'Robinson Crusoe Is a Gentleman'

“This day proving wet, we should have passed our time very uncomfortably, had we not found in the house two chests of books, which we eagerly ransacked.” Some time in the mid-sixties I was home alone on a rainy day. It was a summer afternoon. Self-conscious adolescent boredom was nagging me. I didn’t want to watch television. What would have been on? Game shows? Soap operas? I looked at the bookcase in my room, uncertain what to read or even if I wanted to read. For some reason I chose Robinson Crusoe, which I had already read at least once. I laid on my bed and read most of Defoe’s novel that afternoon. Even at the time I was surprised that the story sustained me, that it so thoroughly held my attention and enabled me to forget my boredom. It remains among the books I have most often read. Dr. Johnson famously said: “Was there ever any thing written by mere men that was wished longer by its readers, excepting Don Quixote, Robinson Crusoe, and the Pilgrim’s Progress?” (The opposite of…