Jules Verne: excitement, adventure and intellect

Jules Verne is one in that long list of authors people persist in reading despite the critics. Like Jack London, many of his works are considered "mere" children's stories, and his style, or supposed lack thereof, is criticized for uncraftedness and naivete.

The only attributes the Frenchman's novels have going for them, seemingly, are excitement, adventure and intellectual substance. That has been enough to keep the major ones continuously in print, in dozens of languages, for well over a century.

In English, the novels are generally available in multiple editions. The Modern Library, for instance, has just reissued in paperback "Journey to the Centre of the Earth" and "Around the World in Eighty Days," the latter of which is, according to Verne buffs, one of his two most-read books, the other being "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea."

"Around the World in Eighty Days" (translated by George M. Towle, 224 pages, $9.95), first published in 1872, offers a good means of clarifying a common error concerning Verne: He was not primarily a science-fiction writer.

Unlike H.G. Wells, who came along a few decades later and can be seen as one of the fathers of sci-fi, Verne wrote adventure stories based upon contemporary scientific knowledge and machines, which he explained in detail. Wells made up his inventions out of, not scientific knowledge, but whole cloth.

As an adventure, "Around the World" is a corker -- and entirely plausible. The adventure begins over a game of whist at the Reform Club in London on Oct. 2, 1872, with Phileas Fogg's 20,000-pound wager that he can go around the world in 80 days, just in the manner outlined in a newspaper article. When other members warn him that the newspaper calculations do not take unforeseen circumstances into consideration, Fogg replies, "The unforeseen does not exist."

So off he goes, that very evening, taking with him only a few clothes and Passepartout, the French valet he had hired only that morning. They are a perfectly matched pair of opposites: Passepartout lively, curious, excitable, voluble; Fogg punctual, solitary, taciturn, and imperturbable -- "precision personified."

From London to Suez they go, and then to Bombay, Calcutta, Hong Kong, Yokohama, San Francisco, New York, and back to London. They do not always make connections to their commercial transportation -- such failures are the principal sources of excitement -- and continually must improvise with whatever elephant or "land yacht" or other conveyance happens to be at hand for purchase with a Gladstone- bagful of money.

Throughout, Verne adeptly employs flashbacks, or what might more accurately be called literary sleight-of-hand, with which he omits describing some sections of the journey, most notably the seven-day leg from England to Suez. He does it again at the very end, and so slickly that we do not realize that we have learned about some vital piece of business without an actual description of it.

In India, they rescue a beautiful high-caste young woman from suttee -- the funeral pyre of her dead husband. The woman, named Aouda, remains with them, and grows increasingly enamored of the aloof Fogg.

All along they are pursued by the ineffable Fix, a policeman who has mistaken Fogg for a man who robbed the Bank of England of 55,000 pounds. Much of the humor derives from Fix's absurd doggedness, and from Passepartout's mistaken belief that Fix is an agent of the Reform Club sent to make sure Fogg is actually making the trip.

So it goes across the globe. Once they arrive on British soil after a final race across the Atlantic in a hired vessel, Fix arrests Fogg, thus causing him to arrive in London five minutes past his deadline and lose the wager.

Or so they think. Actually, as Passepartout discovers by accident the next day, by traveling eastward they had "gained" a day, and so they actually arrived nearly a day ahead of time. Literally as the last second is striking, Fogg walks into the club to claim his prize.

For the author, the journeyer is as important as the journey. In the course of his travels this uptight solitaire has also shown himself to be a generous and sensitive man -- and a brave one, having saved the lives of both Aouda and Passepartout. A man, that is, fully worthy of a second and greater prize, for he has fallen in love with Aouda -- though, typical of Fogg, he does not declare it until she has proposed to him.

And in Verne's view, "a lovely wife who . . . made him the happiest of men" is something worth going around the world to obtain.

'Around the World in Eighty Days'

Facts about Jules Verne and "Around the World in Eighty Days":

-- "Around the World in Eighty Days" is available in other editions. The Oxford University Press paperback ($9.95) is a modern translation by William Butcher, whose introduction to that edition is the source of some of the information that follows. Scholastic has a paperback ($4.50). The text also is available online, along with texts of other Verne novels, without cost at jv.gilead.org.il/.

-- Jules Verne timed the writing and publishing of his book so adroitly that the closing date of the novel, Dec. 22, 1872, was also that of its serial publication.

-- Verne transcribed entire sections of "Around the World" from a book about Britain by another writer, Francis Wey, including the "British traits" -- sobriety, silence, seclusion, independence, isolation -- that make up Phileas Fogg's personality.

-- The source of Fogg's most signal trait may have been Verne's own father, who, Butcher says, "was obsessed with punctuality and ran the house like a monastery crossed with a prison."

-- A careful reading reveals numerous errors in geography, time, logic, history and consistency. Does the bank robbery take place on Sept. 28 (Chapter 19) or Sept. 29 (Chapter 3)? How did the British warrant that Fix needed to arrest Fogg ever catch up to him? A man is identified as Fogg's opponent at cards, and then his partner. Verne calls San Francisco the capital of California, though later he gets it right. There is a ludicrous scene in which a train traverses a bridge known to be unsafe by barreling across it at top speed, the bridge then collapsing immediately behind it. Passepartout had through forgetfulness left the gas lighted in his room all the while they were gone; why, then, after the time situation is straightened out, did Fogg nevertheless charge Passepartout for 1,920 hours (80 days) of gas consumed, when he should have charged him for 1,896 (79 days)?

-- Around-the-world travel was much in the news when Verne sat down to write. What immediately inspired him is unclear, though very likely it was a chance sighting of a Thomas Cook advertisement about world travel. An American, George Francis Train, made four trips around the world, one of them, in 1870, in 80 days. He claimed that Verne stole his thunder, and, indeed, there are aspects of Train's life in the novel.

-- When "Around the World" first came out in serial form, British and American newspapers published excerpts from it. Some readers believed the journey actually was taking place and placed bets on it.

-- David Niven with his crisp self-certainty was the perfect actor to play Fogg in the 1956 film, which was remarkably faithful to the novel, given that this was Hollywood and the film is a loose and commodious vehicle meant to provide cameo glimpses of dozens of famous actors, among them Frank Sinatra, Buster Keaton and Marlene Dietrich. (It certainly is truer to its original than was the 1959 film, "Journey to the Center of the Earth," starring James Mason, Pat Boone and Arlene Dahl, which went in directions Verne never did.)

-- "Around the World in 80 Days" has also had other film incarnations: A TV miniseries starring Pierce Brosnan and Eric Idle (1989), a couple of animated versions and in 1989, Michael Palin retraced the novel's steps for a travel show on the BBC (shown here on PBS). Meanwhile, there is yet and another theatrical version, with British TV actor Steve Coogan and Jackie Chan (!), to be released next June.

E-MAIL: Roger K. Miller, a journalist for many years, is a free- lance writer and reviewer for several publications, and a frequent contributor to the Deseret Morning News.

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