Take a photo of a barcode or cover
A review by daja57
Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne
4.0
I was inspired to re-read this after watching the first episode of the recent BBC adaptation which utterly changed the story.
When I first read this book, as a kid, I loved it. Fundamentally, it is a race against time. Phileas Fogg, an English gentleman of fixed habits who is almost catatonic in his reserve, bets that he can travel around the world in eighty days and sets off with his newly hired manservant Passepartout, whose role in the novel is to provide comedy and to do stupid things which will cause delays. On the journey Mr Fogg acquires a tail, a detective called Fix (never Mr Fix!) who believes Mr Fogg is a bank-robber and follows him in the hope that he will land in an English territory where an arrest warrant might be served. During the journey, the travellers rescue a lady from the clutches of murderous savages who becomes the love interest. But the excitement is provided mainly when missed connections require the improvisation of unorthodox means of travel.
There is also quite a lot of 'travel writing', describing the scenery and customs of foreign lands.
The fundamental problem to a modern reader (or a BBC scriptwriter) is that the book was written at the height of the British Empire and the indigenous peoples visited are invariably described in blatantly racist terms. In addition, the only female character is essentially passive.
When you add the fact that a large part of the excitement requires that the reader/ viewer realises that in Victorian days steamships and locomotives were cutting edge travel, it makes me wonder why they bothered to adapt this book; why not simply take the premise of a race around the world and write your own tale?
But the first episode added a shoot-out in which Passepartout's brother was trying to assassinate the French president. I suppose the BBC believe that the average viewer is unable to be gripped by the fundamentally simple tensions set up by Jules Verne.
Unusually for Jules Verne, this isn't scifi. It was a classic in its time and it is still a good read but it reveals racist and sexist attitudes that were typical of its time but make uncomfortable reading today.
When I first read this book, as a kid, I loved it. Fundamentally, it is a race against time. Phileas Fogg, an English gentleman of fixed habits who is almost catatonic in his reserve, bets that he can travel around the world in eighty days and sets off with his newly hired manservant Passepartout, whose role in the novel is to provide comedy and to do stupid things which will cause delays. On the journey Mr Fogg acquires a tail, a detective called Fix (never Mr Fix!) who believes Mr Fogg is a bank-robber and follows him in the hope that he will land in an English territory where an arrest warrant might be served. During the journey, the travellers rescue a lady from the clutches of murderous savages who becomes the love interest. But the excitement is provided mainly when missed connections require the improvisation of unorthodox means of travel.
There is also quite a lot of 'travel writing', describing the scenery and customs of foreign lands.
The fundamental problem to a modern reader (or a BBC scriptwriter) is that the book was written at the height of the British Empire and the indigenous peoples visited are invariably described in blatantly racist terms. In addition, the only female character is essentially passive.
When you add the fact that a large part of the excitement requires that the reader/ viewer realises that in Victorian days steamships and locomotives were cutting edge travel, it makes me wonder why they bothered to adapt this book; why not simply take the premise of a race around the world and write your own tale?
But the first episode added a shoot-out in which Passepartout's brother was trying to assassinate the French president. I suppose the BBC believe that the average viewer is unable to be gripped by the fundamentally simple tensions set up by Jules Verne.
Unusually for Jules Verne, this isn't scifi. It was a classic in its time and it is still a good read but it reveals racist and sexist attitudes that were typical of its time but make uncomfortable reading today.