Around the world, Verne style

Jules Verne’s Around the World in 80 Days was published on this day in 1873. It’s a busy date. Charles I was beheaded in 1649, Oliver Cromwell likewise, though posthumously in 1661, Hitler came to power in 1933, Ghandi was assassinated in 1948, and Churchill was buried in 1965. Verne didn’t make it on Clement K. Shorter’s list of a hundred best books from 1898, because he was still alive at the time of its compiling, but since the date fits so nicely, I’ll write about the book anyway.

I’ve already written about my favourite Verne novel earlier, Journey to the Center of the Earth. Around the World would be my second favourite Verne. But I have only read it once. The story in all its variations is more familiar to me from films and TV series.

Like the Three Musketeers I wrote about last week, an animated series first introduced me to the story in the early 80s. In Around the World with Willy Fog, Phileas Fogg – the fearless adventurer – was depicted as a lion named Willy Fog. All characters were anthropomorphisms of various animals; the good guys were felines and all the crooks were canines. It was shown once a week, and woe if I missed an episode. (This was before we had a VCR.)

I was a bit older, twelve or so, before I read the book. It turned out to be quite different from the animated series with themes I was too young to fully comprehend. Some plots, like saving Aouda from the funeral pyre, were changed in the cartoon. And while it’s perhaps natural to avoid that topic in a children’s series, it’s actually very rarely used in other adaptations I’ve seen either. The woman is rescued, but from various other perils.

Around the World in 80 Days was a wonderful book to read as a child. All those exotic countries, the adventures, and the excitement of the chase, as the detective Fix from Scotland Yard tries to keep up with Fogg, tickled my imagination perfectly. Not all adaptations I’ve seen have managed the same, but they are rarely so bad I wouldn’t watch them. And nothing beats the cartoon. Perhaps not even the book.

Here are the opening credits – the English version, which I have to say is not as good as the version of my childhood. You can also watch full episodes on YouTube.

News from Nowhere

A list of a hundred best novels has been circulating the Internet. What makes this one stand out among many similar lists is that it was compiled by an English literary critic Clement K. Shorter in 1898 and it contains many books that most people have never heard of. Tastes in books have changed greatly in a century, which explains some differences, but it has a lot to do with his method of selecting the books too.

Shorter accepted only one book per author and he didn’t select books from authors who were still alive. This excluded such great names as Jules Verne, Leo Tolstoy, and Mark Twain. The list is chronological so within it the books haven’t been given any preference. Often he has selected the first novel the author has written despite there being many better to select from.

While some books on the list have retained their value, many have completely disappeared. The oldest book on it, Don Quixote (1604), is still popular today. But Shorter had chosen delightfully many books written by women and many of them are among those that time has forgotten.

Although this blog is about the books that I have read, and I haven’t read most of those on Shorter’s list, I thought to go through it during the next few weeks. Not in detail though, and the emphasis will be on the books that I’ve actually read.

One of those is the last – and thereby the newest – book on the list, William Morris’s News from Nowhere (1891). It doesn’t often appear in modern equivalents. It was a relatively new book so perhaps it had novelty value. However, it was overshadowed at the time of its publication by Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward (1887), a veritable bestseller. Morris’s book was written as an answer to Bellamy’s and the books are fairly similar so why the first was chosen over the latter is a mystery. Perhaps Shorter favoured his countryman, or maybe Bellamy, who died in May 1898, was still alive at the time the list was made and so was excluded.

News from Nowhere (or an Epoch of Rest) is a socialist utopia set in 21st century London. The protagonist, William Guest (a clever name there) wakes up one morning to find himself in the future. He sets out to study his new surroundings and is very impressed by what he sees. Labour has ceased to be painful so people work joyously. Moreover, work is recycled so that people do both manual labour and creative tasks like writing poetry. Everyone is expected to do all kinds of work and they do it happily.

Morris’s utopian society is an idyllic place where the industrialisation has been stopped and the world has returned to a kind of pseudo medieval, agrarian society. Since the industry has ceased from polluting, the nature has recovered too; an important theme in the book. It’s possible to swim in the Thames, which was unheard of in Morris’s time. Beauty is valued above everything else, which isn’t surprising. Morris is best known today from his textiles and tapestries he patterned after a romanticised medieval ideal and that is evident in his utopia too.

It’s difficult to see why Morris’s book has ended up on the list. It’s written in the form of a medieval chivalric romance that must have seemed old-fashioned already a decade later. It’s not a terribly interesting book either. Perhaps the notion of a clean London has appealed to Shorter who had to suffer the worst consequences of British industrialism. Perhaps, only a decade after its publishing, Morris’s vision of the future seemed plausible. Or, it could be that Shorter simply liked the book. Whatever the reason, modern time has largely forgotten Morris’s book. Perhaps rightly so.

   

Behind Sherlock

As I mentioned last week, I’ve never really read Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes books. I love Sherlock Holmes in all the visual incarnations, but I’ve only read The Hound of Baskervilles and A Study in Scarlet. And even though especially the latter is filled with classic Holmes moments, it’s not among my favourite books.

Arthur Conan Doyle created an iconic and memorable character that can be re-invented for the modern audiences and still retain his essence. Considering the state of criminal investigation at the time he wrote the books, he was ahead of his times. A physician himself, he gave his character the analytical mind needed in detective work. Moreover, he wasn’t beyond trying detective work in his own life.

Julian Barnes: Arthur and George

The fascinating story of Conan Doyle as a detective is at the core of Julian Barnes’ book Arthur and George (2005). It’s not a historical account, it’s a novel based on the lives of Arthur Conan Doyle and George Edalji, a part biography and a part detective story. George Edalji, a half-Indian solicitor from Birmingham, was wrongfully committed of a bizarre crime of farm animal slashings in 1903, the so called Great Wyrley Outrages. He was released, but not pardoned, in 1906. Conan Doyle, convinced of Edalji’s innocence set out to clear his name and after eight months of detective work managed to have Edalji exonerated. He didn’t, however, discover who was really behind the deeds, although he was convinced it was a local butcher’s boy named Royden Sharp. No one else was convicted.

As far as biographies go, even those that spring partly from the author’s imagination, Arthur and George is interesting. Two people of seemingly different worlds, though subjects of the same country, are connected by a court case and nothing else. Most of the book follows their separate lives and nothing suggests they might meet one day until they do.

Of the two, Conan Doyle gets more space. He leads the more interesting life by far and undoubtedly there have been more sources to his life too. Edalji, however, gets a more sympathetic portrayal. Not only is he wrongly accused, his entire life has been struggle against racial prejudice and malign, despite which he has managed to carve himself a place in society, albeit small. If it hadn't been for the trial, he would have been forgotten.

Arthur and George is a window to two very different sides of British culture. Those sides are not limited to the early 20th century either. They reflect the modern Britain too – a liberty Julian Barnes has been able to take writing a novel instead of historical biography. Racism and class structure, the possibilities and treatment people get because of their place in society are all themes that reflect the present day too.

Eventful though Conan Doyle’s life was, he wasn’t nearly as intriguing a character as he was able to create himself. Edalji’s tragic life would have made a fascinating book on its own, especially if Barnes had taken more liberties with filling in the unknowns. As a whole, it’s a somewhat unbalanced book, long stretches of it being about Conan Doyle. Eventually, Edalji is put aside completely, faded to obscurity once more. And in the end Conan Doyle, too, is remembered from Sherlock Holmes, not the man he helped to exonerate.

The best crime writer there is

Agatha Christie was chosen for the all-time best crime writer by the Crime Writers Association this week. The same poll declared Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle the best ever series. I like them both. However, while I’ve read many of Christie’s books, I’ve only ever read The Hound of the Baskervilles and A Study in Scarlet by Conan Doyle. For me, Sherlock Holmes has always been better in visual form – any version, I’m not choosy. Christie, however, is enjoyable in both. 

I binge-read Christie’s books when I was maybe fifteen or so. I read every book of hers my local library had, and if there weren’t any unread ones when I went to get more, I would read one of them again. I continued this until I was fed up. I don’t recall having a favourite among them, but I read And Then There Were None more often than others. I should mention, too, that not all her books were available in my language or in my local library so I haven’t read them all.

One would think that a mystery loses its charm the moment one knows the killer, but that doesn’t happen with Christie’s books. More importantly, I don’t think finding out who did it is what draws readers to her books in the first place. Her two wonderful characters alone, Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, with their idiosyncrasies, are a reason to return to the books.

And although this is a reading blog, I have to admit that I love all the movies and TV series based on her books that I’ve seen too. David Suchet is perhaps my favourite Poirot, but I think I’ve liked all the actresses who have portrayed Miss Marple.

What then, makes a good crime novel? Christie’s books are character driven, filled with interesting, funny and bizarre people who all have secrets to hide – all of which are revealed one by one as the story unravels, keeping the reader guessing till the last page. The murderer is never who I expect it to be, but I must admit that the extremely elaborate plot in Death on the Nile remains my favourite; as a movie too, the 1978 version with Peter Ustinov as Poirot.

Once I was over my Christie binge, I left crime novels behind, hers and everyone else’s. I don’t think I’ve picked a crime novel above a handful of times since. I like a bit of mystery in all my reading, but crime novels for their own sake haven’t felt like worth my while. Perhaps I read too many of them at once. Perhaps no other crime writer has intrigued and entertained me as well as Christie has. I guess, for me, she is the best crime writer there is.

Here, to leave you with style, the trailer for the Death on the Nile: