News From Nowhere

As I mentioned in an earlier post, after reading Edward Bellamy's dreadful Utopian novel, Looking Backward: 2000–1887, I started on a novel written in response to Bellamy, News from Nowhere by William Morris, in 1890.

The complete title is - News From Nowhere or An Epoch of Rest being some chapters from A Utopian Romance.

Like those in Bellamy's novel, the ideas in Morris' work may have been considered revolutionary in the 1890's, but I found both books to be boring in the extreme, condescending and pretentious. The fact that neither book has a interesting plot doesn't help.

By an act of insanity, Morris' novel has managed to make Harold Bloom's  The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages. Insanity has to be the only reason that such a worthless piece of drivel should make a list of essential reading.

I don't considered myself to be better off having read News From Nowhere. At one time , I would have stopped reading any book as bad as this early on. I promised myself, however, that I would do my best to finish every book I start.

I should get a medal for having finished News From Nowhere.