Verne’s 20,000 Leagues under the Sea reviewed as if by Herman Melville
“Recounting flaws in Verne’s escapist novels grows as tiresome as reading them, if easier. Armchair dilettante, no seaman, here he offers us Nemo- nobody! -a Captain scantily sketched; his crew, ciphers. Their frankly fantastical submarine, Nautilus- ramming warships to wreckage? Any ordinary sea-swell would overturn its salon (ridiculously furnished with priceless artworks and fragile specimen cases) into shambles! Like Nemo’s library (12,000 tomes surely doomed onboard to dampness and decay), book-learning heavily waterlogs Verne’s prose; he didactically catechises us in biological nomenclature, listing, ever listing… Intermittent passages of chase or conflict whet the appetite then disappoint; lacking salt and savour of manly reality, these are shallowly staged set-pieces.
Verne treats encountered sea-creatures as mere animals, lacking that potent heady symbolism which mariners feel marrow-deep!
Eventually, pasteboard protagonists Arronax, Conseil and Land abandon ship, their souls untransfigured by numinous experience- surely the absurdest impossibility of all.”
It felt strange, writing a mock-panning of one of my favourite books and authors!
Last edited by Graham King; 07-13-2013 at 10:17 AM.
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