This is a curious Jules Verne novel, as it eschews many of the examples of formula that would appear later in his canon, has minimal speculative fiction content, and even features a type of romantic subplot. It's a completely wacky early-ish deviation, and yet it works. 'Around The World In Eighty Days' isn't the best Jules Verne novel, for I still prefer 'Journey To The Center Of The Earth', but it did establish his non-genre credentials and become a massive success. It could be even be called his breakout mainstream success perhaps - said the writer with almost no research under his belt on the topic - and it helped establish the adventure novel. I do believe that.
Oh, I really don't know enough about the history of novels to be able to talk about them with any kind of authoritative grasp. Let it suffice us to say that there were novels before Verne's 'Journey To The Centre Of The Earth', and novels after, but that his books changed everything in genre terms. 'Around The World In Eighty Days' is fun, in a way that you might not find in anything else from the period, translated or not. When did juvenile fiction or adventures begin to appear in the Victorian age? Here, in the great travel stories of Verne, and they're not even that juvenile. Was Captain Nemo's obsession the kind of thing you would find in children's adventures? I think not.
The concept of going around the world in some time limit wasn't a totally new one, apparently, but Verne coupled the concept with the new travel techniques of the time to great effect. Going around the world in eighty days would have been an amazing feat, no matter at what latitude. Even Michael Palin only scraped in with a day to spare in the 1980s. Perhaps that romance of new travel methods in the great old age of discovery is what allows this story to endure. Yes, it's a great travel story with curious side adventures in India and North America, with a light romance imposed over the great doubts of a chasing detective under the delusion that the adventurer Fogg is a bank robber, but the historical aspect is fascinating now that we now live in a world which is, at its best, a little ka-ka. To go around the world? In less than a year? Preposterous! And romantic!
It's a romance of the original sort, an adventure, a thriller, and a race against time. Adventures, according to John Dickson Carr, were rendered impossible to write by the World Wars, but in 1870 they were not just possible but wonderful. The romantic world of yesteryear probably never existed, but in the world of fiction we get to step back from time to time...
Well, that was an inept attempt at writing about 'Around The World In Eighty Days'! It must be tried again.
O.
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