Jules Verne – Background. [Note for project – I will do bios where I can. I have a couple of Jules Vernes in my collection so this will cover a few of those.]
According to the Wiksterpedia, Jules Verne is the second-most translated author of all time with 4223 translations, right behind Agatha Christie.
Jules was French born and bred, with an active imagination and a lust for travel. DOB 8 Feb 1928. The little bugger was busted trying to stowaway on a ship bound for India when he was 12 years old! Spankings galore as a result and he decided to stowaway only in his imagination from then on.
He studied Latin in boarding school, and law after this. He wrote librettos (as you do) for operettas and did a lot of work for theatre. He then wrote some short stories on the side. His father found out, got pissed at Jules and withdrew all financial support. Jules had to support himself as a stockbroker after this which he wasn't actually too bad at.
So, you know, he met Alexandre Dumas, Pere and Victor Hugo – just some guys and they gave him writing tips. As if they'd know anything…
Thanks to the encouragment of his lovely wife, Honorine de Viane Morel, Jules continued to write and began to send work to publishers. He was accepted, he wrote, was published and made enough money to live on.
With all his money he bought a number of ships to sail about the world in and was also appointed Chevalier of the Legion d'honneur.
He was shot in the leg by a loony nephew who suffered from paranoia. This ended up giving him a permanent limp.
Jules also ran for local government and was elected town councillor of Amiens where he served for 15 years.
He passed away on 24 March 1905 from diabetes complications (not so powerhouse).
So Around the World in Eighty Days was originally published in 1873 as Le Tour du Monde en Quatre-Vingts Jours. It was written during the Franco-Prussian war and Jules had been conscripted and was beginning to feel the reality of the war.
Technological innovations were making the world a much smaller place.
Anyways, the book.
Phileas Fogg, an ordinary, punctual gentleman of means takes on a bet, completely out of the blue one afternoon, that he can make it around the world in 80 days, according to a timetable that The Times has published recently. So that night, at 9pm, off he goes and his newly employed servant, a Frenchman, Passepartout, accompanies him.
So far, and I am 11 chapters in at this point, Phileas is possibly one of the more boring and least visible main characters I've come across. He is apparently a retiring type, who keeps to his schedule, fires his original manservant who made the appalling error of serving his cup of tea 2 degrees below the specified temperature, and prefers to have his manservant buy his clothes, have his VISA stamped for him, take care of all the peripherals, whilst he sits at Whist with whomever he can find.
It's interesting that Phileas is described as English through and through and the most sensible of human beings, the most calm and collected of all citizens, etc. On the other hand, Passepartout, a Frenchman, is depicted as not the brightest of characters and a little gullible and a little excitable at times. As Jules Verne was French, why the Anglophilia??
They are being tracked by Fix, an anxious policeman who suspects Phileas of having performed a bank robbery in London the night before he whizzes off on his extraordinary journey. Fix is having difficulty in getting a warrant and thus has to follow Phileas and Passepartout, adding to the tension – of which, so far, there is pretty much ZERO. I'm still waiting for something to happen.
Maybe Phileas will get laid – we can only hope. I only know that Steve Coogan made a far more charismatic Phileas and Jackie Chan a far more energetic Passepartout.
Two days later, I'm finished and Phileas gets laid (aka married) at the very end, but only after one of the most protracted and emotionless 'courtships' ever. Here's the story – Phileas and Passepartout are on an elephant in the wilds of India and a Brahmin funeral procession passes by. They see a hot young 18 year old drugged and on her way to her aged husband's funeral pyre. Seriously, she is described as '...fair as a European.' Turns out she has been educated as a European also, which is bit of luck for the travellers, eh? I mean, you wouldn't want to have rescued a hot chick who displays symptoms of being foreign, now would you – just imagine that! So they rescue her – she spends the rest of their journey round the world with them, giving doe eyes at Phileas and mooning over him every time he deigns to give a cold, emotionless glance her way. He remains calm and unfeeling the whole trip, no matter what happens to delay them. At the end she proposes to him and he suddenly announces out with his love for her. This occurs in the last three pages of the book.
I'm not sure what the purpose of the book is other than to educate the general public about the world. Passepartout appears to be used as a mouthpiece for Verne's more 'controversial' views on the idiocy and savageness of those who were still being colonised by the West. Phileas, by contrast is the educated voice who can make allowances for the savages but we get his point of view on what they see probably two times only. Apparently Verne's work was heavily edited to remove a lot of his political views – it must have been an extremely dry novel on the first draft. We're given local descriptions and histories for each town they visit. And by the way, they DON'T travel by hot air balloon. The closest they get is a wind-powered sled. At the time, this novel must have been fascinating for those who had never travelled beyond their own town, which was pretty much everyone. Even now, it's a great read if you want to know what the world was like at the time. There is a description of the vast herds of buffalo that roam across Ohio, holding up trains for hours at a time. There is also a description of Geisha from Passepartout which is fascinating in how they were seen at that time. However, as a main character, Phileas blows. Inevitably, there are numerous delays during the trip which cause whomever is participating in the bet at the time acute stress and anxiety. But there is one exception – Phileas. All we see is how amazing he is while he sits and maintains a calm demeanour throughout. Once or twice tops he breaks out of character and announces they must rescue someone. This immediately inspires oodles of devotion and loyalty in his travelling companions. The other characters, especially Passepartout evoked far more vigour and interest for me as a reader.
The trip is begun in London and continues via Paris to Suez. They catch a boat to India, travel across India by train and elephant, then onto China by boat. They hitch a boat to Japan and then onto the US. There they move from San Francisco to Omaha to Chicago. Phileas commandeers a ship to Liverpool and finally back to London but they don't make it on the day. Phileas goes straight home, disappointed and deflated. But hey, it doesn't end there – how could it? Turns out they actually gained a day without realising because they travelled eastward around the globe. They don't discover this until the day after they get back to London an hour or so after the agreed time in the bet – 9pm. So at 8.30pm, Phileas does a mad scramble from his house to the centre of London to become the toast of the town and gets to marry the hot Indian chick to boot.
I just wasn't drawn in by this book – I expected to be – but it didn't happen. I did wonder a couple of times, if Jules Verne was taking the piss in having two main characters at such far and opposite ends of the emotion spectrum. I haven't read much of his stuff in recent years, so maybe the other books in my collection will help provide a better perspective. I do think it is worth the read though for the historical facts and titbits.
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