Robinson Crusoe
Copyright Russell McNeil, Malaspina University-College, 1996
March 27, 1996

This is great docu-drama television--let me explain why. Daniel 
Defoe was a hack writer. You gotta love him for that.  Hacks will 
write anything for anyone in any way you ask them to, if there's a 
buck in it.

Of course "hack" doesn't mean bad--although many may be. It's 
the motivation that makes you the hack, not the style you use, or 
the stuff you write about. 

True hacks are not "burdened" with the restrictions imposed by 
having to adhere to any particular ideology, moral position, or 
philosophy. You can defend, or attack, any position and be 
equally persuasive at the drop of a hat: pro-choice in the morning, 
pro-life at noon.

In this culture good hacks are highly valued "professionals." 
Corporate executives, politicians, advertising agencies, television 
networks, large companies, churches, trade magazines, 
communications and public relations agencies, and news 
organizations depend on hacks for much of their output. 

Economics ensures a ready supply. The money is good

This is a huge phenomenon. For most writers, the media is not a 
lucrative profession, and jobs are scarce and getting scarcer as 
newspapers change their role, television specializes, and public 
broadcasters like the CBC contract. Thousands of former 
journalists--end up as hacks: driven there by economic necessity: 
a situation Defoe found himself in many times during his career.

The Nature of the Hack

So Defoe was a hack. So what? Hacks and journalists--Defoe 
was both--work fast and work to deadlines, and the name of the 
game is, after all,  productivity. Editors want a happy readership 
and prize writers who will generate ink--on time--without getting 
their papers in trouble.  Writers quickly learn that survival in this 
game means conforming to the expectations of your editor: and 
the editor expects the writer to help sell papers and hold onto 
their advertisers. The safest way to do that is to learn how to write 
fascinating prose without really saying much at all. Facts, 
especially new controversial facts, are a real pain in the ass for 
journalists. First of all they have to be checked and rechecked, 
and that interferes enormously with deadlines. A few handy 
cliches like, "unconfirmed sources," or "allegedly," or "an 
unnamed government source," can save a lot of work.

One of the ironies of modern journalism is that much of what 
masquerades as independent journalism today is actually written 
by hacks. I worked as a hack for CBC National News once for a 
brief six week period. This is an interesting behind the scene 
activity of which viewers are unaware.  It works like this. A 
reporter is assigned to cover a story and speeds off to do the job. 
My job, as hack, and a lousy one I was, is to direct the story from 
Toronto. Tell the reporter who to talk to. Tell him what questions 
he should ask, and tell him what sort of summary and conclusions 
he or she should arrive at. If necessary write the script and feed it 
to the reporter. It's a hack job because the sense of the story, the 
slant if you will, has been more or less predetermined in Toronto 
by an Executive Editor--my job is to translate his wishes and tell 
the reporter how to pull it off. If the story is in least bit 
"dangerous," my job is to feed the script to one of a small army of 
CBC lawyers who are standing by to "correct" your writing and 
protect the CBC from being sued. The hack's awareness of the shadow of 
the lawyer insures colorful but meaningless (i.e. safe) text.

This practice is routine for major newspapers. Little which is 
printed is printed without detailed vetting and re-writing by 
lawyers.

Journalists in Defoe's time had to do this sort of thing themselves. 
They became their own internal censors not only about questions 
that might have some legal significance, but around issues that 
might alienate editors, readers and advertisers. 

If you wanted to survive as a writer, then or now, follow these 
guidelines:

1: Say anything you want--as long as it mirrors the "conventional 
wisdom" of your audience. This means that as a journalist you 
need to know where the winds are blowing. What does the 
audience want to hear? You need to match their expectations. 
Don't rock the boat. If the government of the day becomes 
unpopular, get on the bandwagon--reflect this sentiment in your 
writing. If the age you are living in is permeated by a boundless 
optimism, reflect a sense of that in the tone of your writing.

2: Anticipate shifting winds. Pay attention to new directions and 
write about them but for god's sake never advocate a new trend 
until you are absolutely sure that is where your audience is 
headed. Once you are sure, advocate like hell--make yourself 
look like a prophet.

3.  Do not originate! Original or novel thinking is taboo. Let the 
philosophers, academics, and politicians do that--it's not your 
role.

4. Develop an interesting and exciting style--make your reputation 
on style--not news. 

What this all means, in a novel like this, is quite interesting. First 
of all it seems highly improbable that Defoe, at 60, after a lifetime 
adhering to these rules, is going to break out onto the world as a 
radical innovator of new thinking and new ideas. Let's not fault 
Defoe for failing to deliver new ideas. That's not what he is about 
and that wasn't what he trained himself to do. He is no Descartes, 
Newton, Galileo, Locke or Hobbes.  Yet, he is doing something 
here that only a skilled hack could pull off.

We do pick up on issues that seem to reflect a set of attitudes 
about life, but these are by and large a reflection of the temper of 
the times, warts and all.  So, we read that the Spaniards had been 
beasts in their oppression of the Americas--conventional wisdom.  
It's okay to populate your plantation with black slaves--
conventional wisdom. Women are meant to be neither seen nor 
heard--conventional wisdom again; Catholicism is dangerous; it's okay to 
embrace piety and the redemptive nature of Jesus Christ--God was very 
popular in the 18th century; God aside, the "exterior" is far more important 
than the "interior"; here folks is how to survive; here folks is how it 
works; here folks is how technology can help; have faith folks you 
can learn; here folks is the road to a good and safe life:Hard 
work and common sense: the boy scout way; be prepared!

What's really curious about this is that as "politically incorrect" as 
these attitudes are to modern ears we seem to forgive Robinson 
Crusoe for these "flaws."  We seem to know that this is at least as 
much a reflection of the age as it is a reflection of Robinson the 
man. We feel less angry about these "attitudes" than we are 
interested and curious.  They are after all some of the 
conventional "attitudes" that existed then, and in reading this 
novel we feel that we are eavesdropping--this is a mirror of that 
time--fascinating.

Another fascination--again one that would be a product of Defoe 
the journalist and hack, is his attention to reportage. There is an 
element of safe and fascinating factual detail that permeates the 
novel which we find quite believable: the natural world as it was--
or believed by most then to be. This is safe ground for a 
journalist. Defoe's descriptions of nature and events are brief but 
highly believable: storms, hurricanes, ocean tides and currents, 
earthquakes, seasickness, dismembered bodies, a bullet hole, 
the loping off of a head, the capture of a goat, the felling of a 
parrot, the killing of a bear, an encounter with wolves, the sinking 
of a ship, the discovery of two drowned men on the ship, the 
discovery of a boy's body on the shore...these and hundreds of 
other brief incidents and events in the story roll through the pages 
of this novel with the fidelity and brevity of breaking news. They 
seem genuine and have a "live eye" feel. Here is the picture; here 
is its caption. Like front page news, it's all you need to know. Like 
a real picture it is neither overdone or underdone. It simply is.

Why is this a Great Book? Why are we reading it? By and large 
for the same reasons we enjoy good documentary television. It's 
easy. There are plenty of pictures.  And, although there's nothing 
terribly deep going on, Defoe does do a credible job in mirroring 
his age, in a way no one other than a hack journalist with a nose 
for what the public wanted to read could do.