I Read Books: News From Nowhere
News From Nowhere
William Guest falls asleep in 1890 (the year the book was written) and wakes up in the early 21st century. The Thames has been cleaned up (tick) and the land is cleaner and more countryfied, terrible old buildings have been torn down, there’s a man on the river who takes him across in his boat and is puzzled about talk of payment. They pass into London where he gets a new tobacco pouch and has it filled (again for free). But this London is hardly crowded, the Palace of Westminster is now the dung market*, there are green spaces and pleasant houses. Everyone is well clothed, well fed, healthy, happy, slightly naïve and incurious, welcoming and hospitable, and even good-looking by the standards of the 19th century. It’s communism baby!
Morris has his own take on this, there are machines (including force-barges) but this is not what interests him, or his characters. They like to do work, and they like to do it well, and to make it look good. So their clothes and houses are hand-made, and beautiful. Art and work and life are one. And when they want a break from this they go out and do work in the countryside. Guest (heh) joins Dick, the boatman, as he goes up river to join in the haymaking, which is his idea of a holiday, something for exercise and fresh air.
Anyway, this has solved war, and also most crime, though there’s some crimes of passion and occasionally people go mad. There’s no government, though local assemblies do get together to discuss things like bridges and roads and so on (presumably sewers and water too). The route here through history is not completely implausible, with strikes and reaction through the first half of the 20th century. Everyone is shocked by a massacre in Trafalgar Square which calms things a bit, and subsequent arrests turn the socialist movement into an army which is leaderless (though not undirected), which eventually wins a fairly nasty civil war.
This is also a romance and an old-school one, with a wise mentor (mostly talking about history and communism) a married couple (who have been together, split up and reunited) and an unobtainable love-interest, who invites Guest to stay with them, before, inevitably, he is rudely returned to 1890.
Are there some implausible bits? Yes, several, especially when after explaining how capitalism is inefficient in distributing wealth and, more importantly, happiness and fulfillment so is completely irrational, then goes on to note that there’s no war between nations because it would be irrational and an inefficient way of conducting affairs. Yes, people are irrational! The guy who is a critic of how things are says that no one is writing good books any more (Vanity Fair is his exemplar) because they’re too happy going on with their lives and work. Fair enough, but also no one is building great projects, force rockets to investigate the solar system, scientists looking into particles and diseases, building machines to help people who fall ill, bridges across the channel, submarines to look into the depths of the ocean etc. They’ve lost ambition. The subtitle An Epoch Of Rest highlights this, and there are hints that this may not be the end of history. Anyway, Morris’s communism boldly suggests that if people aren’t alienated from their work then they’ll enjoy it, make good things that are also beautiful. If you do what you love you’ll never do a day’s work in your life. And the good life is a sort of semi-rural physical labour (you can study if you want to).
Read This: For a full on anarcho-communist agrarian utopia
Don’t Read This: Nineteenth century pastoral romance is no
kind of vehicle for dubious politics
Out Of Copyright: And available to read online
* Although there is no market economy there are meeting places where people offer their goods for others to take
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