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Desert-island reading.(Critical Essay)

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From: New Criterion
Date: 20050201
Author:Dalrymple, Theodore

Betteredge, the butler-narrator in Wilkie Collins's Moonstone, consults Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe much in the way that New Age spiritists consult the I-Ching, as a guide to future actions in difficult circumstances. The character of Betteredge, who in perplexity opens his faithful old copy of the novel at random and always finds wise advice wherever his eye falls, is a mild satire on religious fundamentalists who think that there is or ever could be a single book that answers to all human needs. He tells us:

 
   I am not superstitious. I have read a heap of 
   books in my ...

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