Book Review: Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Seas by Jules Verne · 1:46am Dec 6th, 2012
It's French time! Nah, I can't read French. I wish I could. The greatest novels in the world are in French. But me, I'm stuck with the translations. I chose the 1998 translation by William Butcher for one of Verne's most famous stories. It's free! Get it here.
The translation was excellent. Footnotes, footnotes everywhere! There were a couple spoilers in them, but I guess when a novel reaches one hundred years old, you're not allowed to get mad at spoilers anymore. I knew nothing about this novel going in, other than something about giant squid and some guy named Nemo. I was suspecting something like a French Moby Dick, except with a giant squid instead of a whale and French people instead of normal people (of course I'm fucking joking).
Premise: In 1866 some fast-moving thing is fucking up merchant and military ships crossing the oceans. The world suspects it's some sort of killer narwhal, so the Union Navy sends a battleship to kill it—kind of overkill, but I guess the Americans wanted to justify the ridiculous amount of money they had put into the Civil War that ended a year ago. Anyway, the three main characters are on board to partake in the narwhal killing: Dr. Pierre Arronax, the elitist and pompous mustache-twirling intellectual, lecturer at some huge history museum in Paris (BIG IMPORTANT MAN, DR. ARRONAX); Conseil, his trusty butler, kind of like a Jeeves from Jeeves and Wooster, but with Asperger Syndrome; and Ned Land, a big, burly, chest-thumping Canadian, wears a toque, a plaid shirt with rolled up sleeves that says "I HEART CANADA EH" on it (not really, but he's really, really Canadian), and speaks perfect French and English. On that note, it doesn't seem like the main characters had any trouble communicating with the Union Navy personnel, and it struck me as quite odd that the American sailors could speak perfect French.
It's not a narwhal; it's Captain Nemo and his crazy submarine ship, the Nautilus! After sinking the battleship the main characters are on, he kidnaps them and takes them around the world. Yeah, go read it!
THE GOOD
I was expecting a dusty, old, sea-faring novel, thick with nautical terms and barely understandable dialects; what I got was an amazingly modern story with amazingly modern technology with an amazingly modern story.
The characters are incredibly endearing. They have their own quirky personalities, and they play off each other very well. Conseil and Ned had some particularly funny moments; the two should totally go out! Captain Nemo, in himself, is very interesting. He tries to come across as this misanthropic, steely, mysterious naval commander with a nerve of steel, but he's actually has incredibly deep, painful emotions and is actually a very sad man. And I was so surprised to see that he bursts into tears every time one of his crew members get hurt. At the beginning, he really came across as this "the ends justifies the means/the good of the collective supersedes the good of the individual" kind of captain, but he's not at all. We know nothing of the crew of the Nautilus, except that Captain Nemo cares deeply for them. He felt the most human to me, Captain Nemo; he isn't just some insane, antisocial idiot, and no matter how hard he tries to make people believe he is, he can't. He just cares too much.
After the main characters get kidnapped by Captain Nemo, the novel becomes a sight-seeing book. I really didn't mind: The descriptions of the scenery, their adventures, the feelings, the imagery—Jules Verne is truly a poet and a grandiose story-teller. I felt like I was there, standing with Dr. Arronax and Captain Nemo on the platform of the Nautilus, watching Santorini go by, strolling through the underwater forest along with Dr. Arronax, feeling the splendor of seeing the sunken city of Atlantis, cowering like a little bitch behind a rock when Captain Nemo wrestles the shark.
Yeah, did I tell you there's shark wrestling? Captain Nemo saves a poor fisherman from a shark by wrestling it to the sea-floor. I thought the awesomeness of that part could not have been surpassed by anything—then came the giant squid fight. Fighting giant squids with axes. Yeah, I don't need to say any more than that.
There are some truly tense moments as well. When they were suffocating, trapped under the South Pole, the descriptions and the feelings were so vivid that I could feel myself getting light-headed, and I noticed my breathing became shallower and more rapid. I've always felt that when the author can make the reader feel exactly what the characters feel, he's done his job appropriately, and there was not one moment in Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Seas that I did not feel the characters.
Awesome adventures, awesome scenery, awesome characters, awesome story.
THE BAD
What? How can anything bad after that last sentence? Well, remember when I said that it was a sight-seeing book, and I didn't really mind? Well, that's not really entirely accurate . . .
Fish.
FISH
FUCKING FISH EVERYWHERE
Dr. Arronax is a naturalist, and his butler Conseil, like I said, has an obsession for classifying everything. The two of them insist of classifying every single fish they come across. Pages upon pages are just lists of fish, the genuses, their subspecies, and shit like that. PAGES.
It's the driest thing I've ever read in the world. It's like he copied it directly from a Wikipedia article. They're just lists. Lists of fish. Do the fish attack them? No! They just swim by! The lists serve absolutely no purpose to the story, and I'm still flabbergasted why it was so important that these fish were listed. Monsieur Verne, unfortunately, I'm not impressed by your ability to look up fish genuses in textbooks, and your lists of fish alone are enough to not permit your story, with your awesome characters and whatnot, into my list of favorites.
You think I'm being too hard on Monsieur Verne? Well, judge for yourself. Click on the link on the top of this post, and start reading from page 88. See how far you can get.
Made it through? Oh, but that's just the beginning of the novel! They haven't even passed a single school yet! Good luck.
I love this story, but the fish thing—ugh, it's so unfortunate. If it wasn't for that, Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Seas would've been a perfect novel.
Should you read it? Well, if you like sight-seeing, it's definitely the book for you. Jules Verne is also sometimes credited as the father of modern science-fiction, and it was really interesting to see what he thought a submarine ship in the future would be like. You, like me, might like the history. It's still a great book, and I did really enjoy reading it.
Just skip the fish.
I myself find classic Russian literature (novels and poetry both) to be exceptionally well done
578546
I've only read one Russian book, Metro 2033, and I absolutely loved it. I think fifty or a hundred years from now, it will be considered classic Russian literature.
Please, please don't bring up War and Peace just yet. It's on my kindle, and I plan to read it, but . . . but . . .
Meum corpus paratus non est.
578582 My goal is to become fluent in Russian so I can read the literature in its native tongue.