March 2013 Discussion: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea(s) by Jules Verne (spoilers)
 

It's time to discuss the March 2013 MobileRead Book Club selection, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea(s) by Jules Verne. What did you think?

I think I'm confused. The title says this is a discussion of Persuasion. :)

I think I must be your twin Caleb72 as I also am confused about the difference in titles for this discussion. :rofl:

Verne/Austin what's the difference? Can't you guys be persuaded to shut up and talk about what I tell you? :p

Fixed now. Thanks for the catch, crich.

What's the problem? Surely someone has written a spoof of Persuasion, set under the sea? No? They should. :D

Any who...

Did anyone read a copy with the title "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas"? The title in French is, after all, Vingt mille lieues sous les mers. The decision by early translators of the book into English to call it Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea makes it sound as if the Nautilus was making dives 20,000 leagues deep under the ocean's surface; a clear impossibility.

Growing up I didn't really know what a league was so it never really had an effect on me. I've been reading the old 'under the sea' version I think though. I have heard that Verne even had to do some editing of his manuscript in his time because it was critical of (I think) Poland where Nemo was supposed to have hailed from and France was trying to improve their relations with the country of Poland at the time.

That's true about editing out the politics. I believe his publisher insisted on it.

Verne, of course, would have recognized the absurdity of traveling 70,000 miles straight down on a planet whose diameter was only 8,000 miles; but for those who grew up with no idea of what a "league" was and who had first heard the title of the book as a child, it didn't occur to most of us that he was speaking of the distance traveled by the Nautilus and its crew, and not the depth.

Making it, of course, a great choice for the Travel/Adventure category.

Goes to show both how some things haven't changed since Verne's day (politics are still a hot potato) and the popularity of Verne as a writer in his own time. That they would have a worry that his writing could be widely enough read to have caused an incident I mean.

The book got a big meh from me. I think it was best read by an 11-year old boy, and one no later than mid-20th century at that. What was imaginative and even predictive when it was written is flat now, so what we're left with is less than Homeric lists of fish and no plot.

I ended it with the feeling, "I wuz robbed." All the time I slogged through it, I thought Verne was taking longer and longer to develop the Nemo story and was waiting for a big reveal. Oy! I've read since that Nemo's backstory was given in The Mysterious Island, but I'm not that interested that I'll put myself through another such. So between the lack of plot and the long tease, I think the book fails on a qualitative level.

Verne did have a way with words and the imagery was the best thing about the book. Most entertaining to me was not the battle with the octopus, but the discovery of the South Pole. Essentially Nemo beached the Nautilus, went for a stroll, and said "This must be the pole!" Shame Amundsen and Scott didn't know it was so easy. I was highly tickled by the notion of something somewhat larger than an atoll, that very handily just popped up right on the pole.

I'm not sorry I read it, but I'm glad I was able to read it in odd moments and that it didn't take up any serious reading time.

Sorry to hear you didn't enjoy it Issybird. I think it isn't so much Verne's fault as the fault of readers today being more sophisticated than readers were at the time he wrote it. I mean back then much of what we take for granted was unknown or experimental technology.

Are you sure you didn't read Moby Dick instead?

Personally I find it fascinating to see what he envisioned in an era when electricity was still a novelty and submarines were in the earliest experimental stage of their development.

I actually started it, but after just a few pages it all came back to me from when I read it at about 12-13 years old and I lost interest in reading such an antiquated science fiction novel over.

Yes, a lot of time spent discussing whales. That, and as I recall, there is entire chapter devoted to the debate as to whether or not whales are mammals or fish, with Melville creating an elaborate argument for the wrong answer. Actually when Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea was nominated I thought about nominating Moby Dick in response. :rofl:

Maybe next time a travel/adventure book will be selected?

I've not read it myself, but a friend of mine, in high school, complained about there being an entire chapter dedicated to clam chowder.

I read it as a kid, too but almost certainly in a mangled version. I can see why Verne is described as the father of science fiction. His entire approach is to emphasize the power of scientific technology--as it was conceived at that time. It was his approach that dominated most science fiction into the so called "Golden Age".

Verne clearly felt that the scientific element was of great importance. Thus, there are very many quite long exposition passages {sometimes taking up a complete chapter} which are devoted to various scientific ideas and theories. These sections are frequently quite interesting {excluding the elaborations of various menu items :)} despite the fact that they are dated. In this way he is quite different from Wells who was much more vague in his use of sci-fi literary machinery. The Nautilus, for example, is certainly very carefully constructed in literary terms and is very nearly a character in the book.

In fact, the great submarine is more vivid and realistic than any of the characters aside from Nemo. The Captain stands out with a mysterious charisma. The other main figures are rather one-dimensional--especially the {for me} intensely irritating Ned Land. Conseil gets on my nerves with his constant references to "Master" and the Professor himself suffers the fate of many novelistic narrators in that he becomes subsumed into the story as a plot mechanism.

But intense characterization has seldom been a strong element in science-fiction. Nemo makes up for the other cardboard characters and the imaginative power of Verne allows one to read it now almost as though it were an example of Steampunk.

I read it as a kid, but was very pleased to read the new edition / translation published by the Naval Institute Press:

http://www.usni.org/store/books/fict...gues-under-sea

It's a marked improvement, though tinged somewhat by my having read _The Mysterious Island_ as well as _The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen_ --- so his being described so as to likely have been Polish was a bit off-putting.

Very fitting that the U.S. Navy named the first nuclear submarine USS Nautilus (SSN-571) (and a previous WW-II era SS-168) for it. Wonder what happened to my plastic model of it....

I haven't finished yet - 60% through. As I've been reading I've been wondering why some suggested this would not be a good fit for Travel/Adventure. It's a much better fit than I had thought when nominating it.

The story itself does get bogged down by the descriptions, catalogues and history/scientific lessons. It's possibly why I haven't finished yet even though I thought I'd given myself enough time. I usually find it hard to read non-fiction quickly.

Strangely enough, I have a tough time thinking of it as science fiction. When there was a complaint that we were going to be reading yet another science fiction book, I had to stop and think about it. It hadn't even occurred to me that it was science fiction when I nominated it - all I thought at the time was underwater travel/adventure story. It may be because the notions of submarines, electrical power and underwater exploration are so common to me that I just failed to see it. Actually, if Verne made this science fiction feel so commonplace to me, he must have been a pretty great science fiction writer back then. :)

The only character worth knowing is Nemo and he is pretty interesting throughout. The narrator is for the most part a travel writer with a scientific background and not worth exploring as a character at all. The rest are not really worth much either.

I haven't got to any real drama yet other than the shark fight, so I'm expecting it to become more dramatic fairly soon.

I take all the gentlemen's point about technology and I gave Verne his due, I thought! Reading about it was never my cuppa, and I'm willing to grant that it's unrealistic for me to expect more plot and character. I liked Ned the best, fanasyfan, since to me he was understandable. "Get me off this thing!" I had very high hopes initially for the development of Nemo's backstory. Another reason I liked Ned was that ultimately I held him less complicit in whatever evil Nemo visited on his enemies. No matter what the provocation and his history, even Nemo surely knew that the lackeys on the ships of his enemy were not in control of their destiny or responsible for the tragedies that had befallen him. I think this is what bugged me; I smelled a powerful story, but Verne only hinted at it.

One of my greatest pleasures in reading this was realizing how very apropos was the name of the nuclear Nautilus. I read a lot about polar exploration as a kid and understood that it had been named after the submarine in 20,000. I had no idea that when the USS Nautilus was the first submarine to penetrate the North Pole in the late 1950s, it was merely aping the antics of its namesake at the South Pole a century earlier.

It occurs to me that Nemo and Ahab have some things in common. Both have sailing vessels (though of different types), both have a need for vengeance, and both have crews that are very loyal to them. And of course in both books there are survivors of the wreck of the vessel.

I don't really have much to add to the above. I read it, but don't feel I could recommend it to anyone else as a "must read". At one stage I thought that if Conseil was referred to once more as a gallant lad or a fine lad I might start chewing the furniture. And all those lists of categorisations of fish. I suppose it was 19th century geekiness and as issybird says, would have appealed to 11 year old boys some time back.

Nemo was interesting until he committed mass murder. After that I really didn't care what had happened to him to make him so brooding and mysterious. Nothing could justify such an action.

And finally: what a copout at the end! There they are in a situation which had to mean certain death, so the narrator gets knocked unconscious and comes to safe and sound on land. Do you mean to tell me he didn't ask Conseil and Ned Land how they got out of the Maelstrom?

I won't be reading The Mysterious Island to find out what it was all about!

I haven't read "The Mysterious Island" though I have seen the movie version of the story with the late Herbert Lom as Capt. Nemo. I'll have to get round to reading it after I finish reading TTLUTS this time round.

Well that was a bit of a chore. I finally finished. I'll need some time to ponder before I give one of my far-fetched theories. :)

It can be slower going than a book written today would be. People wrote more indepth about the world that the book was set in back in Verne's time I think. Where a writer today might take a paragraph to set a scene writer's back then might have taken a chapter.

I think I'll give it a go too. :)

I think personally that "The Mysterious Island" is much better. Do give it a go.

I had the pleasure of reading The Mysterious Island unaware of the payoff. Of course, I began to suspect it before I got there, but not knowing at time that Verne had written a sequel to 20,000 Leagues was a plus.

It's rather odd, isn't it, that "20,000 Leagues" is a book which everyone's heard of, while "The Mysterious Island" is virtually unknown when - to me at least - "The Mysterious Island" is so much better a book.

I had heard of The Mysterious Island but didn't realise it was related to Nemo until this thread.

OK - what to say.

Firstly, the essence of this adventure story was great and brought back memories. The reason I wanted to read this story this year was as a tribute to the great adventure stories that really fuelled my interest in reading (albeit in abridged for younger reader editions). So the story itself I really enjoyed except for the ending. I've never been a fan of the unconsciousness mechanism that seems to be used by authors to avoid logically tough conundrums in plot - maelstrom anyone? It's a really lazy plot device and I don't appreciate it.

I didn't mind the queer dialogue even though it was unbearably polite. I'm used to dirtier language in my books. :)

Where I got bogged down in this story was the cataloguing, science and history. In fact, I could have enjoyed most of the science and history if they weren't inundated with endless lists of sea creatures. Lists in general are not great things to have in stories and there were so many in this book I felt like I was looking at an underwater grocery receipt. Putting aside the complete cop-out at the end of the story, it was the cataloguing that marred my appreciation of this story, even if it may have made it even more appropriate for the book club category than I imagined it would be.

Now - back to the story. I thought that perhaps we could view this story as one of three characters: Nemo, Ned Land and Conseil. I'm removing the narrator from the equation as I don't think he really exists. :)

Nemo seems to represent a rebellion against the aggressor and a hero for the oppressed. To me, such a study is always going to be fascinating because it's bound to bring up all sorts of contradictions and Nemo is certainly no exception.

His history is fairly mysterious and leaving aside what we might find out The Mysterious Island or from understanding Verne's original plans for Nemo's nationality, the important details are actually given in this work. Everyone he loved was destroyed by an oppressor and this is what motivates him to separate himself almost entirely from humanity. However, this separatism - even as an ideal - becomes muddied and problematic.

Before we even get into any actual examples, we have the basic problem of his attitude towards Nautilus itself. It is a vessel to conquer - if not the other vessels of man, than the sea itself. How invincible he is in Nautilus is brought up several times. What he can do that others can't is almost deliberately demonstrated to the narrator time and time again. Nemo has the attitude of a conqueror with a sympathy for the oppressed and already I'm a little uneasy. This is enhanced when we see Nemo claiming the Antarctic for himself, a land grab being one of the many reasons that we experience oppressors and oppressed throughout history.

One thing I found interesting was that when his invincibility is really tested, Nemo doesn't cope all that well. The first example of this was when one of the crew dies during the secret attack that happens "off screen". Two other key examples are the battle of the octopi and the battle with nature when trapped in the ice bank. Nemo does not cope very well with any of these situations and I think his reactions are somehow the point of these encounters in the story. I'm not sure I can put my finger on it yet so I'll keep thinking about it.

Then, there are the more interesting aspects of Nemo's "noble" appreciation of the oppressed versus his actual responses. There were a couple of places where I noticed this.

Firstly, the support of the oppressed in Crete against the Ottoman Empire. This was a more subtle response by providing funds to the oppressed.

The second for me was the support of the Baleen whales against the Sperm whales. In some ways, I thought this was Nemo's most contradictory response in the novel and the first time I really thought that Verne might be making a strong statement about not just the notion of revenge, but that of rebellion. I found it interesting to juxtapose Nemo against Ned Land throughout this scene. This is where I thought that Land might have represented the status quo of humanity - the choice of his surname being quite deliberate. Land does want to harpoon the baleen to which Nemo objects on the grounds that it's not needed and that the baleen whale is a useful beast. The position isn't totally off-centre, but then Nemo's response, the slaughter of the Sperm whale seems like such a horrible over-reaction in response, to destroy rather than protect. Land is quite happy with the sport, but not that content with the slaughter and Nemo and Land are definitely at odds at the end of the debacle.

The whale scene was much more powerful to me than the final scene, where Nemo destroys the ship of his nameless oppressors. Although this was an act of revenge and Nemo could have easily avoided the slaughter, at the same time, he was at least being attacked. The ship in question would have happily destroyed Nemo and Nautilus and so I find the destruction unleashed somewhat less pronounced than that of the whales. Nevertheless - the whale scene to me is a precursor of this one.

So we have Nemo and Land - civilisation and the rebel, the oppressor and the avenger. Then we have Conseil, who I think represents the dispassion of science. I think this character is there to support Verne's respect for science. Conseil is constantly edified in almost every reference. While the narrator lends and withdraws support from Land and Nemo throughout the novel, there is nothing but praise for Conseil, the cataloguer extraodinaire. And given just how much scientific explanation and oceanic research is evident in the novel, I think a case can be made that Verne elevates this above the battle represented by Nemo and Land.

It was only in the latter half of the novel that some of these ideas started occurring to me. I'm known for not bothering to read accepted analyses of books like this partly for lack of time and partly because I like to extract what I can independently, so there may be plenty of flaws in my thinking, but feel free to correct or expand upon my ideas as discussing books is fun. :)

That's a very fine post! :2thumbsup It gives me lots to think about. Thanks! :) :) :)

I'm still reading, but think I've enjoyed the endnotes as much as the story itself so far. :)

I'm fascinated by Verne's vision and definitely liked reading a little of his own history in the preface of my edition, though the story is reading slower than I would've thought. I did not realize that it had originally been published as a serialization. I can imagine readers of the day looking forward with great excitement to the next instalment. Maybe I can employ that tactic, setting aside a bit to read each day, to get me to the end. It normally makes up my lunchtime reading...which of late is only about 15 minutes a day.

Great comments by all so far....leaving me with fresh perspective as I dive back in (pun intended). :D

Many of the classics were published in a serialized format originally. Dickens was well known for that and Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde was as well I believe. We don't often think of that fact because we have the finished product available to us.

Not just "many" but "virtually all", if we're talking about those published in the middle to end of the 19th century.

I stand corrected. :)

I wonder what Mr. Verne would have said if someone had told him that his book would still be being read and discussed some 143 years after it was published.