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LOOKING BACKWARD 2000-1887 Kindle Edition
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherHardPress
- Publication dateSeptember 1, 2018
- File size1731 KB
Editorial Reviews
Review
“There is no better book than Looking Backward for understanding the intersecting private and public spheres in Victorian America. This is easily the best edition on the market, thanks to the fine introduction that puts Bellamy in the sweep of utopian writing, the nice selection of contemporary responses, and the excerpts from Bellamy’s ‘Religion of Solidarity’ and Equality.” ― Richard Fox, University of Southern California
“This edition is set apart from all other editions by Alex MacDonald’s excellent introduction and annotations and an excellent selection of related texts.” ― Lyman Tower Sargent, University of Missouri-St. Louis, Editor of Utopian Studies
“This edition is extremely welcome. The introduction is clear and accessible, and both situates the text historically and stresses its continuing relevance. Above all, the additional texts provide supporting material that makes this edition a truly invaluable resource.” ― Ruth Levitas, University of Bristol
From the Back Cover
Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward: 2000-1887 (1888) is one of the most influential utopian novels in English. The narrative follows Julian West, who goes to sleep in Boston in 1887 and wakes in the year 2000 to find that the era of competitive capitalism is long over, replaced by an era of co-operation. Wealth is produced by an “industrial army” and every citizen receives the same wage.
This edition contains a rich selection of appendices, including excerpts from Bellamy’s Equality and other writings; contemporary responses (by William Morris, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and others); excerpts from utopian works by Morris and William Dean Howells; and an excerpt from Henry George’s Progress and Poverty.
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Product details
- ASIN : B07H1HKQG6
- Publisher : HardPress (September 1, 2018)
- Publication date : September 1, 2018
- Language : English
- File size : 1731 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Not Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 336 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #4,577,337 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #290,193 in History (Kindle Store)
- #966,383 in History (Books)
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At the end of the 19th century Bellamy creates a picture of a wonderful future society. Bellamy's protagonist is Julian West, a young aristocratic Bostonian who falls into a deep sleep while under a hypnotic trance in 1887 and ends up waking up in the year 2000 (hence the novel's sub-title). Finding himself a century in the future in the home of Doctor Leete, West is introduced to an amazing society, which is consistently contrasted with the time from which he has come. As much as this is a prediction of a future utopia, it is also a scathing attack on the ills of American life heading into the previous turn of the century. Bellamy's sympathies are clearly with the progressives of that period.
"Looking Backward" does not have a narrative structure per se. Instead West is shown the wonders of Boston in the year 2000, with his hosts explaining the rationale behind the grand civic improvements. For example, he discovers that every body is happy and no one is either rich or poor, all because equality has been achieved. Industry has been nationalized, which has increased efficiency because it has eliminated wasteful competition. This is a world with no need of money, but every citizen has a sort of credit card that allows them to make individual purchases, although everyone has the same montly allowance. In Bellamy's world is so ideal that it does not have any police, a military, any lawyers, or, best of all, any salesmen. Education is so valued that it continues until students reach the age of 21, at which point all citizens enter the work force, where they will stay until the age of 45. Men and women are compensated equally, but there are some distinctions between job on the basis of gender, and pregnancy and motherhood are taken into account.
Bellamy was living during the start of the Industrial Revolution, and like Francis Bacon and Tomasso Campanella who wrote during the height of the Age of Reason, he sees science and human ingenuity as being what will solve all of humanity's problems. He does not get into too many details regarding the comforts of modern living in the future, but there are several telling predictions (e.g., something very much like radio). However, it is clear that Bellamy is writing primarily to talk about economics and sociology, especially because he always compares his idealized future with the problems of his own time.
Obviously Bellamy's critique of the late 19th century will be of less interest to today's students that his various predictions on the both the future and an ideal world, unless they are specifically studying the American industrial revolution. But the latter two are enough to make "Looking Backward" deserve to be included in a current curriculum and I am looking foward to how well my students think Bellamy predicted the world in which we now find ourselves living.
Those who disdained it, at the time, did so because it offered a socialism that was evolutionary, not revolutionary; that supporters wanted the benefit without spilling blood for it. But that optimism is part of the author's formula, that it makes no sense to presume state-controlled protection but disdain state-controlled production. In both Star Trek and Star Wars, there's a Federation, representing what happens when people band together into an authority. Whether you like this book depends on whether you think that's likely to be a good thing or bad.
Looking Backward provides such a conundrum. Author Edward Bellamy deserves credit for developing his version of an Utopian society in such detail, thinking out every facet. He is writing in 1887. The premise is Julian West falls asleep in a bed chamber that is below his house in Boston. He suffers from insomnia, so has a doctor who puts him into hypnotic states to help Julian fall asleep. It is May 30, 1887. He wakes up in the year 2000 in Boston, when the chamber is exscavated. At the time of his sleep, West - and Bellamy - are wealthy, and grappling with how to deal with the issues being raised by the laborers, who are advocating for better wages and working conditions.
Dr. Leete, his wife, and beautiful daughter, Edith (the same name of Julian's fiance in 1887), now occupy the property.
What transpires is a long conversation as Dr. Leete tells Julian the new world that is Boston, the United States, always referred to as the "nation," and world. Everybody is equal. No divisions of wealth. Men are positioned to work in areas that take advantage of their talents. No one works past age 45. Means of distribution are so organized that the exact amount that is needed for each person is known, so in the case of food, there is no hunger. The nation controls production and distribution. There is no cash, but a credit card system, but not like our credit cards. A certain amount is deducted at purchase. There is no want, so no competition and no poverty. Private business, large and small, does not exist. People rarely prepare meals at home, instead eating in the only dining hall in the ward they live. Women have been freed from housework. However, they work in fields that “aren't strenuous for them,” and elect their own leaders. While the primary elected woman can serve in a cabinet of the President of the nation, it wasn't clear whether the woman could be President. There is no mention of African Americans’ participation in the new society.
While occasionally Julian sees the Boston outside the house with the Leetes, most of the dialog is a conversation between Julian and Dr. Leete, which makes the book lack excitement and action. The other challenge for the reader is it is written in 1887 formal language, with some words we're not familiar with, and using too many words to say something. Even though it is the year 2000, Dr. Leete is afflicted with the same problem, though I guess Bellamy couldn't help that.
The hints at future technology is a device that plays music, your favorite tunes, and can wake you up with music, which they call a telephone. Radio? Alarm clock radio? Ipod? There are mechanisms to transmit information about how much of a product is needed. Computers? Internet? However, no technology dealing with the visual.
This is a "perfect" Utopian society. Many aspects might seem great: a world at peace is something we wish for, and for every body to have enough food. The maddening thing about Looking Backward is it's too perfect to believe. As our current lingo would say, "everybody's all in."
To Bellamy's credit, Julian asks all the right questions. To his discredit, are the answers. One of the first questions is there must have been some conflict or war preceding the establishment of this new world. Paraphrasing, "No," Dr. Leete says, "everybody realized it was the right thing to do." For me, this hangs over the book. Every time Julian asks a question that some change must have caused conflict, the answer is always that's not the case; that didn't happen. When Dr. Leete criticizes how things were done in Julian's time, a period he didn't live in, and how it confounds people of today, it comes across as arrogant. Much of the analysis of the 19th century, though, seemed accurate - and for the actual 20th and 21st centuries.
That in itself, makes it hard to believe that one day everybody woke up, liked everybody else, agreed to share food, wealth, the rich gave up their businesses and money. In a post script, Bellamy says the beginning of the transformation was 50 years hence, which would have been 1938. We now know that was right before World II, but Hitler was entrenched in power in Germany.
All political change involves struggle, non-violent or violent. In the 20th century, we saw the rise and fall of Communism and Nazism; two World Wars to end all wars; the Holocaust and more. A hundred years after the Civil War, African-Americans were still marching for civil rights and whites didn’t change their attitude, and say, “sure, that’s great.” Fire hoses were used on African American protesters, and a governor blocked the entrance to a University. Eventually, change happened.
The ending of the book was a bit unexpected, but I don’t want to spoil it. One question Julian struggles with is, “Can I be part of a society I didn’t help to create?”
In the post script, Bellamy tried to address the “rapidity” of the transformation:
“Looking Backward...is intended, in all seriousness, as a forecast, in accordance with the principles of evolution, of the next stage in the industrial and social development of humanity, especially in this country; and no part of it is believed by the author to be better supported by the indications of probability than the implied prediction that the dawn of the new era is already near at hand, and that the full day will swiftly follow.”
In 2014, we need to remember that Bellamy was not going to live to see 2000, and though we criticize aspects of his forecast, we shouldn’t stop our contributions to making a better world.
Top reviews from other countries
So physically good, content as expected.