News From Nowhere

Until recently I had no idea that William Morris ever wrote books.  He was another obscure joke in my family when I was young.  My mum was jokingly convinced that I loved his wallpaper patterns when I was about seven and as a result I ended up with this strange pack of Morris-Pattern wallpaper postcards.  They would have all looked god awful in any room smaller than a football pitch, but they worked in postcard format.  Good for computer wallpaper, horrible for walls.  There was a quite nice khaki one with birds I seem to remember.

Anyway, Morris was also well into his socialism and News From Nowhere is effectively a manifesto on the subject.  It’s partly that, it’s also a bit gothic-novel-y in the sense it’s one of those stories that’s bookend with ramblings about how it didn’t happen to the main character, it happened to someone else. The book tells the story of not very imaginatively named William Guest a man from the nineteenth century who hops forward in time to see how things are shaping up in 2052.  Given that at this time it’s been 100 years since The Revolution, he is surprised at the changes.  They have sorted out all the social inequality and whatnot, but there are still no mobiles.  There are never iPhones in the imaginary future.

The novel itself is okay, I guess.  It’s a nice thought and I do like the ending; Guest returns to his capitalist hell but he returns with hope, or more accurately knowledge that things do get better and that he and his brethren are laying the foundations for a stronger future.  But… the whole thing is a little dry.  The plot is mostly Guest being shown things and having the socialist system explained to him, while his hosts laugh at how old and grizzled he looks.  And the ideas are so naïve.  The idea that socialism or communism would work is hard enough to accept but the one that nations would eschew education in favour of glorifying physical labour is impossible to believe.  I know I am biased when it comes to books but people always want to learn.  This is why there are non-fiction books and films and I don’t accept such a cultural shift. 

The other thing that I found interesting in this book where the dates.  Morris published more than one edition of News From Nowhere and, if the explanatory notes are to be believed, each new version set the time line of the revolution and of the socialist evolution back as Morris grew more disillusioned and cynical.  Even things as small as the date a bridge was built changes.  And I like that; for all the rhetoric and big dreams it’s awfully human to just give up a little bit.  To compromise those big dreams in the face of an unchanging reality.  I usually regret reading the explanatory notes, (especially in Oxford World’s Classics editions) either because they’re for Americans and so tell us just super patronising England-facts or because they’re riddled with spoilers.  But this time it made the book better.  And it made me like William Morris a little bit more. 

I’m now on to Watchmen by Alan Moore and David Gibbons.  There are more pictures than I’m used to in books for adults.