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A review by kylegarvey
Captain Singleton by Daniel Defoe
2.0
The plot of Daniel Defoe's journalistic pirate novel Captain Singleton is not the floor-to-ceiling mischief that I expected. It's never page after page of rough-and-tumble, bloodthirsty, irresistible mayhem. It's actually rather boring, in that all the literary work (heavy description, detail, focus) goes to the dullest parts of the story: instead of fighting or piratical industry or awesome English naval power, we're treated to the mediocre routines of a bunch of plain-faced nobodies. Singleton's men simply "took" a ship, while the exact length, direction, and difficulty of a short march is excruciatingly reported.
I knew I wouldn't be getting anything like an action/adventure book written at the present, or even like one written a hundred years ago; a book from 1720 would of course be primitive all in all. But I thought if its writing weren't fit for a modern piratophile then surely its plot would be. Sadly, it falls short even there.
There are a few brief bits of magic, though: as a young man, Singleton was brought before the Inquisition, and he's thankful that "Catholic" was the first option they gave him, or he might have picked the other one in his religious ignorance; and then, toward the end of his African adventure, he marvels that one group of natives, in spite of the fact that "our Men had made something free with their Women," never went to war with him. Both are fairly surprising shots at comedy in a book that's otherwise filled with stolid, impersonal 18th-century prose.
Defoe's book also shows a very fascinating personality within its characters' chauvinism, a kind of marvelously ridiculous might-is-right bullheadedness. I suppose that sort of thing is appropriate for a pirate, but one overall thread of appropriateness can't stitch together all the other drawbacks and weaknesses of his novel. Arr.
I knew I wouldn't be getting anything like an action/adventure book written at the present, or even like one written a hundred years ago; a book from 1720 would of course be primitive all in all. But I thought if its writing weren't fit for a modern piratophile then surely its plot would be. Sadly, it falls short even there.
There are a few brief bits of magic, though: as a young man, Singleton was brought before the Inquisition, and he's thankful that "Catholic" was the first option they gave him, or he might have picked the other one in his religious ignorance; and then, toward the end of his African adventure, he marvels that one group of natives, in spite of the fact that "our Men had made something free with their Women," never went to war with him. Both are fairly surprising shots at comedy in a book that's otherwise filled with stolid, impersonal 18th-century prose.
Defoe's book also shows a very fascinating personality within its characters' chauvinism, a kind of marvelously ridiculous might-is-right bullheadedness. I suppose that sort of thing is appropriate for a pirate, but one overall thread of appropriateness can't stitch together all the other drawbacks and weaknesses of his novel. Arr.