
Physical description
288 p.; 7.25 x 4.5 inches
ISBN
2070369595 / 9782070369591