Jules Verne Forum

<jvf@Gilead.org.il>

JanFebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOctNovDec 19961997199819992000200120022003200420052006200720082009

Re: From the Earth to the Moon--Does it require a sequel?

From: Walter J Miller <wjm2~at~nyu.edu>
Date: Thu, 02 Mar 2006 14:49:18 -0500
To: Jules Verne Forum <jvf~at~Gilead.org.il>

Thanks for the compliment about my FEM.  Is this novel OP in English?  I'm still hoping to get to pushing Harper/Collins to put out a new edition.  Just busy as hell.  Rehab takes up 3 mornings a week, really breaking up my work time.  I'm asking people to write to HarperCollins to ask why they're not reissuing this....after all, there's a Japanese translation of my AJV:FTETTM and no English version of it.  If I anticipate your answer correctly, there is no other English version in print....?  Cheers!  WJM----- Original Message -----

From: Brian Taves <btav~at~loc.gov>

Date: Monday, February 6, 2006 7:33 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
> compositionof 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
> literaryachievement, 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 re! reading), is the fact
> thatthe whole background of artillery s erves 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 F! EM. 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
> (despitethe 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 for! med the first volume. The futher
> adventures of
> the G un 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'Ilemysterieuse 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
> indeedthe 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 Thu 02 Mar 2006 - 21:51:42 IST

JV.Gilead.org.il
Copyright © Zvi Har’El
$Date: 2009/02/01 22:36:11 $$