A Traveler from Altruria

This is the story of a 19th century gentleman visiting America who hails from the fictional Christian commonwealth of Altruria, a country which has managed to fully embrace a communitarian way of life in service to building Heaven on Earth. An excellent idea rendered pompously, filled with strawpersons, and which gives the rural poor in the tale an oversized natural-born morality which, overall, makes it a less-than-serious sort of novel. Given Howell's professional insistence on Realism over all other concerns, you'd think he'd be able to paint characters more real than those here. Still, I think he meant well, and there are plenty of enjoyable moments. Only if you are really trying to make a survey of Utopian literature is this a necessary read, however.