words wholly related

robinson (crusoe) & (the swiss family) robinson

back when i was just a small fry named “raynor the small fry” i was obsessed with the desert island genre*. my wet nurse (after performing her other duties) would read to me every night from the adventures of robinson crusoe. when i turned six and was able to pour my own milk, i began reading the swiss family robinson, and was like: “what’s with all these robinsons getting shipwrecked on fabulous islands?”

it turns out that robinson wasn’t just an oddly appropriate name for a stranded character. dafoe’s work was so popular, that it defined the genre which became known as the robinsonade.

about 100 years later, a swiss pastor wrote der schweizerische robinson which really just translates into the swiss [version of the] robinson [genre]. the family in the book is not named robinson, nor is robinson a swiss name.

but before you get all high and mighty that some swiss pastor from 200 years ago was trying to cash in on the robinson name, consider first how “the establishment” has coöopted dracula and the character now appears in everything from sesame street to the twilight franchise.

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*this obsession continues to manifest itself in my fondness for prison fiction. in both genres, the protagonist must survive in an unfamiliar world with forced constraints, where the ultimate goal is some sort of creative escape and a return to familiarity and freedom.