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50 greatest books

Gulliver's Travels

VICTORIA GLENDINNING

From Saturday's Globe and Mail

Latest comment posted at 9:18 PM EDT 12/05/08

It's one of the most important books in the world ...Read the full article

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  1. Shadow of the Bear from Canada writes: One of the most shocking things in "Gulliver's Travels" is Swift's attack on man's pride, particularly his pride in thinking of himself as the glory of the universe. What a concept, indeed. Are we the glory of the universe, or "odious little vermin"? Or perhaps we are simply and insignificantly somewhere in between? How far will vice, folly, rationality, reason and compassion carry the human race to one extreme or the other?
  2. lotusland maritimer from Sault Ste Marie, Canada writes: An excellent review of a great work which is indeed the favourite of children worldwide unfortunately bowdlerised. The book not the children. Other works by Swift are also among the greatest of satires, none of the modern works supposedly unprintable come close to Swifts shocking integrity.
    I thought I read all of this work but dont remember any computers. Where?
    His imagination almost matches Jules Verne's but his literary quality is light years ahead of that worst writer that ever set pen to paper but the greatest futurologist. Swift's worlds are not possible... but no, wait after all we just found Flores man and there was a gigantopithecus, so only his scale is off. A true Irishman who worshipped his horses and hated man. What could be more endearing?
  3. John Rowell from Nelson, B.C., Canada writes: Swift is probably the greatest satirist ever. No aspect of human pretensions escapes him--a lesson for all those people with the hubris to believe that human beings are somehow special.
    Does anyone share my view that Don Quixote is overrated? A one- joke novel that is padded out endlessly.
  4. Trying to be Rational from St. John's, Canada writes: A nicely penned overview. In all my years of reading, and English teaching (30 odd), no book has surprised or amazed me more for sheer inventiveness and humaneness. What a wonderful choice. I would give it to my children before I gave them the Bible, and not only because the former is more fun!
  5. Dave T from midwest, Canada writes: “Beware, O wanderer, for the road is walking too” wrote the poet Rilke, a warning apropos for the adventurous Gulliver, who is called upon to extinguish a burning castle with urine, destroy a fleet of ships with his bare hands, sentenced to be blinded, travel on a flying cloud whose inhabitants oddly remind one of scientology; nearly waste away at the hands of his skyscraper size master, be carried off in a closet by a soaring eagle. Still later, Gulliver meets a blind man who mixes paint by smell, another who wants to restore excrement to food, and still later, he encounters the ghosts of the famous dead. Hence, a work of imaginative power, enough so that we are mindful of Wallace Stevens observation that “even the absence of the imagination had Itself to be imagined.” Swift sustains this imaginative force throughout, propelling the reader forward to the next satirical crescendo, with much display of erudition, dexterity, science and political discourse. The balloons Swift intended to lance with his witty, penetrating satire include among others the absurdity of warfare, the nature of petty conflict, and the “man as animal” theme that has enough excrement reminders that you almost feel like the dog on your own lawn. So in part what we have is an imaginative romp that is steeped in satire, yet really no more humourous than Francois Rabelais’ Gargantua and Pantagruel, a work that pre-dates Gulliver’s Travels by several generations. At the same time, we are also mindful that satire itself is a white glove treatment of the human condition, “the trick mirror of pain” as the writer Thomas McGuane put it. As such, there is almost no depth of character here; we merely follow Gulliver as he encounters an endless stream of Lilliputians, Brobdingnagians, Laputians etc. and one is strangely reminded of something like Vladimir Odoevsky’s Russian Nights, where every character seems a spectacle, a world view on display through a human voice of a nearly nondescript personality.
  6. Dave T from midwest, Canada writes: Notwithstanding, after reading things like John Gay’s “On The Art of Walking the Streets of London,” The Rape of the Lock, Gray’s Elegy, varied issues of the Tatler and The Spectator, essays by Shaftesbury and Mandeville, Moll Flanders, and Boswell’s Life of Johnson, Gulliver’s Travels is a breath of fresh air, and Swift, the best of an epoch that was not exactly bursting with literary greatness.
  7. Jim Cohoon from Chilliwack, Canada writes: "Gulliver's Travels" is one of those books that is inherently interesting, but also more interesting as one learns more about the cultural era of the book and its historical background. The same can be said for other Swift satires, such as "The Tale of a Tub" and of course the famous "A Modest Proposal". But transcending the world of three hundred years ago, there are timeless aspects to these books, which is why I would like to see someone (competent to do so) try to intelligently and incisively update any of these themes using post-modern imagery.
  8. Shadow of the Bear from Canada writes: Jim Cohoon from Chilliwack: I do not know if I am "competent to do so", but I have a "modest proposal" for you, if you would like to hear it.
  9. john y from Vancouver, Canada writes: The list so far seems to have an acedemic feel to it. Yes, some are great classics, but I doubt they hold much appeal outside of English Lit classes. My personal favorites (written in the last 100 years), in no particular order, are:

    - Ismail, Daniel Quinn
    - The Good Earth, Pearl Buck
    - The Road Less Travelled, Scott Peck
    - Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan
    - Kon-Tiki, Thor Heyerdahl
  10. Paul Collins from Toronto, Canada writes: Remember if Gulliver's Travels were published now, it would be a print on demand book. Canada Council would ignore it and so would Book Television, who would all be waiting for the latest fluff from the geriatric ward that we all know as Canadian Literati.
  11. Al B from Toronto, Canada writes: lotusland I'm not sure where you got the idea that Jules Verne was the 'worst writer...'. Did you read him in French? Like Dave T said, Rabelais was as brilliant a satirist. One should avoid using the superlatives 'best' and 'worst'.
  12. D. B. from Greater Sask., Canada writes: How come 'Yahoo' has (at least) two meanings today, one negative and one relatively positive, as in some people might consider G. Bush to be a Yahoo, whereas his friends might be saying 'Yahoo, Iraq is open for business?' Well . .. it seems those two meanings do converge somewhat, after all.
  13. lotusland maritimer from Sault Ste Marie, Canada writes: Jules Verne is in any language an awfully bad writer but it doesnt matter in the least what he has to say makes him a great what? thinker philosophe futurologist science fictioner seer. Similar to say Eric Blair George Orwell or most of the Bible esp. say the Apocalypse which is barely literate. In spite of that perhaps because of it it has a peculiar charm and power which well written insignificancies dont. But back to Swift whom I reread or parts of it for the first time unless expurgated. What I found hilarious was that although he can invent creatures 12 times smaller and larger than us he cannot imagine not a monarchy. Every state he enters however odd or unusual has a king or an emperor or a prince ruler. The computer identification is pushing it a bit hardly more advanced than a literal abacus of wooden random words. I found his parody of science a hilarious gem in Laputa and the description of agriculture producing nothing earily prescient and creepy, this is what the Eu has done to the agricultural paradises of Europe, Hungary Bulgaria turned them into dustbowls while feeding the people with refuse from the already depleted West. Globalisation with standardisation and recch subsidiarity. All you need is B.A.s and agronomists with bureaucrats to destroy a country after the communists have sucked it dry. The idea of a floating island state is lifted from Aristophanes Clouds there is nothing new under the sun to block it from the underlings. Even the impractical philosophers are there except he subsumes under that name scientists and the even more odious kind if thats possible the technocrats or applied scientists. And all this a mere three hundred years ago! He is a bit prolix verbose repetitive and redundant after a while we get the idea but is excused as he is writing parodies of current works. Heres another bad writer for you Voltaire whose Candide is rather flat but the ideas are luminous. Also a travelogue of the mind. Swift is a writer.
  14. J Brocha from Toronto, Canada writes: My favorite part is in book four when Gulliver starts to make the Yahoo's skins into clothing. Yahoos = humanoids.
    Book four is USUALLY left out of the children's' versions.
  15. lotusland maritimer from Canada writes: Another extremely creepy unusual lucky guess by Swift is the almost perfect prediction that Mars has two very small moons. It was well over a century later when telescopes developed far enough to permit discovery of these two moons Phobos and Deimos and he almost got the mass orbital periods distance correct within an order of magnitude. If he wasnt an astronomer he must have known well the work of Newton Copernicus Galileo Kepler Huygens Cassini Brahe. Then Voltaire lifted the idea and used it in his very weak Micromegas. In Gulliver the book of Laputa has these prescient scientists. But still to me the most incredible premodern writing is Scipios dream Somnium Scipionis by Cicero which describes the Solar system and the Earth as mere dot in the distance and all this well before Dante or Columbus all of whom knew of course that the Earth is a globe as did Plato. For his part Voltaire gets into the Sirius extraterrestrials which must have made Sagan happy if he knew of it. As he borrowed the two moons of Mars from Swift he likely plagiarised the Sirius business as well. Very few people read Plato Cicero or Dante for the astronomy these days as unbelkievable predictions thousands of years ahead of their time and a very high order of knowledge are commingled with nonsense. Or Swift or Voltaire for that matter.
  16. The Bubble from Canada writes: well here's one I've read finally. I keep thinking I should keep the list and try to read them but that would be putting on airs as my mom used to say. maybe i'll get to some of them. I just read Alan Alda's latest novel. It was pretty wise. His perspective on holding the record for the most watched television show even today is interesting. I hate talking about books or listening to people talk about books. I can't remember which Robertson Davies book I read where he said books are a great way to learn things without having to take it all on the chin. I had two English majors as roommates in Ottawa for a time. One was head of the literary society of Carleton U and organized a speech for the author of The Stone Angel, she lived northwest of peterboro near bridgenorth. All those English majors coming to our place all the time was frigging annoying, they were people my age disconnected with the real world still.

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