The Ungarnished Plate of Daniel Defoe.

Presents literary criticism which focuses on the contributions of author Daniel Defoe. Nobody would presume to put Defoe in a class with Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy, or even Charles Dickens, who happened to despise him. He was not a great novelist, as Maximillian E. Novak is all too aware. First and foremost Defoe is a page-turner, a plotter of then-and-after-that-then who hooks a reader into dying to know what comes next. Without really satisfying logic, Defoe, an oddly devout man, presumes it may be God's will to put us in danger in order to save in the long run, either here or hereafter. There is no doubt that Defoe was as self-contradictory as Novak insists. In his ambition for power as well as wealth he attached himself to the coattails of the powerful, using his talents as a scribbler to produce pamphlets of bad propaganda contrary to his own convictions. As idealists of the family, Tolstoy and Defoe shared a failure to practice what they preach. Tolstoy's "Family Happiness" is a work of genius far beyond Defoe's reach, but he too believed in family happiness.