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Re: From the Earth to the Moon--Does it require a sequel? Maybe not, but it gets a helluva one.

From: Rick Walter <rick1walter~at~comcast.net>
Date: Mon, 6 Feb 2006 18:50:21 -0700
To: "Jules Verne Forum" <jvf~at~gilead.org.il>


Brian's insights are as valuable and stimulating as ever, and I'm not
quarreling with a syllable of them. However I do want to rush to the defense
of AUTOUR DE LA LUNE, which has received significantly less attention in
recent years--only a single modern rendering (the Baldicks in 1970, long
O.P.), no scholarly editions, and minimal English criticism.

It's aims and priorities are in fact sharply different from FROM THE EARTH
TO THE MOON, since Barbicane and Nicholl are now bosom colleagues, the
antiwar content doesn't reappear, and the mcguffin is how to get "there and
back again." But few seemed to have noticed the severe technical challenge
Verne takes on: his setting is excuciatingly restricted, since the inside of
the projectile's just 12 feet high with 54 sq. ft. of floor space. Ardan
calls it "a traveling prison," and he and his traveling companions enter it
in the first chapter and don't leave it till the last chapter but one.

What's Verne to do? Two aspects of his achievement here are exceptionally
noteworthy: 1) Again and again he works nearly in real time, and not just in
Ch. 1 where Nicholl keeps reading aloud from his chronometer. The sense of
a genuine play-by-play, of the rhythm of an actual voyage, has never been
more vivid; 2) In no other Verne novel am I so aware of his theatrical
experience and expertise--several chapters are almost entirely in dialogue,
and brilliant is the word for Verne's virtuosity in timing, pacing, and
varying his didactic materials, his jokes, his ironies, his continual
mysteries and plot puzzles, his sudden developments and surprises; these
serve, of course, to secure and resecure reader interest; but for me they're
a stunning example of a writer creating a little masterwork within almost
preposterous limitations.

Someday I hope to get out a piece on this ingenious novel. Meanwhile, read
it in French or in the Baldick or Linklater translations. Avoid the
humorless Lewis Mercier version, which, in addition, is riddled with cuts
and misunderstandings.

All the best,

Rick Walter
in Albuquerque.






,---- Original Message -----
From: "Brian Taves" <btav~at~loc.gov>
To: "jvforum" <jvf~at~math.technion.ac.il>
Sent: Monday, February 06, 2006 5:33 PM
Subject: From the Earth to the Moon--Does it require a sequel?


>
> The cartoon image of the lightbulb appearing above a character's head is
> familiar to all of us, and is in fact to my mind a rather amusing but also
> accurate portrayal of how a fresh idea may suddenly illuminate our
> thinking.
>
> Such occurred to me, a few days ago, and I'd like to share it with the
> Forum
> for the reactions of others.
>
> I first read a (no doubt watered-down) Scholastic Press version of From
> the
> Earth to the Moon as my first Verne book, in the fifth grade, age ten, in
> the
> spring of 1969. I found it singularly unsatisfying; nowhere in the little
> paperback was there any mention of a sequel. Nonetheless, some months
> later, I
> had entered my own lifelong thrall to Verne and discovered Around the
> Moon,
> discovering that the story of FEM had a more satisfactory conclusion.
>
> Yet, in subsequently realizing the five year span between the composition
> of the two stories, something has always remained unsatisfactory about the
> relationship between the two works. And it may be linked to that need for
> closure, for "a happy ending" that AM offers. Judged purely as a literary
> achievement, FEM outweighs AM, when the two are measured as separate
> novels.
>
> Much has been written on this Forum about Verne's choice of a cannon, and
> whether he was indeed likely aware that his solution to the problem of
> lunar
> travel was ultimately no more practical than that of Poe's Hans Pfaal.
>
> That, however, seems to me a matter of secondary interest. More to the
> point, as highlighted in Walter James Miller's Annotated JV translation of
> FEM (the fabulous version I have just been rereading), is the fact that
> the whole background of artillery serves as a perfect launch pad for
> Verne's own ironic commentaries on militarism, nationalism, capitalism,
> and sectionalism. FEM may be best understood as satire, rather than, more
> conventionally, a scientific novel.
>
> And it is with that in mind that it seems to me it is quite possible to
> read FEM, not as the first part of the story of a lunar journey that it
> became, but a stand-alone volume. One which is open-ended, yet seems to
> indicate that nature has intervened and the ambition of man has been
> thwarted. Just as Herr Schultz sought the destruction of Franceville and
> instead launched a satellite, so too did the Gun Club fail in their aim,
> instead creating yet another satellite. The Club has failed, just as they
> will again in the ultimate volume of the trilogy, which returns to the
> tone of FEM. A later team of American astronomers hunting for a
> meteor--whether or not having the help of an interfering French
> scientist--similarly find nature overwhelming their dreams. Thanks to
> modern literary reappraisals of Verne, we can recognize in him a writer of
> much greater depth, and the seemingly sudden, "surprise ending" of FEM is
> indeed inevitable, and the implied death of all the protagonists (despite
> the hopes of Maston, who has been foolish throughout the novel), an
> experiment with a different type of ending. So too were such other early
> Verne novels as Hatteras and Paris au XX Siecle intended to end in the
> death of the protagonist.
>
> Vernian sequels don't always merge together easily Indeed, the addition of
> Around the Moon rather distorts FEM, losing the materialist view of
> American culture that formed the first volume. The futher adventures of
> the Gun Club to change the Earth's axis lacks the lightness of FEM, or
> Around the Moon. Reading FEM and AM together results in emphasizing the
> science, just as making the background of Captain Nemo concrete in L'Ile
> mysterieuse robs 20K of its ambiguity and universality of experience.
> Maitre du monde does not answer the questions raised by Robur le
> conquerant; instead it multiplies them, and if it ends the life of Robur,
> it leaves his true motivations and background never to be known.
>
> Perhaps, then, it is not so unfortunate that at least in English, FEM has
> often appeared separately, far more times than its sequel has, and indeed
> the two are surprisingly rarely published together.
>
> Given the above, I see that my own one-time belief that FEM demanded a
> sequel may have been a result of an incorrect reading, or only one way of
> reading of FEM. Perhaps a sequel was possible, but certainly not
> essential, from a literary standpoint, any more than L'Ile mys. had to
> resolve the open ends of 20K and Les Enfants du Capitaine Grant. My
> assumption has always been that Verne always planned FEM to have a sequel,
> but I open the question to our expert biographers on that more practical
> point. And, I would suggest the notion that FEM is indeed a singular
> volume, able to stand alone.
>
>
> Brian Taves
> Motion Picture/Broadcasting/Recorded Sound Division
> Library of Congress
> 101 Independence Avenue, S.E. Washington, D.C. 20540-4692
> Telephone: 202-707-9930; 202-707-2371 (fax)
> Email: btav~at~loc.gov
>
>
> Disclaimer--All opinions expressed are my own.
>
>
>
>
Received on Tue 07 Feb 2006 - 03:50:38 IST

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