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= Erewhon =
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Introduction
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'Erewhon: or, Over the Range' () is a utopian novel by English writer
Samuel Butler, first published in 1872, set in a fictional country
discovered and explored by the protagonist. The book is a satire on
Victorian society.
The first few chapters of the novel dealing with the discovery of
Erewhon are based on Butler's own experiences in New Zealand, where,
as a young man, he worked as a sheep farmer on Mesopotamia Station for
four years (1860-1864), exploring parts of the interior of the South
Island and writing about it in 'A First Year in Canterbury Settlement'
(1863).
The novel is one of the first to explore ideas of artificial
intelligence, as influenced by Darwin's recently published 'On the
Origin of Species' (1859) and the machines developed out of the
Industrial Revolution (late 19th to early 20th centuries).
Specifically, it concerns itself, in the three-chapter "Book of the
Machines", with the potentially dangerous ideas of machine
consciousness and self-replicating machines.
In Erewhon, illness is crime and crime is illness. As a result,
citizens are imprisoned for offenses like physical ailments,
misfortune, or ugliness while those who commit conventional crimes
like fraud or theft are seen more sympathetically as exhibiting
symptoms of moral afflictions and prescribed sessions with a
"straightener" (essentially a psychologist) for treatment. The lack of
compassion for physical sickness is reflected in the role of
physicians in Erewhonian society, which is described as something more
akin to that of a judge or law enforcement officer than that of a
doctor. This system of law and medicine is a satirical inversion of
the pattern in western society where crimes are punished and physical
illnesses are treated--immorality is a matter of luck beyond one's
control while sickness falls into the purview of one's individual
autonomy.
Content
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The greater part of the book consists of a description of Erewhon.
The Book of the Machines
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Butler developed the three chapters of 'Erewhon' that make up "The
Book of the Machines" from a number of articles he had contributed to
'The Press', which had just begun publication in Christchurch, New
Zealand, beginning with "Darwin among the Machines" (1863). Butler was
the first to write about the possibility that machines might develop
consciousness by natural selection.
In his preface to the second edition Butler wrote, "I regret that
reviewers have in some cases been inclined to treat the chapters on
Machines as an attempt to reduce Mr Darwin's theory to an absurdity.
Nothing could be further from my intention, and few things would be
more distasteful to me than any attempt to laugh at Mr Darwin."
Characters
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* Higgs--The narrator who informs the reader of the nature of
Erewhonian society.
* Chowbok (Kahabuka)--Higgs' guide into the mountains; he is a native
who greatly fears the Erewhonians. He eventually abandons Higgs.
* Yram--The daughter of Higgs' jailer who takes care of him when he
first enters Erewhon. Her name is Mary spelled backwards.
* Senoj Nosnibor--Higgs' host after he is released from prison; he
hopes that Higgs will marry his elder daughter. His name is Robinson
Jones backwards.
* Zulora--Senoj Nosnibor's elder daughter--Higgs finds her unpleasant,
but her father hopes Higgs will marry her.
* Arowhena--Senoj Nosnibor's younger daughter; she falls in love with
Higgs and runs away with him.
* Mahaina--A woman who claims to suffer from alcoholism but is
believed to have a weak temperament.
* Ydgrun--The incomprehensible goddess of the Erewhonians. Her name is
an anagram of Grundy (from Mrs. Grundy, a character in Thomas Morton's
play 'Speed the Plough').
Reception
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In 1873, the reviewer in the Dunedin newspaper the 'Otago Witness'
declared that 'Erewhon' was the best English satirical fiction since
'Gulliver's Travels' (1726).
In a 1945 broadcast, George Orwell praised the book and said that when
Butler wrote 'Erewhon' it needed "imagination of a very high order to
see that machinery could be dangerous as well as useful". He
recommended the novel, though not its sequel, 'Erewhon Revisited'.
Adaptations
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In 2014, New Zealand artist Gavin Hipkins released his first feature
film, titled 'Erewhon' and based on Butler's book. It premiered at the
New Zealand International Film Festival and the Edinburgh Art
Festival.
Deleuze and Guattari
======================
The French philosopher Gilles Deleuze used ideas from Butler's book at
various points in the development of his philosophy of difference. In
'Difference and Repetition' (1968), Deleuze refers to what he calls
"Ideas" as "Erewhon". "Ideas are not concepts", he said, they are "a
form of eternally positive differential multiplicity, distinguished
from the identity of concepts." "Erewhon" refers to the "nomadic
distributions" that pertain to simulacra, which "are not universals
like the categories, nor are they the 'hic et nunc' or 'nowhere', the
diversity to which categories apply in representation." "Erewhon", in
this reading, is "not only a disguised 'no-where' but a rearranged
'now-here'."
In his collaboration with Félix Guattari, 'Anti-Oedipus' (1972),
Deleuze draws on Butler's "The Book of the Machines" to "go beyond"
the "usual polemic between vitalism and mechanism" as it relates to
their concept of "desiring-machines":
In popular culture
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Erewhon Station is a high-country station in New Zealand's South
Island, neighbouring Mesopotamia Station where Samuel Butler lived for
several years. Originally named Stronechrubie Station, it was renamed
Erewhon Station in 1915 by the then lease-holder, Sidney Pawson, who
was a reader of Samuel Butler's books.
Agatha Christie references 'Erewhon' in her novel 'Death on the Nile'
(1937).
A copy of 'Erewhon' figures in Elizabeth Bowen's short story "The Cat
Jumps" (1934).
Karl Popper's book 'The Open Society and Its Enemies' (1945), includes
an epigraph from 'Erewhon' that reads, "It will be seen ... that the
Erewhonians are a meek and long-suffering people easily led by the
nose, and quick to offer up common sense at the shrine of logic, when
a philosopher arises among them who carries them away ... by
convincing them that their existing institutions are not based on the
strictest principles of morality."
Alan M. Turing references 'Erewhon' in his posthumously published
paper, "Intelligent Machinery, A Heretical Theory" (c. 1951). He
writes, "At some stage therefore we should have to expect the machines
to take control, in the way that is mentioned in Samuel Butler's
Erewhon."
Aldous Huxley alludes to 'Erewhon' in his novels 'The Doors of
Perception' (1954) and 'Island' (1962).
In his book 'A Testament' (1957), Frank Lloyd Wright mistakenly
attributes the origin of the term Usonia as an alternate name for the
United States of America to Samuel Butler in 'Erewhon'.
The "Butlerian Jihad" is the name of the crusade to wipe out "thinking
machines" in Frank Herbert's novel, 'Dune' (1965).
C. S. Lewis alludes to 'Erewhon' in his essay, "The Humanitarian
Theory of Punishment."
The movie 'The Day of the Dolphin' (1973) features a boat named the
Erewhon.
"Erewhon" is the unofficial name US astronauts give Regan Station, a
military space station in David Brin's novel 'Earth' (1990).
In 1994, a group of ex-Yugoslavian writers in Amsterdam, who had
established the PEN centre of Yugoslav Writers in Exile, published a
single issue of the literary journal 'Erewhon'.
In the 1997 film 'Face/Off', FBI Agent Sean Archer, enters Erehwon
Prison, a high-tech prison with severe punishment for any
transgressions.
In the graphic novel 'Bye Bye, Earth' (2000), Belle's sword is called
"Erehwon", and the story makes reference to the novel 'Erewhon'.
New Zealand sound art organization, the Audio Foundation, published in
2012 an anthology edited by Bruce Russell named 'Erewhon Calling'
after Butler's novel.
In "Smile", the second episode of the 2017 season of 'Doctor Who', the
Doctor and Bill explore a spaceship named 'Erehwon'. Despite the
slightly different spelling, the episode writer Frank Cottrell-Boyce
confirmed that this was a reference to Butler's novel.
In the 2019 Ubisoft video game 'Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Breakpoint',
"Erewhon" is the name for the world's settler hideout and players'
online hub.
A copy of Erewhon figures prominently in the video for "A Barely Lit
Path," the lead single from Oneohtrix Point Never's 2023 album
'Again.'
Companies
Erewhon Market is the name of an upscale Los Angeles-based natural
foods grocery chain originally founded in Boston in 1966. The store’s
co-founder Aveline Kushi named it after Erewhon because it was the
favorite book of her mentor, George Ohsawa.
Erewhon is also the name of an independent speculative fiction
publishing company founded in 2018 by Liz Gorinsky.
See also
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* Rangitata River - the location of the high-country Mesopotamia
Station, where Samuel Butler lived for a time, and the neighbouring
Erewhon Station, named for his book.
* Nacirema - another piece of satirical writing with a similar
backwards pun
References
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* "Mesopotamia Station", Newton, P. (1960)
*
* "Samuel Butler of Mesopotamia", Maling, P. B. (1960)
* "The Cradle of Erewhon", Jones, J. (1959)
External links
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*
*
*
[
https://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/tm/scholarly/tei-ButFir-t1-g1-t1-g1-t4-body.html
"Darwin Among the Machines" (To the Editor of 'The Press',
Christchurch, New Zealand, 13 June 1863)] from the New Zealand
Electronic Text Centre
*
License
=========
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License URL:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
Original Article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erewhon
