Looking Backward
| File:Looking backward.jpg cover of Looking Backward: 2000-1887 | |
| Author | Edward Bellamy |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | Utopian novel |
| Publisher | William Ticknor |
Publication date | 1888 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | Print (Hardback) |
| Pages | vii, 470 pp |
| ISBN | NA Parameter error in {{ISBNT}}: invalid character |
| Followed by | Equality |
Looking Backward: 2000-1887 is a utopian novel by Edward Bellamy, a lawyer and writer from western Massachusetts, and was first published in 1888. According to Erich Fromm, Looking Backward is "one of the most remarkable books ever published in America."[1]
It was the third largest bestseller of its time, after Uncle Tom's Cabin and Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ.[1] It influenced a large number of intellectuals, and appears by title in many of the major Marxist writings of the day. "It is one of the few books ever published that created almost immediately on its appearance a political mass movement."[2] Several "Bellamy Clubs" sprang up all over the United States for discussing and propagating the book's ideas. This political movement came to be known as Nationalism.[3] The novel also inspired several utopian communities.
Synopsis
The book tells the story of Julian West, a young American who, towards the end of the 19th century, falls into a deep, hypnosis-induced sleep and wakes up more than a century later. He finds himself in the same location (Boston, Massachusetts) but in a totally changed world: It is the year 2000 and, while he was sleeping, the U.S.A. has been transformed into a socialist utopia. This book outlines Bellamy's complex thoughts about improving the future.
The young man readily finds a guide, Doctor Leete, who shows him around and explains all the advances of this new age, including drastically reduced working hours for people performing menial jobs and almost instantaneous delivery of goods from stores to homes. Everyone retires with full benefits at age 45. The productive capacity of America is commonly owned, and the goods of society are equally distributed to its citizens. A considerable portion of the book is dialogue between Leete and West wherein West expresses his confusion about an issue and Leete explains it.
Although Bellamy's novel did not discuss technology in detail, commentators frequently compare Looking Backward with actual social and technological developments. For example, Julian West is taken to a store which (with its descriptions of cutting out the middleman to cut down on waste in a similar way to the consumers' cooperatives of his own day based on the Rochdale Principles of 1844) somewhat resembles a modern warehouse club. He additionally introduces the concept of credit cards in chapters 9, 10, 11, 13, 25, and 26 (though their description more closely resembles modern day debit cards). Bellamy also predicts classical music and sermons being available in the home through cable "telephone".
Reaction and Sequel(s)
In 1897 Bellamy wrote a sequel, Equality, dealing with women's rights, education and many other issues. Bellamy wrote the sequel to elaborate and clarify many of the ideas merely touched upon in Looking Backward.
The success of Looking Backward provoked a spate of sequels, parodies, satires, and skeptical dystopian responses.[4] A partial list could include:
- Looking Beyond (1891), by Ludwig A. Geissler
- Looking Forward (1906), by Harry W. Hillman.
- Looking Further Forward: An Answer to "Looking Backward" by Edward Bellamy (1890), by Richard C. Michaelis
- Looking Backward and What I Saw (1890), by W. W. Satterlee
- Looking Further Backward (1890), by Arthur Dudley Vinton
- Mr. East's Experiences in Mr. Bellamy's World (1891), by Conrad Wilbrandt
- Looking Within: The Misleading Tendencies of "Looking Backward" Made Manifest (1893), by J. W. Roberts
- Young West: A Sequel to Edward Bellamy's Celebrated Novel "Looking Backward" (1894), by Solomon Schindler.
The result was a "battle of the books" that lasted through the rest of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth. The back-and-forth nature of the debate is illustrated by the subtitle of Geissler's 1891 Looking Beyond, which is A Sequel to "Looking Backward" by Edward Bellamy and an Answer to "Looking Forward" by Richard Michaelis.
William Morris's 1890 utopia News from Nowhere was partly written in reaction to Bellamy's utopia, which Morris did not find congenial.
Beyond the purely literary sphere, Bellamy's descriptions of utopian urban planning had a practical influence on Ebenezer Howard's founding of the garden city movement in England, and on the design of the Bradbury Building in Los Angeles.
During the Great Strikes of 1877, Eugene V. Debs opposed the strikes and argued that there was no essential necessity for the conflict between capital and labor. However, Debs was influenced by Bellamy's book to turn to a more socialist direction. He soon helped to form the American Railway Union. With supporters from the Knights of Labor and from the immediate vicinity of Chicago, workers at the Pullman Palace Car Company went on strike in June 1894. This came to be known as the Pullman Strike.
Later Responses
Looking Backward was re-written in 1974 by American science fiction writer Mack Reynolds as Looking Backward from the Year 2000. Matthew Kapell, a historian and anthropologist, examined this re-writing in his essay, "Mack Reynolds' Avoidance of his own Eighteenth Brumaire: A Note of Caution for Would-Be Utopians."
In 1984, Herbert Knapp and Mary Knapp's "Red, White and Blue Paradise: The American Canal Zone in Panama" appeared. The book was in part a memoir of their careers teaching at fabled Balboa High School, but also a re-interpretation of the Canal Zone as a creature of turn-of-the-century Progressivism, a workers' paradise. The Knapps employed Bellamy's "Looking Backward" as their heuristic model for understanding Progressive ideology as it shaped the Canal Zone.
References
- ^ a b Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward 2000-1887, with a foreword by Erich Fromm, Signet 1960. ISBN 0-451-52412-8
- ^ (Fromm, p vi). 165
- ^ Edward Bellamy. "What 'Nationalism' Means." The Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature (1844-1898); Vol. 52, No. 3 (September 1890); p. 289.
- ^ Pfaelzer, pp. 78-94 and 170-3.
- Bleiler, Everett (1948). The Checklist of Fantastic Literature. Chicago: Shasta Publishers. pp. 46, 436.
- Brinkley, Alan (2003). American History: A Survey. Columbia University: McGraw Hill.
- Pfaelzer, Jean (1984). The Utopian Novel in America, 1886–1896: The Politics of Form. Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh Press
External links
- Looking Backward From 2000 to 1887 at Project Gutenberg
- Looking Backward — html edition.
- Looking Backward From 2000 to 1887, available at Wikisource
- Looking Backwardon Literapedia.