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News from Nowhere
News from Nowhere (1890) is the best-known prose work of William Morris and the only significant English utopia to be written since Thomas More's. The novel describes the encounter between a visitor from the nineteenth century, William Guest, and a decentralized and humane socialist future. Set over a century after a revolutionary upheaval in 1952, these "Chapters from a Utopian Romance" recount his journey across London and up the Thames to Kelmscott Manor, Morris's own country house in Oxfordshire. Drawing on the work of John Ruskin and Karl Marx, Morris's book is not only an evocative statement of his egalitarian convictions but also a distinctive contribution to the utopian tradition. Morris's rejection of state socialism and his ambition to transform the relationship between humankind and the natural world, give News from Nowhere a particular resonance for modern readers. This text is based on the 1891 version, incorporating the extensive revisions made by Morris to the first edition.
207 pages, Paperback
First published January 11, 1890
About the author
William Morris
1,431 books432 followersWilliam Morris was an English architect, furniture and textile designer, artist, writer, socialist and Marxist associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the English Arts and Crafts Movement. Morris wrote and published poetry, fiction, and translations of ancient and medieval texts throughout his life. His best-known works include The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems (1858), The Earthly Paradise (1868–1870), A Dream of John Ball and the utopian News from Nowhere. He was an important figure in the emergence of socialism in Britain, founding the Socialist League in 1884, but breaking with the movement over goals and methods by the end of that decade. He devoted much of the rest of his life to the Kelmscott Press, which he founded in 1891. The 1896 Kelmscott edition of the Works of Geoffrey Chaucer is considered a masterpiece of book design.
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December 3, 2018
It is pleasant to remember that, in our outrageous and ill-mannered world, we have the potential to create utopian societies, where ephebes and red-cheeked Venii canter around village greens, exchanging flirtatious banter in Latin and Welsh, never once seeking to crush a pockmarked peasant under their well-shod hobnails for the mere titter factor. Morris’s hallucinogenic utopian novel is like falling into a bed of soft blonde hair, or rolling around a meadow in one’s shorts as the summer sun bronzes one’s pert buttcheeks, and a kind-hearted auntie serves up a platter of cream tea with extra cream. As our planet approaches the certitude of fast-moving extinction via the rolling revue of autocratic thundercunts at the helm of most nations, an afternoon spent in this Victorian reverie is a soothing unguent for the soul.
September 15, 2021
- My version of utopia would be to have the time to read all these books I bought.
- Or you could develop powers like Johnny 5
- But I am not like Johnny 5. I am so slooow. And I’m running out of shelf space.
- Well some people don’t have any shelves at all. So be thankful.
- In William Morris’s cutesy-communist-glazed-eyes-dreamy-pastoral world everyone would have beautifully hand-carved shelves with 14th century designs.
- Communist? Is that your word?
- No, - when he describes the revolution of 1952 he says it was led by
Some of those more enlightened men who were then called Socialists, although they well knew, and even stated in public, that the only reasonable condition of society was that of pure Communism such as you now see around you
- So Mr Morris was taking on the tough job of describing what a pure Communist society would be like, something that Karl himself put into the Too Difficult box.
- Yes. As usual with these utopia novels, this is not really a novel but an essay in the form of a novel, mostly in dialogue.
- Like this review?
- Yes! Ha ha, I wonder where I got that idea from.
- Well, never mind how he did it, what’s the result like? This ideal society.
- Well, I’m sorry to say that Morris communism turns out to be a version of the worst song John Lennon ever wrote.
- “Run for your Life”?
- No, “Imagine”. It’s a mimsywimsy Hallmark greeting card society where miraculously everyone is good looking, cheerful, eager to help milk all the llamas or do some strenuous haymaking at the drop of a 14th century hat– the industrial revolution has been abolished along with the concept of nationality (“imagine there’s no countries, it isn’t hard to do, nothing to kill or die for, and no religion too”). It’s like if The Shire where the hobbits live expanded to take over the whole world
- Yes, how this society had solved all the major economic problems of resource management and transportation not to mention medical – nobody seems to get ill – is not really explained. It’s all waved away. Bank robberies? But dear boy, there are no banks. Because there’s no money! We have solved that problem!
- So it’s like oh well, after the revolution, we will abolish people being mean to each other and we’ll abolish all disease.
- But without passing any laws because there isn’t a government!
- Yes, everybody is the government!
- You may say that he’s a dreamer.
- I do say so. He was a dreamer. But he wasn’t the only one. I think there were eight or nine others.
- Or you could develop powers like Johnny 5
- But I am not like Johnny 5. I am so slooow. And I’m running out of shelf space.
- Well some people don’t have any shelves at all. So be thankful.
- In William Morris’s cutesy-communist-glazed-eyes-dreamy-pastoral world everyone would have beautifully hand-carved shelves with 14th century designs.
- Communist? Is that your word?
- No, - when he describes the revolution of 1952 he says it was led by
Some of those more enlightened men who were then called Socialists, although they well knew, and even stated in public, that the only reasonable condition of society was that of pure Communism such as you now see around you
- So Mr Morris was taking on the tough job of describing what a pure Communist society would be like, something that Karl himself put into the Too Difficult box.
- Yes. As usual with these utopia novels, this is not really a novel but an essay in the form of a novel, mostly in dialogue.
- Like this review?
- Yes! Ha ha, I wonder where I got that idea from.
- Well, never mind how he did it, what’s the result like? This ideal society.
- Well, I’m sorry to say that Morris communism turns out to be a version of the worst song John Lennon ever wrote.
- “Run for your Life”?
- No, “Imagine”. It’s a mimsywimsy Hallmark greeting card society where miraculously everyone is good looking, cheerful, eager to help milk all the llamas or do some strenuous haymaking at the drop of a 14th century hat– the industrial revolution has been abolished along with the concept of nationality (“imagine there’s no countries, it isn’t hard to do, nothing to kill or die for, and no religion too”). It’s like if The Shire where the hobbits live expanded to take over the whole world
- Yes, how this society had solved all the major economic problems of resource management and transportation not to mention medical – nobody seems to get ill – is not really explained. It’s all waved away. Bank robberies? But dear boy, there are no banks. Because there’s no money! We have solved that problem!
- So it’s like oh well, after the revolution, we will abolish people being mean to each other and we’ll abolish all disease.
- But without passing any laws because there isn’t a government!
- Yes, everybody is the government!
- You may say that he’s a dreamer.
- I do say so. He was a dreamer. But he wasn’t the only one. I think there were eight or nine others.
September 9, 2011
I first knew of Morris as the greatest bookbinder of the modern age, a master of textile design who single-handedly rediscovered half a dozen dead arts. But he was also a fantasist, contemporary with Dunsany, and a political thinker.
My search among the many branching roots of Fantasy lead me to pick up this collection, but I must admit this is not what I had in mind by 'fantasy'. Here, Morris gives us a rather bland and didactic rundown of his perfect world, loosely structured around something less engaging than a story.
Morris' pessimism about the state of man lends him a desperation, a need for things to be different, to be better. He indulges this need, but he does not build upon it. We never learn how his world came about, how it overcame the pitfalls of human conflict, of ignorance, or fear.
There was a bloody revolution, this we know, brought on by the great inequality suffered by the squalid poor. This is not remarkable, as history will attest, but in every case, such revolutions have not resulted in a sudden utopia, but in a new power structure.
In Morris' world, a pleasant socialist anarchy arises from the revolution, and the only explanation for why is that 'human beings desire to be happy'. Certainly, they seem to, but that doesn't mean they know how to achieve happiness, or that they won't be sidelined by fear, ignorance, and internal conflicts.
Morris seems to sense the ephemeral state he has painted, where the problems of the world are solved by pure coincidence, and he often foreshadows that this ideal world is poised to fall at any moment, as well it might, since there is nothing to bolster or protect it.
Like the other Utopian Socialists of Victorian England, Morris wants to see a new world born, but doesn't seem to know how to bring it about. Like them, he is content to rely on the 'pure goodness of man' to do the work for him, and like them, his pleasant thoughts prove ineffective in the end.
After reading about Morris' many laudable achievements in various arts, I felt a need to study him, hoping I might find the personal philosophy which allows a man to explore so freely, and to remain undaunted by the vastness of his studies. I quickly found his secret: he was independently wealthy from a young age.
This allowed him to pursue with absolute freedom anything which interested him, including socialism and the 'plight of the poor', which was indeed a severe one in Victorian period. So he and his other well-off friends started a social club where they would hang about and talk about how to fix the world.
And this book sounds like what would come of the conversation of a bunch of wealthy people who were concerned about the poor and decided they wanted to fix things. There are a lot of noble sentiments, many platitudes, and a complete avoidance of man's darker side.
Morris assumes that if one destroyed all of the social structures (politics, justice, law, industry, business), then all people would naturally be nice to one another, which rather ignores the fact that we developed these systems to replace the violent, anarchic systems which preceded them.
Certainly, all of these structures are rife with corruption and inequality, but it is folly to scrap an entire plan just because it has drawbacks. Every plan has drawbacks, so the real challenge is to find the one that will be most effective despite its flaws, not reject anything that isn't perfect.
Also like other idealist thinkers of the Victorian, he seems to have a very rosy, idealized view of the Medieval Period. After all, it was the Victorians who invented the world of knights, princesses, chivalry, and honor that we not think of as the Middle Ages.
Now, Morris had slightly more knowledge of the period than some of his contemporaries, since he read Medieval manuscripts in order to recreate their craft techniques, but his social understanding seems to be more rudimentary, as he seems to think of it as a Golden Age when people were intelligent and pleasant, not as a period of violent, jostling warlords who were so childish and ignorant that they would buy matching silk shirts instead of armoring their troops.
Morris' Utopia is similar to the Medieval in that it seems to be a period following a Dark Age, where people are mostly simple and uneducated, where much of technology has fallen by the wayside, and people have enough to think about with feeding their families rather than casting their thoughts to higher things.
Overall, the pervasive happiness on which his world seems to run felt more to me like ignorant self-satisfaction rather than the enrichment of a lifetime of soul-searching. Perhaps Morris likes the idea of a world run by the motto 'ignorance is bliss', but I can hardly imagine that would turn out very well.
Another concept central to his world is the notion that work and art are the same thing, and that if people simply took pride in what they did, then they would be happy and all the work would always get done. I couldn't help but think that there would definitely still be some jobs that wouldn't get done, especially ones unpleasant enough that it would be hard to find the art in them, especially if they weren't recompensed.
Certainly, there have been some projects that operated because of a pride in work--namely the great cathedrals of Europe and the Egyptian pyramids, where people were given personal prestige and spiritual guarantees for working free or at a discounted rate, but Morris gives us no such social structure to elevate the status of truly unpleasant labors.
In the conclusion , Morris asks us to believe that this is a vision, not a dream, but that isn't true. This is not a revelation of a philosophy or worldview, not a glimpse of other possibilities, but a vague and ephemeral thing, built of elation and hope--and little else.
UPDATE:
The day after writing this review, I continued with my collection of Morris' writings, finding a lecture called 'The Hopes of Civilization' which more-or-less outlines all the problems I had with News From Nowhere. In the lecture he explains how his utopia could come about, why he idealized the Medieval period, what economic philosophies underpin ideas, and he even mentions manufacturing a pseudo-religious motivation for work.
So here were all my answers, all the failings of this book explained succinctly, passionately, concretely, and instructively, in a lecture. A lecture written five years before News From Nowhere. It is hard to describe the combination of frustration, anger, and confusion I felt as I saw him skillfully lay out what this book should have been, proving that he had all of the tools necessary to write an engrossing, insightful, well-supported work, but instead, and for unfathomable reasons, wrote something vague, repetitive, unsupported, and preachy.
I think if you took all the descriptions of how pretty women are in News From Nowhere (usually every other paragraph if the narrator is talking to a woman) and set them aside, the result would be longer than the entire lecture. I'm not sure what this means, but it gives me the same itchy, perturbed sensation I get when I see a luxury SUV parked across two handicap spaces.
I know other of his works have a more overtly fantastical bent, and I hope to get more out of them than I did from this.
My search among the many branching roots of Fantasy lead me to pick up this collection, but I must admit this is not what I had in mind by 'fantasy'. Here, Morris gives us a rather bland and didactic rundown of his perfect world, loosely structured around something less engaging than a story.
Morris' pessimism about the state of man lends him a desperation, a need for things to be different, to be better. He indulges this need, but he does not build upon it. We never learn how his world came about, how it overcame the pitfalls of human conflict, of ignorance, or fear.
There was a bloody revolution, this we know, brought on by the great inequality suffered by the squalid poor. This is not remarkable, as history will attest, but in every case, such revolutions have not resulted in a sudden utopia, but in a new power structure.
In Morris' world, a pleasant socialist anarchy arises from the revolution, and the only explanation for why is that 'human beings desire to be happy'. Certainly, they seem to, but that doesn't mean they know how to achieve happiness, or that they won't be sidelined by fear, ignorance, and internal conflicts.
Morris seems to sense the ephemeral state he has painted, where the problems of the world are solved by pure coincidence, and he often foreshadows that this ideal world is poised to fall at any moment, as well it might, since there is nothing to bolster or protect it.
Like the other Utopian Socialists of Victorian England, Morris wants to see a new world born, but doesn't seem to know how to bring it about. Like them, he is content to rely on the 'pure goodness of man' to do the work for him, and like them, his pleasant thoughts prove ineffective in the end.
After reading about Morris' many laudable achievements in various arts, I felt a need to study him, hoping I might find the personal philosophy which allows a man to explore so freely, and to remain undaunted by the vastness of his studies. I quickly found his secret: he was independently wealthy from a young age.
This allowed him to pursue with absolute freedom anything which interested him, including socialism and the 'plight of the poor', which was indeed a severe one in Victorian period. So he and his other well-off friends started a social club where they would hang about and talk about how to fix the world.
And this book sounds like what would come of the conversation of a bunch of wealthy people who were concerned about the poor and decided they wanted to fix things. There are a lot of noble sentiments, many platitudes, and a complete avoidance of man's darker side.
Morris assumes that if one destroyed all of the social structures (politics, justice, law, industry, business), then all people would naturally be nice to one another, which rather ignores the fact that we developed these systems to replace the violent, anarchic systems which preceded them.
Certainly, all of these structures are rife with corruption and inequality, but it is folly to scrap an entire plan just because it has drawbacks. Every plan has drawbacks, so the real challenge is to find the one that will be most effective despite its flaws, not reject anything that isn't perfect.
Also like other idealist thinkers of the Victorian, he seems to have a very rosy, idealized view of the Medieval Period. After all, it was the Victorians who invented the world of knights, princesses, chivalry, and honor that we not think of as the Middle Ages.
Now, Morris had slightly more knowledge of the period than some of his contemporaries, since he read Medieval manuscripts in order to recreate their craft techniques, but his social understanding seems to be more rudimentary, as he seems to think of it as a Golden Age when people were intelligent and pleasant, not as a period of violent, jostling warlords who were so childish and ignorant that they would buy matching silk shirts instead of armoring their troops.
Morris' Utopia is similar to the Medieval in that it seems to be a period following a Dark Age, where people are mostly simple and uneducated, where much of technology has fallen by the wayside, and people have enough to think about with feeding their families rather than casting their thoughts to higher things.
Overall, the pervasive happiness on which his world seems to run felt more to me like ignorant self-satisfaction rather than the enrichment of a lifetime of soul-searching. Perhaps Morris likes the idea of a world run by the motto 'ignorance is bliss', but I can hardly imagine that would turn out very well.
Another concept central to his world is the notion that work and art are the same thing, and that if people simply took pride in what they did, then they would be happy and all the work would always get done. I couldn't help but think that there would definitely still be some jobs that wouldn't get done, especially ones unpleasant enough that it would be hard to find the art in them, especially if they weren't recompensed.
Certainly, there have been some projects that operated because of a pride in work--namely the great cathedrals of Europe and the Egyptian pyramids, where people were given personal prestige and spiritual guarantees for working free or at a discounted rate, but Morris gives us no such social structure to elevate the status of truly unpleasant labors.
In the conclusion , Morris asks us to believe that this is a vision, not a dream, but that isn't true. This is not a revelation of a philosophy or worldview, not a glimpse of other possibilities, but a vague and ephemeral thing, built of elation and hope--and little else.
UPDATE:
The day after writing this review, I continued with my collection of Morris' writings, finding a lecture called 'The Hopes of Civilization' which more-or-less outlines all the problems I had with News From Nowhere. In the lecture he explains how his utopia could come about, why he idealized the Medieval period, what economic philosophies underpin ideas, and he even mentions manufacturing a pseudo-religious motivation for work.
So here were all my answers, all the failings of this book explained succinctly, passionately, concretely, and instructively, in a lecture. A lecture written five years before News From Nowhere. It is hard to describe the combination of frustration, anger, and confusion I felt as I saw him skillfully lay out what this book should have been, proving that he had all of the tools necessary to write an engrossing, insightful, well-supported work, but instead, and for unfathomable reasons, wrote something vague, repetitive, unsupported, and preachy.
I think if you took all the descriptions of how pretty women are in News From Nowhere (usually every other paragraph if the narrator is talking to a woman) and set them aside, the result would be longer than the entire lecture. I'm not sure what this means, but it gives me the same itchy, perturbed sensation I get when I see a luxury SUV parked across two handicap spaces.
I know other of his works have a more overtly fantastical bent, and I hope to get more out of them than I did from this.
June 4, 2010
A Victorian gentleman named Guest is mysteriously transported forward in time to a society less futuristic than one might expect. A utopia of environmental purity, personal freedom, and peace, it is characterized by small communities of rural artisans modeled after Morris' idealized conception of medieval (communal, not feudal) society. There are no nations and no money. Each individual does the work that he or she finds fulfilling, and the products of labor are shared freely. Rather than perfecting labor-saving technology, people have learned to value work and to prize the quality of objects over mass-consumerism. Possessions are few, but beautifully crafted and food is wholesome and plentiful. Sexual relationships are at the discretion of those involved and there are no social mores other than a general concern for the happiness of others.
Morris’ radical beliefs were grounded in aesthetic rather than political or economic ideas. He himself explained his socialist convictions, perhaps flippantly, but not insincerely, I am a socialist partly because I found out that in these days only rich men can have pretty things about them—which doesn’t seem fair to me. In the utopia dreamt of by Morris, the populace will create and enjoy art as part of the aspirations of the people towards the beauty and true pleasure of life.
Morris had become interested in social amelioration soon after entering the university, when he and his close friend Burne-Jones discussed entering monastic life but instead resolved to dedicate themselves to art and make that art a crusade and Holy Warfare against the age. Morris’ early publications, particularly his long poem-story “Defense of Guenevere”, were notable for their rejection of contemporary sexual mores and interest in social justice. At this early point Morris was not yet involved in the socialist movement and his radicalism was by and large camouflaged by the romantic imagery and ornate decorative motifs that characterized his writing and visual arts. During middle age, when he became openly affiliated with the Social-Democratic Federation, he came to focus more and more on the need to create an egalitarian society, which he imagined as resembling the small communities of the Middle Ages, minus the feudalism, violence and poverty.
Morris imagined a future utopian society in which hard work, creative fulfillment, generosity, and personal freedom would be united in an environment of liberation and creativity. For Morris, socialism meant the freedom for individual pleasure, but time and again his examples of the pleasures of the future society return to art. Pleasure, essentially, was the creation of beauty. Morris stated that he did not want art for a few any more than education for a few, or freedom for a few. By this Morris meant not only the possession of art but also its production. Morris believed that the best and most vibrant art was made by cooperative rather than individual effort. He wrote that popular art…is…the art which is made by the co-operation of many minds and hands varying in kind and degree of talent, but all doing their part in due subordination to a great whole, without anyone losing his individuality… This is Morris’ ideal of the fulfilling communal life, in which no one is excluded from artistic production. This point is especially clear in contrast with some of his other fiction writing, such as his last novel, Water of the Wondrous Isles (1897). One of the locales Morris invents in this story is the Isle of Increase Unsaught, alternately named the Isle of Earthly Pleasure; here limitless production occurs without the intervention of the inhabitants, who gain no happiness from their physical resources because they are all prisoners who no longer have the knowledge or ability to create on their own or to even survive without their magical environment.
Morris was, for his era, extraordinarily optimistic about human nature. Many who shared his utopian ideals did so with a more typically Victorian pessimism, in which community, and the peer pressure that accompanied it, was a necessary restraint to man’s negative tendencies. Morris believed that people really enjoyed work as much as he did himself (he typically worked 14 hours a day and eventually died of overwork) and did not see a need for a mechanism to prevent idleness. He championed sexual freedom but thought most people, left to their own devices, would settle down into nuclear families. Women would probably want to be more involved in the domestic sphere, but if some didn't care to that was also fine. Morris does not delve very deeply into economics, which he admitted to having little interest in or understanding of, and this is the main weakness of his socialist theory. Without a concrete mechanism, it is just a beautiful dream.
Morris’ radical beliefs were grounded in aesthetic rather than political or economic ideas. He himself explained his socialist convictions, perhaps flippantly, but not insincerely, I am a socialist partly because I found out that in these days only rich men can have pretty things about them—which doesn’t seem fair to me. In the utopia dreamt of by Morris, the populace will create and enjoy art as part of the aspirations of the people towards the beauty and true pleasure of life.
Morris had become interested in social amelioration soon after entering the university, when he and his close friend Burne-Jones discussed entering monastic life but instead resolved to dedicate themselves to art and make that art a crusade and Holy Warfare against the age. Morris’ early publications, particularly his long poem-story “Defense of Guenevere”, were notable for their rejection of contemporary sexual mores and interest in social justice. At this early point Morris was not yet involved in the socialist movement and his radicalism was by and large camouflaged by the romantic imagery and ornate decorative motifs that characterized his writing and visual arts. During middle age, when he became openly affiliated with the Social-Democratic Federation, he came to focus more and more on the need to create an egalitarian society, which he imagined as resembling the small communities of the Middle Ages, minus the feudalism, violence and poverty.
Morris imagined a future utopian society in which hard work, creative fulfillment, generosity, and personal freedom would be united in an environment of liberation and creativity. For Morris, socialism meant the freedom for individual pleasure, but time and again his examples of the pleasures of the future society return to art. Pleasure, essentially, was the creation of beauty. Morris stated that he did not want art for a few any more than education for a few, or freedom for a few. By this Morris meant not only the possession of art but also its production. Morris believed that the best and most vibrant art was made by cooperative rather than individual effort. He wrote that popular art…is…the art which is made by the co-operation of many minds and hands varying in kind and degree of talent, but all doing their part in due subordination to a great whole, without anyone losing his individuality… This is Morris’ ideal of the fulfilling communal life, in which no one is excluded from artistic production. This point is especially clear in contrast with some of his other fiction writing, such as his last novel, Water of the Wondrous Isles (1897). One of the locales Morris invents in this story is the Isle of Increase Unsaught, alternately named the Isle of Earthly Pleasure; here limitless production occurs without the intervention of the inhabitants, who gain no happiness from their physical resources because they are all prisoners who no longer have the knowledge or ability to create on their own or to even survive without their magical environment.
Morris was, for his era, extraordinarily optimistic about human nature. Many who shared his utopian ideals did so with a more typically Victorian pessimism, in which community, and the peer pressure that accompanied it, was a necessary restraint to man’s negative tendencies. Morris believed that people really enjoyed work as much as he did himself (he typically worked 14 hours a day and eventually died of overwork) and did not see a need for a mechanism to prevent idleness. He championed sexual freedom but thought most people, left to their own devices, would settle down into nuclear families. Women would probably want to be more involved in the domestic sphere, but if some didn't care to that was also fine. Morris does not delve very deeply into economics, which he admitted to having little interest in or understanding of, and this is the main weakness of his socialist theory. Without a concrete mechanism, it is just a beautiful dream.
April 25, 2022
So this is an example of "libertarian" socialism, which is opposed to the kind of state-run authoritarian equity proposed by Marx, H.G. Wells, and factions of the contemporary progressive parties of the Americas and Europe.
"News from Nowhere" is a reaction to the industrial revolution. Though technology was designed to make work less burdensome and more efficient, Morris foresaw people becoming enslaved to machines. Therefore, his ideal society is the simple country life, free from the rat race of industry and meddling government bureaucracy. In this book, a man from 19th Century London falls asleep and awakens in the 21st Century. But now there are no big cities, no money, no taxes, no private property of any kind. There was no Brexit because there was no European Union. No divorce, no court system, no prisons. That also means no parliament, no prime minister, no police. And if there is no one to lobby, and no money to lobby with, then there is also no big corporate interests or monopolies to manipulate and lie to the public. In fact, Morris places the responsibility of most problems squarely on the government/lobbying elite dyad, saying that it does nothing but protect the rich from the poor. Though they fool people into thinking the government is by the people and for the people, the real purpose is to protect corporate interests. Government could care less about the everyday person. The book says that governments do very little to effectively prevent riots and criminals from taking the lives and property of regular citizens, but should the citizen actually try to criticize or change anything in government, swift action is taken to treat such behavior as seditious and traitorous. If one really looks at what is happening in American politics today with a critical eye, one would swear Morris really could see into the 21st Century. Morris essentially says that when the elite class and their government system was abolished, the main source of societal division and of unhappiness went with it.
Actually, I think there's some truth there, and the lives of this utopian society sounds pretty good to me, except then that would likely mean I couldn't binge watch Doctor Who or Better Call Saul.
Of course, I really don't know how in the world any of this could be accomplished. Morris seems to think that there are no loafers and no criminals because everyone is happy. The drudgery of toil for someone else's profit is gone, and so people find pleasure in meaningful and cooperative work. But some people don't need an excuse to break bad.
As is often the case with social satires and dystopias, the focus is on the extremes, and so it's best not to think too much about the believability of such a society. However, in the case of utopias, the reader IS in fact expected to be inspired for change, to be able to see the depicted civilization as tangible. The last utopia that I reviewed for Goodreads, "Solaris Farm," did a great job a decade after "News from Nowhere" spelling out a comprehensive plan for a very believable utopian community. But this one, not so much. Supposedly this book really inspired people to become activists in socialism. I can't imagine how that would happen to any person not impaired by serious drugs.
Even at the most mundane levels, this book is cannot be taken seriously. For example, the citizens of the future claim they don't have a system of schools, nor do they even know what the word "education" means. The idea is that the people of this agrarian age learn most of what they need from nature. But they still speak English, know their history, and have books that have survived from multiple centuries all the way to Shakespeare, so you mean to tell me that the very word has escaped the common vernacular? Ridiculous.
Now, I did mention that "Solaris Farm" was superior in depicting a more realistic plan for a progressive agrarian community (except for the floating trumpets serving as advisors). But "News from Nowhere" has a leg up in the entertainment department. Frankly, utopian literature from the era of the Scientific Romance and the Radium Age can be quite dull, consisting largely of preachings and didactics. "News from Nowhere" is still largely a travelogue, and thus has very little plot to speak of, but it is so eccentric and silly that it is still a fun read. There's some good humor and likeable quirky characters that elevate this from just naive propaganda, though it does get rather somber when an old man named Hammond relates the story of the revolution that eventually led to the current utopian society. Hammond is one of the figures encountered along the journey that are romantic archetypes, and thus the narrative is largely allegorical of the protagonist's rebirth.
And so "News from Nowhere" gets a solid three stars from me. It's tastefully brief and oddly interesting enough to warrant it's place as a classic in the Hall of Fame of utopianian literature and in science fiction history. And it is refreshing to immerse yourself in a world where people are gentle, kind, and cooperative with each other. Not everyone will agree with the politics, but I'm sure we can all acknowledge that we could use a bit of good news from somewhere, even if it's from Nowhere.
"News from Nowhere" is a reaction to the industrial revolution. Though technology was designed to make work less burdensome and more efficient, Morris foresaw people becoming enslaved to machines. Therefore, his ideal society is the simple country life, free from the rat race of industry and meddling government bureaucracy. In this book, a man from 19th Century London falls asleep and awakens in the 21st Century. But now there are no big cities, no money, no taxes, no private property of any kind. There was no Brexit because there was no European Union. No divorce, no court system, no prisons. That also means no parliament, no prime minister, no police. And if there is no one to lobby, and no money to lobby with, then there is also no big corporate interests or monopolies to manipulate and lie to the public. In fact, Morris places the responsibility of most problems squarely on the government/lobbying elite dyad, saying that it does nothing but protect the rich from the poor. Though they fool people into thinking the government is by the people and for the people, the real purpose is to protect corporate interests. Government could care less about the everyday person. The book says that governments do very little to effectively prevent riots and criminals from taking the lives and property of regular citizens, but should the citizen actually try to criticize or change anything in government, swift action is taken to treat such behavior as seditious and traitorous. If one really looks at what is happening in American politics today with a critical eye, one would swear Morris really could see into the 21st Century. Morris essentially says that when the elite class and their government system was abolished, the main source of societal division and of unhappiness went with it.
Actually, I think there's some truth there, and the lives of this utopian society sounds pretty good to me, except then that would likely mean I couldn't binge watch Doctor Who or Better Call Saul.
Of course, I really don't know how in the world any of this could be accomplished. Morris seems to think that there are no loafers and no criminals because everyone is happy. The drudgery of toil for someone else's profit is gone, and so people find pleasure in meaningful and cooperative work. But some people don't need an excuse to break bad.
As is often the case with social satires and dystopias, the focus is on the extremes, and so it's best not to think too much about the believability of such a society. However, in the case of utopias, the reader IS in fact expected to be inspired for change, to be able to see the depicted civilization as tangible. The last utopia that I reviewed for Goodreads, "Solaris Farm," did a great job a decade after "News from Nowhere" spelling out a comprehensive plan for a very believable utopian community. But this one, not so much. Supposedly this book really inspired people to become activists in socialism. I can't imagine how that would happen to any person not impaired by serious drugs.
Even at the most mundane levels, this book is cannot be taken seriously. For example, the citizens of the future claim they don't have a system of schools, nor do they even know what the word "education" means. The idea is that the people of this agrarian age learn most of what they need from nature. But they still speak English, know their history, and have books that have survived from multiple centuries all the way to Shakespeare, so you mean to tell me that the very word has escaped the common vernacular? Ridiculous.
Now, I did mention that "Solaris Farm" was superior in depicting a more realistic plan for a progressive agrarian community (except for the floating trumpets serving as advisors). But "News from Nowhere" has a leg up in the entertainment department. Frankly, utopian literature from the era of the Scientific Romance and the Radium Age can be quite dull, consisting largely of preachings and didactics. "News from Nowhere" is still largely a travelogue, and thus has very little plot to speak of, but it is so eccentric and silly that it is still a fun read. There's some good humor and likeable quirky characters that elevate this from just naive propaganda, though it does get rather somber when an old man named Hammond relates the story of the revolution that eventually led to the current utopian society. Hammond is one of the figures encountered along the journey that are romantic archetypes, and thus the narrative is largely allegorical of the protagonist's rebirth.
And so "News from Nowhere" gets a solid three stars from me. It's tastefully brief and oddly interesting enough to warrant it's place as a classic in the Hall of Fame of utopianian literature and in science fiction history. And it is refreshing to immerse yourself in a world where people are gentle, kind, and cooperative with each other. Not everyone will agree with the politics, but I'm sure we can all acknowledge that we could use a bit of good news from somewhere, even if it's from Nowhere.
December 8, 2021
So this one did not start off on a good footing. The protagonist goes to bed on a dreary winter night and wakes up in a beautiful spring.
Thematically i get what the author is doing but just because your in a utopian future doesn't mean its always sunny in england.
In fact if you want to sell me on a utopia convince me when its raining, anyone can have a utopia in the sun :P .
Then right after arriving our hero goes down to the Thames, which has clear water in it. Again i get the intent, its no longer filled with sewage i guess.. but it is the Thames, its like a tidal estuary river... again utopian futures do not mean the rivers don't get muddy, its a river thats just how they are sometimes!
Anyway, its interesting enough when we get to the whys and hows of the utopia although its always a little vague and unconvincing. If this were an alien planet found in star-trek.. no problem, wouln't question how this society could function.. but with human nature being what it is.. its a stretch to say the least.
Also the climate here seems suspicously stable, my pessimism says one bad winter and they'd probably be eating each other ;) .
Once we're given all the info though it just keeps going, despite not really having any proper story to sustain things past the 'this is my utopia, there are many like it but this one is mine' stage. There's a sort of romance thrown in but its a good 50-100 pages longer than it needs to be.
I will say there is a sort of haunting quality to the ending but thats about it.
Thematically i get what the author is doing but just because your in a utopian future doesn't mean its always sunny in england.
In fact if you want to sell me on a utopia convince me when its raining, anyone can have a utopia in the sun :P .
Then right after arriving our hero goes down to the Thames, which has clear water in it. Again i get the intent, its no longer filled with sewage i guess.. but it is the Thames, its like a tidal estuary river... again utopian futures do not mean the rivers don't get muddy, its a river thats just how they are sometimes!
Anyway, its interesting enough when we get to the whys and hows of the utopia although its always a little vague and unconvincing. If this were an alien planet found in star-trek.. no problem, wouln't question how this society could function.. but with human nature being what it is.. its a stretch to say the least.
Also the climate here seems suspicously stable, my pessimism says one bad winter and they'd probably be eating each other ;) .
Once we're given all the info though it just keeps going, despite not really having any proper story to sustain things past the 'this is my utopia, there are many like it but this one is mine' stage. There's a sort of romance thrown in but its a good 50-100 pages longer than it needs to be.
I will say there is a sort of haunting quality to the ending but thats about it.
October 13, 2014
(1890) William MorrisA utopian novel, set in the 2000s -- It feels so strange to have lived through the futures named by so many utopian and dystopian writers, even if only by year and not imagining. A socialist returns home to Hammersmith frustrated with another meeting of argument and lost tempers (nothing has changed there) and wakes up in a world transformed by revolution. This is actually one of the nicer utopias I've read, here is the new Hammersmith and his dream of the Thames river banks, with his ideal residential architecture:
Both shores had a line of very pretty houses, low and not large, standing back a little way from the river; they were mostly built of red brick and roofed with tiles, and looked, above all, comfortable, and as if they were, so to say, alive, and sympathetic with the life of the dwellers in them. There was a continuous garden in front of them, going down to the water's edge, in which the flowers were now blooming luxuriantly, and sending delicious waves of summer scent over the eddying stream. Behind the houses, I could see great trees rising, mostly planes, and looking down the water there were the reaches towards Putney almost as if they were a lake with a forest shore, so thick were the big trees... (loc 108)
More on the new face of Hammersmith, the modern return to ancient ways and the fate of the city to return to village and countryside:
We turned away from the river at once, and were soon in the main road that runs through Hammersmith. But I should have had no guess as to where I was, if I had not started from the waterside; for King Street was gone, and the highway ran through wide sunny meadows and garden-like tillage. The Creek, which we crossed at once, had been rescued from its culvert, and as we went over its pretty bridge we saw its waters, yet swollen by the tide, covered with gay boats of different sizes. There were houses about, some on the road, some amongst the fields with pleasant lanes leading down to them, and each surrounded by a teeming garden. They were all pretty in design, and as solid as might be, but countryfied in appearance, like yeomen's dwellings; some of them of red brick like those by the river, but more of timber and plaster, which were by the necessity of their construction so like mediaeval houses of the same materials that I fairly felt as if I were alive in the fourteenth century; a sensation helped out by the costume of the people that we met or passed, in whose dress there was nothing "modern." Almost everybody was gaily dressed, but especially the women, who were so well-looking, or even so handsome, that I could scarcely refrain my tongue from calling my companion's attention to the fact. Some faces I saw that were thoughtful, and in these I noticed great nobility of expression, but none that had a glimmer of unhappiness, and the greater part (we came upon a good many people) were frankly and openly joyous (loc 328).
This is a future in which no one knows want, work is shared out equally in small portions -- though I was a bit disappointed that women still reveled in domestic duties. Still, they also worked with stone and in building great buildings and other more unconventional places. I laughed out loud when we came to the 'golden dustman of Hammersmith'! Because everyone can wear what clothes they like, woven for pleasure and beauty. Who will collect the garbage? Mostly this guy, but everyone, and they will do it happily. Their great fear is running out of work because everything is already so beautiful after they have built and rebuilt and rebuilt again. Needless to say the slums are no more:
"Tell me, then," said I, "how is it towards the east?"
Said he: "Time was when if you mounted a good horse and rode straight away from my door here at a round trot for an hour and a half; you would still be in the thick of London, and the greater part of that would be 'slums,' as they were called; that is to say, places of torture for innocent men and women; or worse, stews for rearing and breeding men and women in such degradation that that torture should seem to them mere ordinary and natural life."
"I know, I know," I said, rather impatiently. "That was what was; tell me something of what is. Is any of that left?"
"Not an inch," said he; "but some memory of it abides with us, and I am glad of it. Once a year, on May-day, we hold a solemn feast in those easterly communes of London to commemorate The Clearing of Misery, as it is called. On that day we have music and dancing, and merry games and happy feasting on the site of some of the worst of the old slums, the traditional memory of which we have kept. On that occasion the custom is for the prettiest girls to sing some of the old revolutionary songs, and those which were the groans of the discontent, once so hopeless, on the very spots where those terrible crimes of class-murder were committed day by day for so many years. To a man like me, who have studied the past so diligently, it is a curious and touching sight to see some beautiful girl, daintily clad, and crowned with flowers from the neighbouring meadows, standing amongst the happy people, on some mound where of old time stood the wretched apology for a house, a den in which men and women lived packed amongst the filth like pilchards in a cask; lived in such a way that they could only have endured it, as I said just now, by being degraded out of humanity--to hear the terrible words of threatening and lamentation coming from her sweet and beautiful lips, and she unconscious of their real meaning: to hear her, for instance, singing Hood's Song of the Shirt, and to think that all the time she does not understand what it is all about--a tragedy grown inconceivable to her and her listeners. Think of that, if you can, and of how glorious life is grown!" (loc 900)
It is fascinating, this new topography of London which makes it no longer London, no longer a city. This is a vision of socialism in which cities are inimical, so different from those visions based on technology and scientific improvement. I did love titling banks as 'swindling kens', and that they were occupied in the transition to a new way of structuring society socially and materially:
"Tell me in detail," said I, "what lies east of Bloomsbury now?"
Said he: "There are but few houses between this and the outer part of the old city; but in the city we have a thickly-dwelling population. Our forefathers, in the first clearing of the slums, were not in a hurry to pull down the houses in what was called at the end of the nineteenth century the business quarter of the town, and what later got to be known as the Swindling Kens. You see, these houses, though they stood hideously thick on the ground, were roomy and fairly solid in building, and clean, because they were not used for living in, but as mere gambling booths; so the poor people from the cleared slums took them for lodgings and dwelt there, till the folk of those days had time to think of something better for them; so the buildings were pulled down so gradually that people got used to living thicker on the ground there than in most places; therefore it remains the most populous part of London, or perhaps of all these islands. But it is very pleasant there, partly because of the splendour of the architecture, which goes further than what you will see elsewhere. However, this crowding, if it may be called so, does not go further than a street called Aldgate, a name which perhaps you may have heard of. Beyond that the houses are scattered wide about the meadows there, which are very beautiful, especially when you get on to the lovely river Lea (where old Isaak Walton used to fish, you know) about the places called Stratford and Old Ford, names which of course you will not have heard of, though the Romans were busy there once upon a time." (loc 992)
Morris is quite specific in this remapping and remaking of London. Here is the new topography south of the Thames:
About these Docks are a good few houses, which, however, are not inhabited by many people permanently; I mean, those who use them come and go a good deal, the place being too low and marshy for pleasant dwelling. Past the Docks eastward and landward it is all flat pasture, once marsh, except for a few gardens, and there are very few permanent dwellings there: scarcely anything but a few sheds, and cots for the men who come to look after the great herds of cattle pasturing there. But however, what with the beasts and the men, and the scattered red-tiled roofs and the big hayricks, it does not make a bad holiday to get a quiet pony and ride about there on a sunny afternoon of autumn, and look over the river and the craft passing up and down, and on to Shooters' Hill and the Kentish uplands, and then turn round to the wide green sea of the Essex marsh-land, with the great domed line of the sky, and the sun shining down in one flood of peaceful light over the long distance. There is a place called Canning's Town, and further out, Silvertown, where the pleasant meadows are at their pleasantest: doubtless they were once slums, and wretched enough." (loc 1007)
As the protagonist travels through this new civilisation, asking questions that younger people don't understand, the answers he receives from older 'scholars' make this a bit like a book of FAQs. Morris has clearly been asked about what happens to the population, how a dense city can be transformed into a series of villages and country houses. I couldn't buy it, but spreading out across England and the world is the answer:
"I am rather surprised," said I, "by all this, for it seems to me that after all the country must be tolerably populous."
"Certainly," said he; "the population is pretty much the same as it was at the end of the nineteenth century; we have spread it, that is all. Of course, also, we have helped to populate other countries--where we were wanted and were called for." (loc 1096)
But I liked that he grappled with imperialism, re-envisioned work to end exploitation both of the English working classes and the oppressed workers of other nations. Here is more on labour, machines, exploitation and imperialism:
"What's that you are saying? the labour-saving machines? Yes, they were made to 'save labour' (or, to speak more plainly, the lives of men) on one piece of work in order that it might be expended--I will say wasted--on another, probably useless, piece of work. Friend, all their devices for cheapening labour simply resulted in increasing the burden of labour. The appetite of the World-Market grew with what it fed on: the countries within the ring of 'civilisation' (that is, organised misery) were glutted with the abortions of the market, and force and fraud were used unsparingly to 'open up' countries outside that pale. This process of 'opening up' is a strange one to those who have read the professions of the men of that period and do not understand their practice; and perhaps shows us at its worst the great vice of the nineteenth century, the use of hypocrisy and cant to evade the responsibility of vicarious ferocity. When the civilised World-Market coveted a country not yet in its clutches, some transparent pretext was found--the suppression of a slavery different from and not so cruel as that of commerce; the pushing of a religion no longer believed in by its promoters; the 'rescue' of some desperado or homicidal madman whose misdeeds had got him into trouble amongst the natives of the 'barbarous' country--any stick, in short, which would beat the dog at all. Then some bold, unprincipled, ignorant adventurer was found (no difficult task in the days of competition), and he was bribed to 'create a market' by breaking up whatever traditional society there might be in the doomed country, and by destroying whatever leisure or pleasure he found there. He forced wares on the natives which they did not want, and took their natural products in 'exchange,' as this form of robbery was called, and thereby he 'created new wants,' to supply which (that is, to be allowed to live by their new masters) the hapless, helpless people had to sell themselves into the slavery of hopeless toil so that they might have something wherewith to purchase the nullities of 'civilisation.' (loc 1411)
Such a simple breakdown of how imperialism worked and still works. I also like that he gives details of how utopia was all actually achieved -- through mass movement. The reason the revolution could not be repressed and destroyed:
"The members of the Committee went off quietly to prison; but they had left their soul and their organisation behind them. For they depended not on a carefully arranged centre with all kinds of checks and counter-checks about it, but on a huge mass of people in thorough sympathy with the movement, bound together by a great number of links of small centres with very simple instructions. These instructions were now carried out (loc 1803).
And of course, you then have the GENERAL STRIKE. Never in America did I hear people go on at such length about the general strike the way they do in the UK, a venerable tradition I can see. Just as the newspapers continue on:
The ordinary newspapers gave up the struggle that morning, and only one very violent reactionary paper (called the Daily Telegraph) attempted an appearance, and rated 'the rebels' in good set terms for their folly and ingratitude in tearing out the bowels of their 'common mother,' the English Nation, for the benefit of a few greedy paid agitators, and the fools whom they were deluding.
That made me laugh. The revolution had no manifesto though people kept waiting for it, clearly a bone of contention for the socialists of the day, just as it was recently for the occupy movement. What will happen to all of our stuff -- another FAQ. Morris is, of course, focused on work and art and the ideal relationship between them, the end of capitalist production means the creation of objects for use not profit, and frees time to make them well and beautifully:
The loss of the competitive spur to exertion had not, indeed, done anything to interfere with the necessary production of the community, but how if it should make men dull by giving them too much time for thought or idle musing? But, after all, this dull thunder-cloud only threatened us, and then passed over. Probably, from what I have told you before, you will have a guess at the remedy for such a disaster; remembering always that many of the things which used to be produced--slave-wares for the poor and mere wealth-wasting wares for the rich--ceased to be made. That remedy was, in short, the production of what used to be called art, but which has no name amongst us now, because it has become a necessary part of the labour of every man who produces (loc 1996)."
Thus the good life can be lived without a trace of the guilt that we always carry with us in a capitalist society, because anything created by the work of others is created through their oppression.
The evening passed all too quickly for me; since that day, for the first time in my life, I was having my fill of the pleasure of the eyes without any of that sense of incongruity, that dread of approaching ruin, which had always beset me hitherto when I had been amongst the beautiful works of art of the past, mingled with the lovely nature of the present; both of them, in fact, the result of the long centuries of tradition, which had compelled men to produce the art, and compelled nature to run into the mould of the ages. Here I could enjoy everything without an afterthought of the injustice and miserable toil which made my leisure; the ignorance and dulness of life which went to make my keen appreciation of history; the tyranny and the struggle full of fear and mishap which went to make my romance. The only weight I had upon my heart was a vague fear as it drew toward bed-time concerning the place wherein I should wake on the morrow: but I choked that down, and went to bed happy, and in a very few moments was in a dreamless sleep (loc 2104).
There is a great deal in here about the openness of relations both between the sexes and between friends, who can choose to live with each other in different configurations of large home or village. There are no prohibitions, rules against divorce, class distinctions, roles for men and women, requirements for nuclear families and children come and go. While sadly queer happiness is not cared for here, for its time (and in many ways ours as well), this is quite advanced in ways I like. The ideas around education -- that it just sort of happens by itself -- I found the strangest, but from what I have heard of Victorian rote and miserable schooling, also served as an advancement. All in all I quite enjoyed this, in all its sincerity and simplicity.
Just one last thing, because I've run into older uses of the word 'cockney' in a couple of other places and found it quite interesting, is this description of 'cockney villas', also a description of the further suburbs of London in Morris's own time:
As we went higher up the river, there was less difference between the Thames of that day and Thames as I remembered it; for setting aside the hideous vulgarity of the cockney villas of the well-to-do, stockbrokers and other such, which in older time marred the beauty of the bough-hung banks, even this beginning of the country Thames was always beautiful... (loc 2154).
July 24, 2024
1890’s Communist Utopia…
Preamble:
--Published 7 years after the passing of Marx (and 6 years before the author’s own passing), this novel by a cultural icon (esp. in poetry) of Victorian Britain is an important work to check off in my meandering tour through utopian novels:
i) Socialist/anarcho-syndicalist (with details on economy): Another Now: Dispatches from an Alternative Present (2020)
ii) Feminist: Second-Wave (which I contrast with First-Wave) in Woman on the Edge of Time (1976); Fourth-Wave in Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune, 2052–2072 (2022)
iii) Ecological: Ecotopia: A Novel (1976)
Highlights:
--I’ll let the literary critics bicker about the fictional merits. Sure, the story-telling was not gripping, but I’m here to unpack the nonfiction ideas…
1) Idealism vs. Materialism:
--I’m currently much stricter on the importance of a historical materialist lens when it comes to non-fiction, which I unpack in reviewing the messy The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity.
--With fiction, my standards plummet. There just seems to be a lack of rigorous (i.e. materialist) scholars who can write stories. The best compromise I can think of is in critical/materialist anthropology, which combines rigorous scholarship with story-telling (from its cultural analysis). Researching real-world communities living (and thriving) in material conditions that promote egalitarianism, sounds like compelling utopias (see the Dawn of Everything review for a reading list)…
--The article “William Morris. A Vindication” on Marxist.org contrasts:
a) this “utopian romance” set in the future where the State has withered away (“communism”; thus, very different material conditions, and not a treatise for current material conditions/strategies), vs.
b) Morris’ real-life activism as sufficiently materialist/revolutionary, so not to be dismissed as a “Utopian Socialist” politically lacking revolutionary rigour (see Engel’s Socialism: Utopian and Scientific).
…My approach aligns with this in a roundabout way (I’m also less zealous with critiquing Morris’ real-life activism given how much more work it is for me to re-construct his context).
2) Class/Capitalism:
--Impressed to see this critique of dualism, which central to today’s decolonization and ecological studies today (Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World):
--There are also elegant passages on state capitalism, recognizing that capitalism has always required the state to protect capitalist property rights.
--Morris does his best to popularize Marx’s Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume 1, colloquially describing the colossal machine of capitalism squeezing labour to churn out more commodities for the sake of profit (“sham or artificial necessaries” rather than “real necessaries”):
--While the novel is limited on the “how?” regarding transition, it does mention:
i) a “piecemeal” “State Socialism” phase that was ineffective at counterbalancing capitalists, but eventually provided workers with experience at labour organization that spread to basically all of wage labour (a true proletariat class)
ii) leading to a revolution (this book only specifically mentions England). This follows The Communist Manifesto (1848) in assuming that socialist revolutions will be led by countries with the most advanced capitalist production, i.e. Western Europe. So, it makes sense Morris warns against nationalism (which in Europe’s case casts an imperialist shadow over the rest of the world: Discourse on Colonialism), as the promise of revolution devolves into nationalist/imperialist rivalries of WWI/WWII.
iii) civil war against reactionary forces.
…see comments below for rest of the review…
Preamble:
--Published 7 years after the passing of Marx (and 6 years before the author’s own passing), this novel by a cultural icon (esp. in poetry) of Victorian Britain is an important work to check off in my meandering tour through utopian novels:
i) Socialist/anarcho-syndicalist (with details on economy): Another Now: Dispatches from an Alternative Present (2020)
ii) Feminist: Second-Wave (which I contrast with First-Wave) in Woman on the Edge of Time (1976); Fourth-Wave in Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune, 2052–2072 (2022)
iii) Ecological: Ecotopia: A Novel (1976)
Highlights:
--I’ll let the literary critics bicker about the fictional merits. Sure, the story-telling was not gripping, but I’m here to unpack the nonfiction ideas…
1) Idealism vs. Materialism:
--I’m currently much stricter on the importance of a historical materialist lens when it comes to non-fiction, which I unpack in reviewing the messy The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity.
--With fiction, my standards plummet. There just seems to be a lack of rigorous (i.e. materialist) scholars who can write stories. The best compromise I can think of is in critical/materialist anthropology, which combines rigorous scholarship with story-telling (from its cultural analysis). Researching real-world communities living (and thriving) in material conditions that promote egalitarianism, sounds like compelling utopias (see the Dawn of Everything review for a reading list)…
--The article “William Morris. A Vindication” on Marxist.org contrasts:
a) this “utopian romance” set in the future where the State has withered away (“communism”; thus, very different material conditions, and not a treatise for current material conditions/strategies), vs.
b) Morris’ real-life activism as sufficiently materialist/revolutionary, so not to be dismissed as a “Utopian Socialist” politically lacking revolutionary rigour (see Engel’s Socialism: Utopian and Scientific).
…My approach aligns with this in a roundabout way (I’m also less zealous with critiquing Morris’ real-life activism given how much more work it is for me to re-construct his context).
2) Class/Capitalism:
--Impressed to see this critique of dualism, which central to today’s decolonization and ecological studies today (Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World):
“Was not their mistake once more bred of the life of slavery that they had been living?—a life which was always looking upon everything, except mankind, animate and inanimate—‘nature,’ as people used to call it—as one thing, and mankind as another, it was natural to people thinking in this way, that they should try to make ‘nature’ their slave, since they thought ‘nature’ was something outside them.”--How can we not applaud such a mainstream cultural figure in the warring continent of Europe popularizing class analysis/struggle/solidarity and condemning nationalism, which will once again tear up Europe (and eventually the world) in the decades after the author’s passing:
(H.) This is true; and we may admit that the pretensions of the government to defend the poor (i.e., the useful) people against other countries come to nothing. But that is but natural; for we have seen already that it was the function of government to protect the rich against the poor. But did not the government defend its rich men against other nations?…also see: War is a Racket: The Antiwar Classic by America's Most Decorated Soldier
(I) I do not remember to have heard that the rich needed defence; because it is said that even when two nations were at war, the rich men of each nation gambled with each other pretty much as usual, and even sold each other weapons wherewith to kill their own countrymen.
--There are also elegant passages on state capitalism, recognizing that capitalism has always required the state to protect capitalist property rights.
--Morris does his best to popularize Marx’s Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume 1, colloquially describing the colossal machine of capitalism squeezing labour to churn out more commodities for the sake of profit (“sham or artificial necessaries” rather than “real necessaries”):
[…] the ceaseless endeavour to expend the least possible amount of labour on any article made, and yet at the same time to make as many articles as possible. To this ‘cheapening of production’, as it was called, everything was sacrificed: the happiness of the workman at his work, nay, his most elementary comfort and bare health, his food, his clothes, his dwelling, his leisure, his amusement, his education—his life, in short—did not weigh a grain of sand in the balance against this dire necessity of ‘cheap production’ of things, a great part of which were not worth producing at all. […] even rich and powerful men, the masters of the poor devils aforesaid, submitted to live amidst sights and sounds and smells which it is in the very nature of man to abhor and flee from, in order that their riches might bolster up this supreme folly. The whole community, in fact, was cast into the jaws of this ravening monster, ‘the cheap production’ forced upon it by the World-Market.--On incentives for work, I wonder if Morris had Marx’s critique of Fourier in mind here as he praised Fourier:
“Well, but,” said I, “the man of the nineteenth century would say there is a natural desire towards the procreation of children, and a natural desire not to work.”--Similarly, on education, there’s no more need to enforce schooling to survive a life of wage labour struggle; children are open to imitate with information available when they seek it. Once again, not much details but the direction is appreciated.
“Yes, yes,” said he, “I know the ancient platitude,—wholly untrue; indeed, to us quite meaningless. Fourier, whom all men laughed at, understood the matter better. […] Because it implies that all work is suffering, and we are so far from thinking that, that, as you may have noticed, whereas we are not short of wealth, there is a kind of fear growing up amongst us that we shall one day be short of work. It is a pleasure which we are afraid of losing, not a pain.”
--While the novel is limited on the “how?” regarding transition, it does mention:
i) a “piecemeal” “State Socialism” phase that was ineffective at counterbalancing capitalists, but eventually provided workers with experience at labour organization that spread to basically all of wage labour (a true proletariat class)
ii) leading to a revolution (this book only specifically mentions England). This follows The Communist Manifesto (1848) in assuming that socialist revolutions will be led by countries with the most advanced capitalist production, i.e. Western Europe. So, it makes sense Morris warns against nationalism (which in Europe’s case casts an imperialist shadow over the rest of the world: Discourse on Colonialism), as the promise of revolution devolves into nationalist/imperialist rivalries of WWI/WWII.
iii) civil war against reactionary forces.
…see comments below for rest of the review…
January 21, 2020
As like a socialist vision/utopia this is great (although still a little cisheteronormative and gender essentialist and very much a white middle class vision of reality) but as a story it was...very slow. It barely has a plot and at times it was a fight to keep my attention on it and keep reading.
February 19, 2012
Even knowing the background on which these books grew, I have something of a tolerant dislike towards old utopias. When I read them, it oftentimes seems to me that the authors, without intending and without really thinking about it, actually wrote a rather frightening dystopia, and thought well of it.
Of course, I am allergic to utopias in general, but I posit that this is not merely a completely subjective occurrence. I shall demonstrate:
Here, for instance, is the perfect communist small-village world, written by William Morris. Everyone is happy. Everyone does what he wants to do. Namely... uh, being a dustman, sculling people on the Thames, building houses and bridges, planting gardens and making "useful" stuff. Oops.
Being as I hail from what used to be a socialist (permanently on the road to communism, you know) country, I've some experience with this sort of habitual usefulness and manual labour happiness. 'Digging potatoes' is something of a running joke in my family, most of whom happen to be mathematicians, doctors and engineers. It describes frustrating, annoying, pointless work which randomly tears you away from the things you're actually good at (like surgery) and sends you at random intervals to do precisely what Morris described as the state of ultimate happiness.
Then there is the blissful (in Morris's words) ignorance of world history and the past. 'Education' is unknown, book reading becomes rare, everyone is so happy working outside that they become smart by some miraculous osmosis, making book-learning appear pettish, unrewarding, somewhat peculiar. This streak of anti-intellectualism, fantastically common to all communist utopias (except, strangely enough, for the ones written by actual residents of communism, like Lem or the Strugatsky brothers) isn't as severe - the author chose to let Oxford and its 'less interesting sister, Cambridge' (Morris being an Oxford man, that made me literally spew drink out of my nose) remain standing - but very much present.
Sorry, Mr. Morris, I just don't see myself finding my ultimate happiness in raking hay by hand wearing Medieval clothing.
The book actually managed to make me think of Ayn Rand who, while coming from the completely opposite end of the political spectrum, shares some traits with this novel. Namely, that the culmination of political dogma in her works, and in this one, makes people smarter, happier, healthier and, yes, I kid you not, even prettier. Morris considers communism to be capable of transforming not only human society, but also the human individual. No more cosmetics and plastic surgery, ladies! Communism is your road to automatic 'comeliness', as he puts it. Perhaps he'd had a vision of the old, 20s and 30s Russian propaganda posters, in a dream.
I confess that rather grated.
It doesn't help that utopias by their very nature, beginning with Plato and culminating in Le Guin, are political diatribes. Dystpias are too, of course, but at least in dystopias there is an element of man vs. hostile world, a one-step-removed element of things actually happening. Whereas, what can one do in a utopia? Everything is great! The element of struggle is removed and.. bam! One is reading a Platonic dialogue poorly veiled under 'and then this happened and then this happened'. Morris is no different. His protagonist - and we never get an explanation of why the friend knows him so well, by the way - wakes up in the future, listens to a great deal of good things about the future society, drives through the uprooted and reforested London (my heart ached for the historically significant buildings), listens to more political diatribes, goes up the Thames, has political musings... et cetera ad nauseum.
And all this is written in a pseudo-quaint, didactic style, using the word 'quoth' a lot. Who the heck uses the word quoth in 1890! Wilde sure hadn't. Doyle sure hadn't. Hardy had't (much). Suddenly... 'quoth'.
'Well'. quoth I, 'I'd much rather my unutopic world, and not have to dig potatoes'.
Of course, I am allergic to utopias in general, but I posit that this is not merely a completely subjective occurrence. I shall demonstrate:
Here, for instance, is the perfect communist small-village world, written by William Morris. Everyone is happy. Everyone does what he wants to do. Namely... uh, being a dustman, sculling people on the Thames, building houses and bridges, planting gardens and making "useful" stuff. Oops.
Being as I hail from what used to be a socialist (permanently on the road to communism, you know) country, I've some experience with this sort of habitual usefulness and manual labour happiness. 'Digging potatoes' is something of a running joke in my family, most of whom happen to be mathematicians, doctors and engineers. It describes frustrating, annoying, pointless work which randomly tears you away from the things you're actually good at (like surgery) and sends you at random intervals to do precisely what Morris described as the state of ultimate happiness.
Then there is the blissful (in Morris's words) ignorance of world history and the past. 'Education' is unknown, book reading becomes rare, everyone is so happy working outside that they become smart by some miraculous osmosis, making book-learning appear pettish, unrewarding, somewhat peculiar. This streak of anti-intellectualism, fantastically common to all communist utopias (except, strangely enough, for the ones written by actual residents of communism, like Lem or the Strugatsky brothers) isn't as severe - the author chose to let Oxford and its 'less interesting sister, Cambridge' (Morris being an Oxford man, that made me literally spew drink out of my nose) remain standing - but very much present.
Sorry, Mr. Morris, I just don't see myself finding my ultimate happiness in raking hay by hand wearing Medieval clothing.
The book actually managed to make me think of Ayn Rand who, while coming from the completely opposite end of the political spectrum, shares some traits with this novel. Namely, that the culmination of political dogma in her works, and in this one, makes people smarter, happier, healthier and, yes, I kid you not, even prettier. Morris considers communism to be capable of transforming not only human society, but also the human individual. No more cosmetics and plastic surgery, ladies! Communism is your road to automatic 'comeliness', as he puts it. Perhaps he'd had a vision of the old, 20s and 30s Russian propaganda posters, in a dream.
I confess that rather grated.
It doesn't help that utopias by their very nature, beginning with Plato and culminating in Le Guin, are political diatribes. Dystpias are too, of course, but at least in dystopias there is an element of man vs. hostile world, a one-step-removed element of things actually happening. Whereas, what can one do in a utopia? Everything is great! The element of struggle is removed and.. bam! One is reading a Platonic dialogue poorly veiled under 'and then this happened and then this happened'. Morris is no different. His protagonist - and we never get an explanation of why the friend knows him so well, by the way - wakes up in the future, listens to a great deal of good things about the future society, drives through the uprooted and reforested London (my heart ached for the historically significant buildings), listens to more political diatribes, goes up the Thames, has political musings... et cetera ad nauseum.
And all this is written in a pseudo-quaint, didactic style, using the word 'quoth' a lot. Who the heck uses the word quoth in 1890! Wilde sure hadn't. Doyle sure hadn't. Hardy had't (much). Suddenly... 'quoth'.
'Well'. quoth I, 'I'd much rather my unutopic world, and not have to dig potatoes'.
August 21, 2016
There are many distopic novels but few utopic,between them is this: News from Nowhere.
It is a utopic socialist novel on the edge of anarchism;taking account that it was written in 1890 in a pre high technological society and by that a no to day utopic novel,it describes a a semirural society where part of people returned from cities to the fields,a society without classes,with a comunal property of the means of production,with few useless things produced,where the people works in that it wish and by the plasure of work and produce useful and beautiful things,with direct democracy,without goverment,courts,policy,jails ,army,war,the children educated in whole freedom with plenty of books to search the knowledge and truth.
As all utopies that show a perfect society its fault is that it is build on perfect humans without greed,envy,asocial,psichopaths,natural born violent individuals and by that this utopies are beautiful dreams-the novel itself is a dream of the nameless main character-but is good to dream and try to aproximate real society to this dream.
The novel has many positive faces, being vanguardist for its time:the search of the beauty in all,the free love without social conventions,the women freedom and equality and a intense love and respect by the nature along the whole novel-to day it could be classified in the deep ecology movement.
As a example this quote said by Susan "The earth,its forests,its life! Oh if i could say,if i could show how i love it ".
The book is also profetic in his critic of globalization and the massive production of cheap low quality useless things.
A beautiful,full of humanity,beauty and poetry dream
It is a utopic socialist novel on the edge of anarchism;taking account that it was written in 1890 in a pre high technological society and by that a no to day utopic novel,it describes a a semirural society where part of people returned from cities to the fields,a society without classes,with a comunal property of the means of production,with few useless things produced,where the people works in that it wish and by the plasure of work and produce useful and beautiful things,with direct democracy,without goverment,courts,policy,jails ,army,war,the children educated in whole freedom with plenty of books to search the knowledge and truth.
As all utopies that show a perfect society its fault is that it is build on perfect humans without greed,envy,asocial,psichopaths,natural born violent individuals and by that this utopies are beautiful dreams-the novel itself is a dream of the nameless main character-but is good to dream and try to aproximate real society to this dream.
The novel has many positive faces, being vanguardist for its time:the search of the beauty in all,the free love without social conventions,the women freedom and equality and a intense love and respect by the nature along the whole novel-to day it could be classified in the deep ecology movement.
As a example this quote said by Susan "The earth,its forests,its life! Oh if i could say,if i could show how i love it ".
The book is also profetic in his critic of globalization and the massive production of cheap low quality useless things.
A beautiful,full of humanity,beauty and poetry dream
January 4, 2012
An excellent book, originally written in response to Looking Backward by Edward Bellamy, whom William Morris considered to take too much of a statist approach.
Whilst Morris' book is utopian (assuming people will find work pleasurable), it is interesting to note that he ruled out the prospect of non-violent revolution, and so is perhaps less idealistic than Bellamy in this regard (Bellamy believed a peaceful transition of power was possible).
Overall, I think Bellamy's books stand up stronger, having more economic arguments within them (which are still very relevant today) and very accurate predictions with regards to the expansion of automation and technology (Equality covers this very well, especially how vested interests will resist such changes). But Morris' book should not be overlooked by any means, and is an enjoyable and inspiring read.
Whilst Morris' book is utopian (assuming people will find work pleasurable), it is interesting to note that he ruled out the prospect of non-violent revolution, and so is perhaps less idealistic than Bellamy in this regard (Bellamy believed a peaceful transition of power was possible).
Overall, I think Bellamy's books stand up stronger, having more economic arguments within them (which are still very relevant today) and very accurate predictions with regards to the expansion of automation and technology (Equality covers this very well, especially how vested interests will resist such changes). But Morris' book should not be overlooked by any means, and is an enjoyable and inspiring read.
Read
May 18, 2020i had a very contradictory experience w this; one moment I'm like YEAH!!! the next i was like ,,,, Definitely Not William..... good things: no money, prisons r abolished!!!, parliament is a dung market lmao
bad things: everyone still works & values themselves thru work, women still love & do housework & wait upon ppl & dont like birth control, and its deeply deeeeeply heterosexual [+ misogynistic], william morris is obsessed w aesthetics to a fetishising and rude degree, all the women are beautiful and treated as adornments & its rly gross bc the main character is 50 and he becomes infatuated with a 20 year old girl .... No Thanks.
it was wild that this was written in the 1890s [and contains a full account of the class war of the mid 20th century] and the future parts are set in 2003 !! lol if only
bad things: everyone still works & values themselves thru work, women still love & do housework & wait upon ppl & dont like birth control, and its deeply deeeeeply heterosexual [+ misogynistic], william morris is obsessed w aesthetics to a fetishising and rude degree, all the women are beautiful and treated as adornments & its rly gross bc the main character is 50 and he becomes infatuated with a 20 year old girl .... No Thanks.
it was wild that this was written in the 1890s [and contains a full account of the class war of the mid 20th century] and the future parts are set in 2003 !! lol if only
Want to read
October 17, 2014HUZZAH - Gutenberg comes up trumps again: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3261
August 25, 2018
This is such a strange and moving book, a novel about ideas that largely avoids plot, an argument for a retro utopia build in science fiction.
News from Nowhere is a utopian novel. It imagines a future almost two centuries off, wherein the market economy is gone, governments are done with, and cities have been reduced to small towns and a returning countryside. The novel offers an anarchist vision, but doesn't use that word more than once, and then only in the preface.
The novel also rejects contemporary (Victorian) technology and civilization. While some Americans today flock to an imagined nineteenth century for steampunk delights, Morris hauls us back to the late middle ages. Time and again he shows us people dressed in medieval costume, living in medieval houses, working at premodern tasks (rowing, carving, hay mowing). The narrator compares what he sees to the fourteenth century at least five times. But gone is the ancient regime's theocracy; instead people do what they want, trying not to hurt anyone else. There are a couple of hints about technology as work, like this tantalizing note: "All work which would be irksome to do by hand is done by immensely improved machinery" (Kindle Locations 1322-1324). But we never see signs of that. Overall the novel's world is a bit like a cross between arts and crafts, Mr. Rogers, and punk.
Morris strives to make this work, partly through nice descriptions of happy people in a lovely countryside, but also through arguments, which constitute most of the novel. Our point of view character falls asleep in his time and wakes up sometimes in the 21st century, then wanders around talking with people. Each utopian denizen tries to convince "William Guest" that their way of life is superior. The novel's center is a long Socratic dialogue with a local elder who lives in the more or less abandoned British Museum, and who harangues the narrator about how awful his time was, then sketches out parts of the revolution which led to utopia.
I'm a reader who enjoys conversational texts. I also like philosophical novels. But I recognize how dull this can be. Morris runs smack into the problems of utopia - without unhappiness there isn't much room for plot. We get some discussions about scheduling and delicate steps around the possibility of offending characters, and that's about it. One solution to the narrative problem of utopia is to focus on its edges, where it meets other worlds. That's Iain Banks' frequent approach in his Culture stories. Morris' nowhere doesn't really have a boundary, and we're given to understand the world has been globally transformed into versions of his London. There are hints that love can upend society, as it often does in dystopias, but apart from one cautionary tale of ax murder (!) there isn't much sign of that actually occurring.
It is easy to poke holes in News from Nowhere's ideas. Its dispute-handling mechanisms would break down under determined opposition. Hoarding could easily upend a locality. A group of determined, organized, and violent people could have a delightful time trashing the place. And there isn't much room for psychologies other than that of Mr. Rogers. The landscape and general happiness has to do a lot of work to cheer people up. I would also cast a skeptical eye on the happiness of people without modern dentistry, or antibiotics, or anesthetics, and so on.
Ultimately this reminds me of the Marxist idea of reformatting human psychology by altering material conditions. The Soviets aimed to create a "new Soviet man" in the 20th century, someone who grew up in socialism, not capitalism, and would therefore have a different mix of desires. That didn't work out, and gave ammunition to anticommunists who insist on an immutable human nature. Morris is with Moscow here, as his utopians argue that removing the state and money would generate a different kind of human being.
What might interest today's reader the most is the novel's argument that people don't really want to be idle. While we discuss the potential of universal basic income, News from Nowhere offers a kind of version of UBI. People do take time off to enjoy watching the sky, but they also love work, because it's work they find meaningful. Morris' conceit is that the capitalist marketplace drives people to work at jobs they despise. Without that framework we'd turn our hands to make things and perform services that we delight in. Those goods and services should be better constructed and make their consumers happier than if they purchased mass-produced schlock fabricated by unhappy wage slaves. This is why everyone in News is so much happier. (Sam Harris and Andrew Yang recently made a related argument about IBU).
Another point of interest is Morris' feminist and semi-Freudian ideas about sex and violence. The elder informs Guest that they don't have much violence because they have far more sexual freedom. "[M]any violent acts came from the artificial perversion of the sexual passions, which caused overweening jealousy and the like miseries." What does he see as the cause of that perversion, religion or science? No:
As I approached the end of the novel my enjoyment had sunk as I kept poking holes in the world. The lack of narrative tension gradually wearied me. But the finale had quite the sting in store. Guest starts to attend a party, but then -ah, spoilers:
So I recommend this to you. Read it with some energy. Be ready to argue.
News from Nowhere is a utopian novel. It imagines a future almost two centuries off, wherein the market economy is gone, governments are done with, and cities have been reduced to small towns and a returning countryside. The novel offers an anarchist vision, but doesn't use that word more than once, and then only in the preface.
The novel also rejects contemporary (Victorian) technology and civilization. While some Americans today flock to an imagined nineteenth century for steampunk delights, Morris hauls us back to the late middle ages. Time and again he shows us people dressed in medieval costume, living in medieval houses, working at premodern tasks (rowing, carving, hay mowing). The narrator compares what he sees to the fourteenth century at least five times. But gone is the ancient regime's theocracy; instead people do what they want, trying not to hurt anyone else. There are a couple of hints about technology as work, like this tantalizing note: "All work which would be irksome to do by hand is done by immensely improved machinery" (Kindle Locations 1322-1324). But we never see signs of that. Overall the novel's world is a bit like a cross between arts and crafts, Mr. Rogers, and punk.
Morris strives to make this work, partly through nice descriptions of happy people in a lovely countryside, but also through arguments, which constitute most of the novel. Our point of view character falls asleep in his time and wakes up sometimes in the 21st century, then wanders around talking with people. Each utopian denizen tries to convince "William Guest" that their way of life is superior. The novel's center is a long Socratic dialogue with a local elder who lives in the more or less abandoned British Museum, and who harangues the narrator about how awful his time was, then sketches out parts of the revolution which led to utopia.
I'm a reader who enjoys conversational texts. I also like philosophical novels. But I recognize how dull this can be. Morris runs smack into the problems of utopia - without unhappiness there isn't much room for plot. We get some discussions about scheduling and delicate steps around the possibility of offending characters, and that's about it. One solution to the narrative problem of utopia is to focus on its edges, where it meets other worlds. That's Iain Banks' frequent approach in his Culture stories. Morris' nowhere doesn't really have a boundary, and we're given to understand the world has been globally transformed into versions of his London. There are hints that love can upend society, as it often does in dystopias, but apart from one cautionary tale of ax murder (!) there isn't much sign of that actually occurring.
It is easy to poke holes in News from Nowhere's ideas. Its dispute-handling mechanisms would break down under determined opposition. Hoarding could easily upend a locality. A group of determined, organized, and violent people could have a delightful time trashing the place. And there isn't much room for psychologies other than that of Mr. Rogers. The landscape and general happiness has to do a lot of work to cheer people up. I would also cast a skeptical eye on the happiness of people without modern dentistry, or antibiotics, or anesthetics, and so on.
Ultimately this reminds me of the Marxist idea of reformatting human psychology by altering material conditions. The Soviets aimed to create a "new Soviet man" in the 20th century, someone who grew up in socialism, not capitalism, and would therefore have a different mix of desires. That didn't work out, and gave ammunition to anticommunists who insist on an immutable human nature. Morris is with Moscow here, as his utopians argue that removing the state and money would generate a different kind of human being.
What might interest today's reader the most is the novel's argument that people don't really want to be idle. While we discuss the potential of universal basic income, News from Nowhere offers a kind of version of UBI. People do take time off to enjoy watching the sky, but they also love work, because it's work they find meaningful. Morris' conceit is that the capitalist marketplace drives people to work at jobs they despise. Without that framework we'd turn our hands to make things and perform services that we delight in. Those goods and services should be better constructed and make their consumers happier than if they purchased mass-produced schlock fabricated by unhappy wage slaves. This is why everyone in News is so much happier. (Sam Harris and Andrew Yang recently made a related argument about IBU).
Another point of interest is Morris' feminist and semi-Freudian ideas about sex and violence. The elder informs Guest that they don't have much violence because they have far more sexual freedom. "[M]any violent acts came from the artificial perversion of the sexual passions, which caused overweening jealousy and the like miseries." What does he see as the cause of that perversion, religion or science? No:
Now, when you look carefully into these, you will find that what lay at the bottom of them was mostly the idea (a law-made idea) of the woman being the property of the man, whether he were husband, father, brother, or what not. That idea has of course vanished with private property, as well as certain follies about the ‘ruin’ of women for following their natural desires in an illegal way, which of course was a convention caused by the laws of private property.(Kindle Locations 1098-1102)This latter sentiment might connect well with today's readers.
As I approached the end of the novel my enjoyment had sunk as I kept poking holes in the world. The lack of narrative tension gradually wearied me. But the finale had quite the sting in store. Guest starts to attend a party, but then -ah, spoilers:
So I recommend this to you. Read it with some energy. Be ready to argue.
May 13, 2022
Ok... so again, the protagonist falls asleep and wakes up in the future... sigh, but the writing is better for average in this utopian genre I've been reading. The future in which he wakes up is populated with attractive people living happy lives as communal agrarians. He explains things tolerably well and the info-dumps common to this genre are handled fairly well. I actually felt bad for the guy when he had to go back to his own time.
Reminded me of a race of Eloi in H.G. Wells' Time Machine, except they actually work and organize themselves... and there didn't seem to be any Morlocks about.
Reminded me of a race of Eloi in H.G. Wells' Time Machine, except they actually work and organize themselves... and there didn't seem to be any Morlocks about.
July 27, 2019
"Certainly," I said, "you had better go on straight with your story. I see that time is wearing."
This pretty much sums up my feelings for the book. A very dated book that doesn't age well. There is no plot just aimless meandering by cardboard cutout characters that are lifeless and have no depth. It's basically the author's way of dressing up his criticism of the evils of the politics and social aspects of his time while pining for a utopian society.
This pretty much sums up my feelings for the book. A very dated book that doesn't age well. There is no plot just aimless meandering by cardboard cutout characters that are lifeless and have no depth. It's basically the author's way of dressing up his criticism of the evils of the politics and social aspects of his time while pining for a utopian society.
September 8, 2018
From BBC Radio 4 Extra:
News from Nowhere is a classic piece of futuristic writing, first published in 1890 by artist, designer and socialist William Morris. Its central tenet - that society should refind the value of work and thrive on beauty, rather than consumerism - is timely. This updated drama revisits Morris' vision of a new society for now.
Our Will Guest is a modern day, 21st Century man, travelling from 2016 to a future Utopia. The word utopia comes from the Greek ou-topos, meaning 'no-place' or 'nowhere'. There is uneasy antagonism between Will's 21st Century values and those of 'Nowhere'. But there is also love......Will goes on a time travelling voyage of discovery, finding a new love for society, as well as a woman.
Part of the Dangerous Visions BBC Radio 4 season.
Dramatist Sarah Woods
Producer Polly Thomas
Sound design Nigel Lewis
Production co ordination Lindsay Rees
A BBC Cymru/Wales production for BBC Radio 4.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/play/b0bj...
News from Nowhere is a classic piece of futuristic writing, first published in 1890 by artist, designer and socialist William Morris. Its central tenet - that society should refind the value of work and thrive on beauty, rather than consumerism - is timely. This updated drama revisits Morris' vision of a new society for now.
Our Will Guest is a modern day, 21st Century man, travelling from 2016 to a future Utopia. The word utopia comes from the Greek ou-topos, meaning 'no-place' or 'nowhere'. There is uneasy antagonism between Will's 21st Century values and those of 'Nowhere'. But there is also love......Will goes on a time travelling voyage of discovery, finding a new love for society, as well as a woman.
Part of the Dangerous Visions BBC Radio 4 season.
Dramatist Sarah Woods
Producer Polly Thomas
Sound design Nigel Lewis
Production co ordination Lindsay Rees
A BBC Cymru/Wales production for BBC Radio 4.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/play/b0bj...
June 12, 2024
Lire News from Nowhere de William Morris, qui décrit une utopie communiste vue par un homme de la fin du XIXe siècle, au moment des élections européennes 2024 dominées en France par l'extrême-droite, de la dissolution de l'Assemblée nationale et des élections législatives qui se préparent, c’est une drôle d’expérience. Je suis partagé entre envie, désir d’évasion, et tristesse et amertume face à ces rêves exprimés si joliment et non réalisés. Au-delà de ce contexte de lecture auquel l'auteur ne pouvait évidemment rien, c'est un texte magnifique, parfois maladroit, mais terriblement enthousiasmant. On a envie de vivre dans un monde comme celui qui est décrit, ou en tout cas de lutter pour en faire advenir un qui y ressemble.
May 13, 2020
For who is interested in early socialism in Britain, maybe you can afford to read this book. Otherwise...it is BOOOORING.
The most interesting I read about it, is the Wikipedia page.
This are extracts from Wiki:
The novel explores a number of aspects of this society, including its organisation and the relationships which it engenders between people. Morris fuses Marxism and the romance tradition when he presents himself as an enchanted figure in a time and place different from Victorian England. ... News From Nowhere was written as a libertarian socialist response to an earlier book called Looking Backward, a book that epitomises a kind of state socialism that Morris abhorred. It was also meant to directly influence various currents of thought at the time regarding the tactics to bring about socialism. ... Morris reviewed the novel Looking Backward in the Commonweal on 21 June 1889. In his review, Morris objects to Bellamy's portrayal of his imagined society as an authority for what socialists believe. ...
(Looking Backward: 2000–1887 is a utopian novel by Edward Bellamy, a journalist and writer from Chicopee Falls, Massachusetts; it was first published in 1888. It was the third largest bestseller of its time, after Uncle Tom's Cabin and Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ. ... The success of Looking Backward provoked a spate of sequels, parodies, satires, dystopian, and 'anti-utopian' responses.)
This book is one of those.
The most interesting I read about it, is the Wikipedia page.
This are extracts from Wiki:
The novel explores a number of aspects of this society, including its organisation and the relationships which it engenders between people. Morris fuses Marxism and the romance tradition when he presents himself as an enchanted figure in a time and place different from Victorian England. ... News From Nowhere was written as a libertarian socialist response to an earlier book called Looking Backward, a book that epitomises a kind of state socialism that Morris abhorred. It was also meant to directly influence various currents of thought at the time regarding the tactics to bring about socialism. ... Morris reviewed the novel Looking Backward in the Commonweal on 21 June 1889. In his review, Morris objects to Bellamy's portrayal of his imagined society as an authority for what socialists believe. ...
(Looking Backward: 2000–1887 is a utopian novel by Edward Bellamy, a journalist and writer from Chicopee Falls, Massachusetts; it was first published in 1888. It was the third largest bestseller of its time, after Uncle Tom's Cabin and Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ. ... The success of Looking Backward provoked a spate of sequels, parodies, satires, dystopian, and 'anti-utopian' responses.)
This book is one of those.
Shelved as 'started-and-not-finished'
January 24, 2011This isn't an actual review (and I wouldn't do a rating), since I didn't finish the book --just an explanation of why I didn't! When I started the book, I was hoping that Morris' vision of his ideal society as agrarian, pastoral and decentralized (as opposed to the typical Utopian visions of his day) would produce a novel markedly more interesting than the other Utopian fiction of that era. Alas, it didn't; the basic components of his vision are still the same clueless optimism about human perfectibility through socio-economic change, and the same total naivete about the workings of social and economic life, that characterize the writings of his contemporaries. And the delivery is the same boring, lecture-style essay in the loose guise of fiction.
August 31, 2019
It started off really interesting and I did want to know how this future works but in the context of a story. The middle turned into one big exposition dump and I can't help but wonder if this political vision could have been written in a different form. The writing was easy to read but the later sections contained a lot of descriptions of how wide the river is and the elm trees that surround it. The way chapter 1 starts, you know that it's going to end the way it does straightaway but I can't help but eye roll at 'it's all a dream'...or as the books ends "it may be called a vision rather than a dream". At least I like how it faded into it.
April 26, 2022
Utopian novels are almost impossible to pull off, because they are driven by fantasy, reduce humans to simplistic creatures with no agency and have a specific idea of what a "perfect" world would look like. Add a socialist\communist lens to it and it really is a shitshow of mental gymnastics. Sadly, News From Nowhere doesn't even have a story to tell, it's just an information dump of dull nonsense and bad ideas, you almost feel like you were tricked into reading the communist manifesto.
February 7, 2017
Wish I could give negative stars.
August 22, 2020
An interesting, thought provoking, short novel about living in the ideal socialist society. William Guest awakes and finds himself 150 years in the future, in London, England. He meets friendly, happy, content people who explain over the course of the book their society. In this society people enjoy work, there is no idleness, no poverty, no factories, no politics, no laws and no formal education. People like making things. There are no conflicts. Differences of opinion are settled by the majority.
First published in 1890.
First published in 1890.
June 10, 2024
Not the most engaging storyline, but nevertheless, an interesting way to outline a political and social vision - one that seems to resonate just as much now as it did when it was written. I think we can take much from Morris’s vision and personally News from Nowhere opened up many avenues of thought which I had not considered before. Overall, a worthwhile read.
January 2, 2023
A moving romantic fantasy. Morris certainly forms his utopia in his own image, but the desire for a mutual and pleasure-focused society has broad appeal. But I do resent Morris for his dislike of ‘vulgar’ ‘cockney’ culture and for his lacklustre and old-fashioned gender politics.
February 8, 2023
That ending!!!!! :’D Chills!! Reminds me of Le Guin’s Hainish Cycle!
June 23, 2023
Astoundingly beautiful! Contemplations and a boat ride mixed together into a masterpiece where appreciation of life and a wish for a better one for everybody drips off every page! A must-read for everyone who thinks himself a socialist.
April 5, 2024
I am reading incredibly slowly at the moment. The first half of this book went very quickly but then it took another week to finish. It was more of an essay on the ideal state of the world than a novel but it was interesting nonetheless. Everything so focused on the arts and crafs movement, everyone a skilled artisan and everything made to be lovely. Ironically I thought the funniest part of the book was when the were discussing the differences between the sexes and the old man said how they were now completely equal, except of course there were some things that women particularly enjoyed because they suited thier nature, these things being serving men, keeping a home and having children! It was odd to read about a communist utopia written before their had been any communist revolutions. I felt William Morris had rather a simplistic view of human nature and desires. But they did make for an interesting book. I think this is actually a book that I'm interested in going and reading some criticism about as I'd like to know how other people interpreted it.
Reread as found a reprinte of the Kelmscott press edition. The gendered view that all women want is to housekeep and raise a family was harder to take this time. But it was a pretty edition.
Reread as found a reprinte of the Kelmscott press edition. The gendered view that all women want is to housekeep and raise a family was harder to take this time. But it was a pretty edition.
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