Thoughts on Crusoe and Defoe Imitation

So, I'm finally finished with Robbie Crusoe, and while it certainly wasn't the most...how you say...riveting book in the world, I'm glad I have it under my belt. I hear a lot of people have been complaining about it, and I don't particularly blame them, but I wouldn't necessarily call it the worst book ever, or a worthless piece of crap, or an abomination of all things good and holy in the literary world, etc. I look at it this way: if people are correct in thinking that Robinson Crusoe is the first actual novel ever published, then we should give it credit for spawning all the other novels that followed it. For example, I don't particularly like the earliest form of rock and roll (e.g.: Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Elvis, etc.), but I love the stuff that immediately followed it (e.g.: Jimi Hendrix, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, etc.), so I still honor the early stuff because I know without it, everything after it would not have been the same.

I'm glad we're getting to read Gulliver's Travels now, since it's a total play on what Defoe was doing in Crusoe. I've read Gulliver a few times before, and now I think I'll appreciate it better after reading Crusoe, and vice versa. Gulliver has always fascinated me because 1) it's funny as hell and 2) it's very much a political commentary of life and politics back in the good old days of the eighteenth century, and as a History major, I sort of like that crap for some reason.

Here is my imitation of Defoe's writing style of a paragraph in "Running With Scissors" that was given to us. Enjoy.

The shiny and Luminescent bookshelves within my Possession are saturated with a myriad of Items which are quite privy to mine Interest, up to and including Canisters absent of the labels that were so Wonderfully adorned to their vibrant Cylindricalness of silver, though I cannot hide my Yearning for golden objects of the same Nature; also present are delightfully crafted Rings from my voyage to the New World five years following the glorious occasion of my Birth, which God and Providence has bequeathed me good Tidings...

You get the point.