I'm not very happy with Jules Verne right now. I feel kind of like I did at the end of the film Secret Window -- or that John Cusack movie that was awesome until the very end when all of a sudden it became the worst movie ever (if you've seen it, you'll know it). No... that's not quite right. Those films left me feeling like I wasted my time because the screenwriters thought they were being clever when in actuality they were just choosing a really cheap out because they couldn't think of a better ending. With Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth I feel more like he got massively bored 220 pages into writing the book and decided he was done. Perhaps he'd been shut up inside at his desk for too long and one morning looked out his window and saw what a bright and sunny day it was and heard the wind blowing and the leaves rustling and the birds chirping and got a whiff of the dewy grass and thought how much he'd rather spend the day in the great outdoors than inside writing about the earth's interior... and then he looked down at his manuscript and thought, "Gee, this is a lot of pages. This is enough, right? I think I'm done. Yeah, I'm done," and so he splashed a few more words down, shut the manuscript, ran outside, and... ummm... forgot to re-title the book???
Because here's the thing: It's called "Journey to the Center of the Earth." If I were to make one assumption about the book it would probably be that it's about some characters who, ya know, travel to the center of the earth. Reasonable assumption, right? Nope! Well surely, you think, they must make it close to the center of the earth, even if they don't make it to the exact center point, right? Yeeeaaahhh.... No. At their closest point, the Professor tells his nephew "that to reach the interior of the earth we have only five thousand miles to travel!"...... Hey Professor? It's only 4000 miles to the center of the earth from the surface. Whatcha doin' up in the sky?
Now lest I sound like I'm being too harsh on one of the fathers of science fiction, allow me to say that I thoroughly enjoyed the first 220 pages and greatly appreciate what Verne contributed to literature. And I recognize that as I read the "standard" and original 1871 English translation, it is in fact a bogus translation that changes characters' names, adds some passages, and eliminates others. (This is a bizarre and fascinating fact that I discovered as a result of researching the translation history when I became confused by the number of awkward syntax choices in a work of such prominence. What is purportedly the most widely read English version of the book is not remotely close to a true translation -- yet if the book is as famous as it is even in the English language, and this is the translation that is most commonly printed in mass paperback, then, poor sentence structure or not, with changes large and small, is not this a valid piece of literature in its own right? I would make the same case for paintings that were thought to be by Picasso or Van Gogh and are discovered to be by other artists instead -- if they brought people pleasure for decades or centuries, then why is their value decreased when the artist is discovered to be someone else? How much of art's value is based on its aesthetic merits and the reaction it creates in the minds, hearts, and imaginations of its viewers or readers, and how much is based solely on the name behind it? Why? But I digress.) However, a little Googling tells me that even if I were to read the book in its original French (also on my to-do list, because for some odd reason, even later English translations of the book make alterations, including changing a present-tense section to past tense for seemingly no reason -- Why are Verne's original words deemed unsuited for an attempted truthful translation?), I would still find that Professor Lidenbrock (or Hardwigg), Axell (or Harry, or Henry), and Hans make it only 88 miles down before getting spewed out by an active volcano. (They're fine, in case you were wondering -- because they're on a wooden raft.... Despite extensive scientific writing interspersed throughout the book, by 220 pages in we're just going to go with it....)
The characters who were bound and
determined to reach the center at all costs -- obsessed at times with
their goal and driven to madness with that obsession at several points
-- are suddenly perfectly content to leave things as they are and
abandon their singular goal. No second attempt now that they know what
they're dealing with, no dissatisfaction, no feeling of incompletion, no
nagging "what if".... I would happily accept that they don't accomplish
what they set out to do if they responded to that situation as driven
and determined people do -- with emotion. But the book just ends.
And that left me wanting more and feeling frustrated....
SO...
in conclusion... the book should be titled "Journey About 3% into the
Earth's Mantle and Not At All Into The Earth's Core."
That has a catchy ring to it, don't you think?
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