FRIDAY AND ROBINSON: Life on Speranza Island

Based on Tournier's own Grand Prix du Roman-winning novel Friday which was in turn based on Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, this revisitation of the castaways' island turns the Robinson/Friday relationship into a philosophical parable on the relative strengths and weaknesses of civilized vs. primitive man. Here Robinson's desperate efforts to maintain his psychological equilibrium by recreating the structured environment of civilization (punctuated by retreats to a womb-like cave in moments of stress) come to an abrupt end when Friday explodes his stores of gunpowder, blowing up Robinson's house and fields. Without these possessions, the balance of power between the two men is altered, and Friday becomes the leader by virtue of his talent for improvising with materials at hand (baking fowl wrapped in layers of clay, making arrows and musical instruments), his close relationship to animals (which Robinson views as capriciously bloodthirsty and sentimental by turns) and his ability to waste time without becoming demoralized. The reversal is affirmed by games of dress-up role playing, during which Robinson makes symbolic expiation for his former assumption of superiority. But when the idyll of noble savagery is finally ended by the arrival of the Whitebird, it's Friday -- fascinated by the ship's technical beauty -- who opts for society while Robinson is repelled by the grossness and cruelty of the ship's crew. Many of Friday's activities -- such as his turning the skull of a goat that saved his life into an Aeolian harp -- have a kind of mythic unity, and the spare existential prose is studded with startling images. The condensed form places some limitations on Tournier's flights of profundity, but it makes the story a good deal less formidable than its explication might suggest. Many young people who've speculated themselves on the contradictions of civilization might enjoy meeting a Robinson with a modem turn of mind.