‘Robinson Crusoe’

After the footprint.

That is my definition of anxiety. It is found, of course, in Daniel Defoe’s 18th-Century spellbinder, “Robinson Crusoe,” which has just been issued in an excellent unabridged reading by Classics on Tape, a new company in Ashland, Ore.

You may recall that Mr. Crusoe was a Yorkshireman who found success that his father could not have predicted when he ran away to sea and wound up owning a plantation in South America.

One day, bored and greedy, Crusoe consented to lend his seafaring knowledge to a slave trader whose mission was to bring back a load of chattel to the plantations.

When the bark cracked up in a storm off a deserted island, Crusoe was the only survivor. Defoe’s description of how he set about confronting his physical needs is the best part of the book. A cave with a secret entrance, clothes stitched from goatskins, boats hewn from logs--any man who ever was a Boy Scout will listen to this section at least twice.

It amuses me, though, that this book is now thought of as a “boy’s book.” I’m sure that when Defoe published it in 1719 in his 60th year (there is hope for all us scribblers!) he did not intend it for a juvenile audience. The new biography, “Daniel Defoe” by Paula R. Backscheider for Johns Hopkins University Press, reveals that the author was a fascinating, thoughtful man whose activities ranged from spying to printing political and philosophical pamphlets.

And indeed, there are some wonderful, universal musings that I had forgotten about until I listened to the audio version of “Robinson Crusoe.”

There is the moment, for example, when Crusoe attempts to explore other sides of the island in his homemade boat and suddenly is blown out to sea.

“How I had repined at my solitary condition; and now what I would give to be on the shore again,” said Crusoe. “ . . . Thus we never see the true state of our condition until it is illustrated to us by its contraries; nor know how to value what we enjoy, but by the want of it.”

The story is set in the mid-1600s, so it was entirely plausible that no ship would pass Crusoe’s island for decades. Now to the anxiety: Crusoe had lived there for 15 years and had become quite adjusted to his condition when one day “ . . . I was exceedingly surprised with the print of a man’s naked foot on the shore. I stood like one thunderstruck . . . I listened, I looked round me, I could hear nothing, nor see anything.”

He went back to his hide-out and spent his first sleepless night since he had washed ashore.

“How strange a checkerwork of Providence is the life of man!” said Crusoe as he tossed and turned. “ . . . I, whose only affliction was that I seemed banished from human society . . . should now tremble at the very apprehensions of seeing a man.”

Not for years was this anxiety laid to rest, however. Crusoe finally confronted other human beings in his 24th year on the island, and his rescue of Man Friday from some visiting cannibals sets the stage for the end of the tale.

One could only wish that the book had stopped when the two men eventually escape from the island. To say that what happens after that escape is anti-climactic is to redefine the term. However, on the audio version, this only takes up the last tape of the eight-tape set, so the rental ($15.95 a month) from Classics on Tape is an investment you will not regret.

This is especially true because of the cadence used by the narrator, Frederick Davidson. The Oxford-groomed voice of this Englishman takes its time with this book; you can drive in stop-and-go on the freeway and never lose the thread.

Customers of audio-literature pioneer Books on Tape of Newport Beach will know that Davidson voice by another name-- David Case, his actual name. He said in a recent telephone interview from his Northern California home that he has read “about a hundred books” for Books on Tape.

That was a good-enough recommendation for Craig Black, the 38-year-old entrepreneur who cashed in the equity in his Palos Verdes home and started up Classics on Tape in Ashland, Ore., last year.

Most of the offerings in the Classics on Tape catalogue are business and history readings that reflect Black’s Libertarian leanings.

Which is why, in Black’s mind, Robinson Crusoe was a perfect entry for his company’s fiction list: One man, alone, surviving by his wits.

WHERE TO ORDER TAPES: Classics on Tape; 800-729-2665; P.O. Box 969, Ashland, Ore. 97520