Rating: 
Summary: It could have been a lot better
Review: "Looking Backward" is considered a classic of its type: Utopian literature, which was popular from the sixteenth century into the beginning of the twentieth. But of course, the vast majority of lives were lived in desperation then, and any escape into a better world was well received. Bellamy was 31 when this book was published. As the narrator, he relates his experience of being put into a hypnotic trance as a sleeping aid in 1887 only to be awakened 113 years later, sound of body and mind just as he was when he went to sleep. But the world has changed to a completely socialistic system. Bellamy goes into interminable explanations of how the new world operates. His characters go into long winded, somewhat repetitive, explanations of all phases of this new order. These tirades become brain numbing in their length and use of archaic words. I believe it would have been much easier to take if he had made his explanations through dialogues instead of monologues. And then his character goes out into the world of 2000 Boston. But, what does he see that's new, different, and exciting? We never find out, because he doesn't tell us. In fact, the only new inventions he describes in the entire book are water fountains whose spray works as airconditioners in buildings, awnings hanging over the entire street to keep out rain, pasteboard credit cards, and music and sermons piped into the home through telephone wires. Too bad he didn't talk with some creative visionaries about what the world might be like in the year 2000, and incorporate some of those concepts in his tale. He says nothing about changes in fashions, transportation, or any other aspect of his new surroundings. And there is a glaring error in his utopian world: He does not take into account human nature. He glosses this over by claiming that the new socialist order was so successful, that all humans immediately fell into step and laziness, jealousy and greed are no more. As if that would happen. There is one thought in the entire book I found illuminating. Paraphrasing here: Credit can be compared with nothing else but the plight of a man building a house with dynamite for mortar. With that, I agree.
Rating: 
Summary: The Dogmatic Utopian Dream
Review: "Looking Backward", by Edward Bellamy, was clearly a vehical to espouse a leftist utopian view of society. Mr. Bellamy's account of society in the year 2000 could have come verbatim from Stalin's Soviet propoganda. This is an excellent book to read for the purposes of recognizing pie eyed utopian drival that has proven to destroy societies that try to implement policies to support this dogma.
Rating:
Summary: utopia of the damned
Review: although initally i believed the book had promise, i became increasingly frustrated at the depth of detail, the commentator for Bellamys utopia, spent on explaining it. the overall structre is generally sound but can become tedoius. as for the world as bellamy envisons, well he can have it. give me the harsh, unequal, but despite this, real ninetenth century. as a vision good; as a reality no chance. but to be fair to bellamy he probably accepts this and this is why he artculates his philosophy through literature. a book that encourages you to think but it works best as a critque of the ninetenth century.
Rating: 
Summary: Not Stalinistic in the least
Review: As pointed out in a recent review of this book in Harpers' Magazine, "utopian" writers are often unfairly branded with the brush of the holocaust (or as my fellow Chicagoan says below, Stalinism). This is simply untrue: Stalin was a power hungry thug, and to paint utopians with the racist brush of Hitler is to paint democrats with the racist brush of apartheid (the South African government was democratic as far as whites went). Moreover, Bellamay wasn't alive during these times. ANd nowhere in this book were those who disagreed eliminated - it claims that popular thought evolved to this vision. What I remember most from this view wasn't that I agreed with its ideal society but a feeling of sweetness from its faith in the ultimate goodness of humanity and a willingness not to turn its head from the worst problems of our times or admit defeat to them.
Rating:
Summary: Futures of Days Past?
Review: Being a fan of irony, I decided to read this novel now that it is the year 2000. Much like 1984 by George Orwell, many of the prophecies have fallen short of the mark. The Utopian strain of Bellamys vision is apparent but we have not nearly evolved that much. This book contains a lot of the naivity of the Socialist/Marxist intelligentsia of that era. Human nature, alas, is still much too flawed for that. But politics aside, this is an enjoyable, well written novel. Bellamy is obviously preaching but it does not detract from the story. Julian West is a sympathetic character in spite his aristocratic origin. It should also be stated that some of the predictions of the book like credit cards and malls have come to pass. It was stimulating and thought provoking to read this book in the year the story allegedly took place. It should remind us that we have come a long way but we still have a long way yet to go.
Rating:
Summary: You'll be bound and determined to finish....
Review: Bellamy's 'Looking Backward' is an interesting little book - it may just as well have been an essay of the author's opinions of what the future may bring. Lacking in plot, this novel is by no means an easy read, but worth reading even if only to say you finished!
Rating: 
Summary: "Looking Backward": still the great American utopian novel
Review: Edward Bellamy's "Looking Backward 2000-1887" remains the most successful and influential utopian novel written by an American writer mainly because the competition consists mostly of dystopian works, from Jack London's "The Iron Heel" to Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale," or science fiction works like Ursula K. LeGuin's "The Dispossessed." Still, I do not mean to give the impression that Bellamy's 1888 novel gets this honor by default. Magazine covers in 1984 were devoted to judging the track record of George Orwell's dystopian classic and I would argue that Bellamy deserves the same sort of consideration now that we have reached the 21st century. I certainly intend to use him to that end in my upcoming Utopian Images class. 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.
Rating:
Summary: too dogmatic
Review: Edward Bellamy's "Looking Backward" is about a man who sleeps from 1887 until the year 2000. The United States has become one giant socialist monopoly (excuse the redundancy). The book openly portrays men treated as military draftees, from the age of twenty-one until the age of forty-five, in the U.S.'s industrial army. Bellamy's glorification of the military includes government assignment of all jobs. Everyone is issued ration cards which are used to draw goods from government storehouses. Everyone is permitted the same amount in value annually. Of course, all of the preceding is portrayed as a dandy utopia just as it was portrayed by so many apologists for the military socialist complex of the socialist trio of atrocities (the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (62 million killed), the People's Republic of China (35 million), the National Socialist German Workers' Party (21 million) and elsewhere. Did Bellamy foresee soviet-style rationing, or did he inspire it? Bellamy's is the same socialist naivete that resulted in 7 million persons who perished from 1932-33 in the famine that resulted in Europe's "breadbasket" after the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics imposed collectivist land management in the Ukraine. By the spring of 1933, an estimated 25,000 people died every day in the Ukraine. It is the same socialist naivete that resulted in 27 million people starving to death in 1958 in the so-called "Great Leap Forward" in China. Was the "Great Leap Forward" inspired by "Looking Backward"? Edward Bellamy was the cousin of Francis Bellamy the author of the Pledge of Allegiance, which expresses the ideas Edward Bellamy's socialist utopian novels. Francis wrote the pledge to promote socialism in the most socialistic institution -government schools. Both cousins were members of the "Nationalism" movement and its socialist auxiliary group, whose members wanted the federal government to nationalize most of the American economy. They saw government schools as a means to their socialist "Nationalism." Francis Bellamy lived long enough to see a similar salute and a similar philosophy espoused by the National Socialist German Workers'Party. As the only person on the internet who collects, exposes and writes about historical photos of the original socialist salute to the U.S. flag, I find Bellamy's book terrifying.
Rating: 
Summary: "Looking Backward at Socialism" by RexCurry.net
Review: Edward Bellamy's "Looking Backward" is about a man who sleeps from 1887 until the year 2000. The United States has become one giant socialist monopoly (excuse the redundancy). The book openly portrays men treated as military draftees, from the age of twenty-one until the age of forty-five, in the U.S.'s industrial army. Bellamy's glorification of the military includes government assignment of all jobs. Everyone is issued ration cards which are used to draw goods from government storehouses. Everyone is permitted the same amount in value annually. Of course, all of the preceding is portrayed as a dandy utopia just as it was portrayed by so many apologists for the military socialist complex of the socialist trio of atrocities (the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (62 million killed), the People's Republic of China (35 million), the National Socialist German Workers' Party (21 million) and elsewhere. Did Bellamy foresee soviet-style rationing, or did he inspire it? Bellamy's is the same socialist naivete that resulted in 7 million persons who perished from 1932-33 in the famine that resulted in Europe's "breadbasket" after the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics imposed collectivist land management in the Ukraine. By the spring of 1933, an estimated 25,000 people died every day in the Ukraine. It is the same socialist naivete that resulted in 27 million people starving to death in 1958 in the so-called "Great Leap Forward" in China. Was the "Great Leap Forward" inspired by "Looking Backward"? Edward Bellamy was the cousin of Francis Bellamy the author of the Pledge of Allegiance, which expresses the ideas Edward Bellamy's socialist utopian novels. Francis wrote the pledge to promote socialism in the most socialistic institution -government schools. Both cousins were members of the "Nationalism" movement and its socialist auxiliary group, whose members wanted the federal government to nationalize most of the American economy. They saw government schools as a means to their socialist "Nationalism." Francis Bellamy lived long enough to see a similar salute and a similar philosophy espoused by the National Socialist German Workers'Party. As the only person on the internet who collects, exposes and writes about historical photos of the original socialist salute to the U.S. flag, I find Bellamy's book terrifying.
Rating:
Summary: Important but mediocre
Review: Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward is not a great work of literature. The character development is minimal, there is little plot line to speak of beyond the main character's mysterious transportation from the end of the 19th to the end of the 20th century. The dialogue is stilted and is often rendered simply as responsory monologues. Not so interested, huh? Well, it is an important book. It was the most popular book of the last quarter of the nineteenth century, and thus has great value as a historical work. Bellamy gives an interesting commentary on the social conditions of his time, and provides an interesting answer -- though another interesting weakness is that Bellamy never bothers to explain how the transition to his utopian economic structure occurred; it was simply "inevitable." So if you're assigned to read this for school, read it for what it is: a piece of late nineteenth-century history. Just don't expect anything belonging to the canon of Great Western Literature.
|
