LOOKING BACKWARD

Here is the sort of intellectual Buck Rogers. In this nearly forgotten classic, a member of the Boston leisure class falls asleep in 1888 and wakes in 2000. Thence follows endless conversations reflecting journalist/fictionalist Edward Bellamy's prescient solutions to the problems of Victorian industrialism. This is less a novel than a dialectic, a quality that Edward Lewis's dry reading emphasizes. He sounds like an academic reading a paper to the Academy. His precise diction and phrasing are important pluses, given the fustian locutions he has to deal with. Y.R. © AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine [Published: APR/MAY 02]