Journey To The Center Of The Earth
(Jules Verne)
This wonderfully breezy, picaresque novel is the perfect antidote to a surfeit of Sartre or Camus. It is like slamming the dusty old books shut and getting out for a walk and some fresh air. It goes along at a rattling pace that keeps you breathless, and if you accept it on its own terms it has the realism of a very vivid dream, and one that you wouldn?t mind staying in a bit longer.
Professor Otto Lindenbrock, the archetypal absent-minded one, unearths a manuscript by the 16th century Icelandic explorer Arne Saknussemm that details his own journey to the centre of the earth, and together with his nephew/assistant Axel and an Icelandic guide called Hans they set off to retrace his steps.
Entering the earth?s crust from the dormant Sneffels volcano in Iceland, they enter a world of fantastic rock and gem formations, strange lights, subterranean forests and vast seas, inhabited by the inevitable dinosaurs, and catch a glimpse of twelve-foot humans herding mastodons.
The professor is a single-minded bully of a scientist, Hans is the ultimate stoical guide from whom the temper-tantrums and scenery alike wash as from a duck?s back, and Axel (who narrates) fusses and worries and records his impressions.
They manage to get a fair way down but don?t actually reach the centre; instead, after a hair-raising, roller-coaster descent into a watery abyss they are ejected from an active volcano and end up in Sicily.
You catch a breath of the heady atmosphere of mid-nineteenth-century optimism in this book, the sense that the world has opened up and that all things are possible. There is no navel-gazing or search for meaning, and Verne deliberately goes for straightforward adventure, eschewing the complications of realism in favour of a Candide-like approach. Yet this is not just a tale for children. If you suspend your disbelief and join in the ride, you?ll feel by the end that you?ve been down there yourself and come back to tell the tale. It really does leave a happy smile on the face, and you can?t say that about many classics.
Resumos Relacionados
- Journey To The Centre Of The Earth
- Journey To The Centre Of The Earth
- Journey To The Center Of The Earth
- Journey To The Centre Of The Earth
- The Chronicles Of Pern: First Fall
|
|
