Journey to the Centre of the Earth (Penguin Classics) Jules Verne

Every library should have one

Jules Verne is my favorite French writer. There. I have said it.Mind you, I did not say "Jules Verne is the greatest French writer." Back in graduate-school days, I'd have gotten laughed out of the third-floor English Department seminar room in Taliaferro Hall at the University of Maryland if I'd said anything like that. I do not claim for a moment that Verne possesses the epic sensibility of Hugo, or the psychological insight of Proust, or the wit and subtlety of Colette, or the unflinching realism of Zola. What I do claim is that Jules Verne knows how to write stories that are a hell of a lot of fun to read. I approach the work of Hugo or Proust or Colette or Zola with dutiful reverence. I take up a Jules Verne novel with a smile, thinking, "This is going to be fun."It was that way when I was a very young boy, when a Verne novel would whisk me away from the suburban comfort of my Bethesda, Maryland, home and off into a world of adventure; and it is that way now, as I return in middle age to "Voyage au centre de la Terre" (1864), the novel that we in the Anglosphere know somewhat better as "Journey to the Centre of the Earth."Verne's storytelling verve and the far-ranging quality of his imagination are very much on display here. Moreover, of all Verne's novels this may be the one that partakes most of the nature of myth. We're all used to the idea that the archetypal, mythic story involves a descent into the abyss, wherein the hero combines a physical journey beneath the surface of the earth with a voyage downward into his or her own psychology, a confrontation with one's own inner demons. In the case of "Journey to the Centre of the Earth," the whole damned *thing* is a descent into the abyss.The heroes of our journey are Dr. Otto Lidenbrock, a German professor who is singularly driven by his need to find something that no one has discovered before; Lidenbrock's young nephew Axel, who narrates the novel and in the process reveals his own trepidation about making the journey; and Hans, the stoic Icelander who serves as guide, leading Lidenbrock and Axel from the crater at Snæfellsjökull in western Iceland on their journey to - well, you know, the center of the earth.Lidenbrock is led on this journey by his discovery of a scrap of manuscript written by a 16th-century Icelandic scientist named Arne Saknussemm. Axel does not share Lidenbrock's enthusiasm for the voyage, but is induced in part by his love for Gräuben, Lidenbrock's beautiful young ward, who encourages him to make the journey. They leave Hamburg and make their way to Iceland, enlist the services of Hans, and make their way down into the crater of Snæfellsjökull.Character development is not Verne's strong suit. Throughout the novel, Lidenbrock is obsessed and enthusiastic; Axel is reluctant; Hans is stoic and accepting: the characters simply demonstrate these traits in varying ways as the novel progresses. One reads a Verne novel not for characterization but for plot, and this novel has plotline in abundance - one life-threatening episode after another. Like Odysseus or Aeneas in the epic poems of classical times, Lidenbrock, Axel, and Hans proceed from one danger to another - dead-end tunnels, hunger and thirst, storms, sea monsters, giants, floods, molten lava. The more I think about it, the more I think Verne may have had the Odyssey and the Aeneid in mind as he wrote this book.Because I read "Journey to the Centre of the Earth" on a trip to Iceland, I enjoyed the leisurely manner in which Verne conveys his journeyers from their Hamburg home to Iceland, and lets them sojourn for a bit in Reykjavík and its environs before finally - at the beginning of Chapter 17 of a 45-chapter book, 90 pages into a 233-page novel - setting the three on their journey coreward. These initial chapters display Verne's talent for descriptive writing: "The longer of the streets in Reykjavík runs parallel to the coast, and it is here that merchants and traders in cabins of horizontal red beams ply their trade....I had soon paced these sad and dreary thoroughfares; sometimes I spied a yellowing lawn like a threadbare woollen rug, or a vegetable garden whose meagre crops - potatoes, cabbage, lettuce - would not have looked out of place on a Lilliputian table. A few drooping gillyflowers did their best to adopt a sunny disposition" (p. 51). To those readers who would want Verne to hurry up and get on with center-of-the-earth stuff, I would counsel patience. Verne knows that a good book is all about the journey.Once our three travelers have made their way into the crater of Snæfellsjökull, and follow the path set forth by Arne Saknussemm (the phrase "the shadow of Scartaris" becomes very important here), each new section of underground passage uncovers new wonders: "Sometime a series of vaults like the arches of the counter-nave in a Gothic cathedral appeared before us....A mile further on, we were forced to stoop beneath low, rounded arches in the Romanesque style, supported by large pillars formed by the rock face itself" (p. 100). When, eventually, the three find themselves on the shore of a vast underground ocean - Professor Lidenbrock immodestly designates it the Lidenbrock Sea - things get really interesting. The epic sea battle between an ichthyosaur and a plesiosaur that takes place in Chapter 33 is the earliest example I know of a storyteller looking for a way to bring modern people together with extinct dinosaurs - decades before Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Lost World" (1912), and more than a century before "Jurassic Park."This Penguin Books edition of "Journey to the Centre of the Earth" is particularly good for a couple of reasons. The introduction by Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Jane Smiley looks perceptively and with sympathy at the pressures under which Verne wrote, including an imperious and demanding editor. Editor Peter Cogman provides helpful footnotes that situate this novel within 19th-century geological studies and make clear that, like science-fiction novelists ever since, Verne studied his science carefully. He broke rules frankly and fearlessly, in accordance with the needs of his stories, but he worked to build a sense of verisimilitude, to get the reader believing in the story while the story is going on.Do the characters seem flat? Yes, at times. Does Verne sometimes lead his characters into literal or figurative dead ends? Absolutely. Does he squander some interesting narrative opportunities - e.g., Axel's and Lidenbrock's discovery of mastodons being led by a man, "a giant capable of commanding these monsters....more than 12 feet tall" and carrying "an enormous bough, a crook worthy of this antediluvian shepherd" (p. 200)? Most certainly. And is the novel's resolution, through which Verne finds a way of quickly bringing major characters of the novel back to a surface they spent months descending from, an example of "deus ex monte"? Quite possibly. And yet, in a way, none of that matters."Journey to the Centre of the Earth" is a great and entertaining story. Small wonder that the posh restaurant at the top of the Eiffel Tower (a Verne-style achievement in itself) bears Jules Verne's name. Small wonder that this story has been filmed so many times (e.g., the 1959 film in which James Mason as the professor finds himself looking at rhinoceros iguanas dressed up as Dimetrodons; or the 2008 film in which Brendan Fraser as a geologist goes with his nephew and an Icelandic guide in following the clues left by "Vernians" who believe that Verne's novels offer clues for real-life exploration). This is a fun novel, a happy journey.

Pretty sure Verne just wrote this because he wanted to talk a lot about rocks and putting it in a novel was the only way people would listen. (I felt the same about 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and fish - Verne just wanted to tell people about cool fish). Didn't enjoy this one as much as Leagues, but I still love Verne's writing.

If you can get by the old timey racism, like most books written in the 1800s, then this is one fantastic adventure novel. Not my favorite by Venre, that'd be 20000 Leagues Under the Sea, but still worth the price. Penguin Classics always does a good job with classic novels too. Though I can recommend the one by Seawolf Press as well as it has original illustrations.

no much comments, classic fiction novel. help me understand more in my literature class but I do not remember where I put it now...