After The Count of Monte Cristo, I felt like visiting an old friend. In junior high, I read Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days so many times I wore out a copy. And I’m delighted to find that it’s still a lot of fun after all these years. A quick trip around the world was just what I needed.
Originally published as a newspaper serial in 1873, this book flies right by. The chapters are punchy and, so short, that I kept promising myself one more–and then one more–and just one more before going to sleep. It was so much fun to spend time once again with the phlegmatic Phileas Fogg and the excitable Passepartout. I’m well aware that they’re both stereotypes, but they’re a lot of fun to watch. Nothing ever seems to both Fogg, while Passepartout flips out over every delay and misfortune.
There’s not much to talk about, as the whole point of the book is the trip. Along the way, you get a daring rescue in India, an opium den in Hong Kong, an Indian attack on a train, and a spectacular trip on a steamboat after the coal runs out. Personally, this is my favorite part, when Fogg and his companions travel across Utah and meet a Mormon:
Trains, like time and tide, stop for for no one. The gentleman who uttered the cries was obviously a belated Mormon. He was breathless with running. Happily for him, the station had neither gates nor barriers. He rushed along the track, jumped the read platform of the train, and fell exhausted into one of the seats. Passepartout, who had been anxiously watching this amateur gymnast, approached him with lively interest, and learned that he had taken flight after an unpleasant domestic scene. When the Mormon has recovered had recovered his breath, Passepartout ventured to ask him politely how many wives he had; for, from the manner in which he had decamped, it might be though that he had twenty at least. “One, sir,” replied the Mormon, raising his arms heavenward–“one, and that was enough!”
It’s not often that you get to see your home in classic literature. But when I saw “Wahsatch” and “Tuilla” in the text, I had to smile. I know those names, no matter how oddly spelled.
I read the introduction to the text when I had finished and was a little surprised to find that Verne had never visited any of these places. According to James Hynes, Verne spend most of his time writing in his office. All the evocative sketches of Suez, Bombay, Calcutta, Hong Kong, and the United States were most like made after Verne read descriptions of them from other travelers. While I can’t say that these places spring to three dimensional life when you read about them, these short descriptions have just enough verisimilitude to carry you around the world.
In 1988, Michael Palin (of Monty Python) replicated the trip for the BBC. I’ve been watching it over the last couple of nights. Using trains, buses, and ships, Palin went around the world in 79 days. (He didn’t break Nellie Bly’s record of 72 days.) Actually seeing the places Fogg fictionally visited was a lot of fun. I almost wish that I could pack up and follow in their steps.