Classic books are hailed as classic for a reason.
It’s not simply that they’ve been around for a while; plenty of tiles have and people struggle to remember titles, plots or even that they exist at all.
The ones that really imprint themselves on peoples’ minds, or that really cement themselves in public consciousness, many of them over centuries, have a certain something that still appeals even when the author is long dead and the societal trends of ideas that impelled its creation are long spent and much forgotten.
While it’s impossible to know why these novels still resonate with us with complete certainty, in the case of particular books you can guess, with titles such as Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne, who also gave us Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and Journey to the Centre of the Earth, no doubt appealing because of their breathtaking sense of adventure and impossibility that infuse every single one of its pages.
Around the World in Eighty Days was written in an age of great exploration when the world seemed to be one great new puzzle to be solved – it also came with deplorable imperialistic activity and horrific treatment of indigenous populations which, in keeping with the time in which they were written were either not recognised or fully comprehended – and all you had to do was decide to ride out to meet adventure and it would likely rush up to meet you.
On this Wednesday, 9th October, he noted down his arrival at Suez, by which, as it was in accordance with the scheduled time, he neither gained nor lost. Then he ordered lunch in his cabin. The thought of going ashore to see the town never occurred to him, for he was one of those Englishman who, when travelling, leave their servants to do their sightseeing for them.
That idea that great things await if you simple reach out to grab them permeates every single page of Around the World in Eighty Days which centres on a wealthy Londoner named Phileas Fogg who one day accepts a bet from his fellow Reform Club members to navigate the world in, you guessed it, eighty days.
In the age of airplane and super fast trains, the idea of taking that long to go from London through Europe to the Middle East and Asia and then through the United States back to the starting point seems ridiculously luxurious and expansive.
But in 1872 when the book is set – Fogg’s timeframe runs from early October until 8.45pm on 21 December when he must appear in the Reform Club or risk his wager of twenty thousand pounds (a fortune in those days and half of Fogg’s net worth) – it’s a tight period of time which allows for precious little to go wrong.
Being a book designed to keep you on the edge of your seat, reading like a blockbuster with perils aplenty and woes in alarming profusion, it’s tighter than you can imagine and while the seemingly limitless possibilities of an optimistic modern age had seized the public imagination to an enthralling degree, no one besides a few intrepid souls really believes Fogg can pull off this impressive feat.
It’s seem too much to accomplish in such a limited span of days and while Fogg talks loftily about trains across the entirety of India and super fast steamers, the truth is a lot can go wrong, and you will be not be surprised to learn, actually does.
(courtesy IMDb)
Still, with Fogg routinely positioned in Around the World in Eighty Days as a dashing adventurer for whom nothing is impossible with a generous heart and an imaginative, stress-free mind – he’s also described as socially maladapt and a man of habits so ingrained that servants are dismissed for mere infractions of them – you fully expect he, and his faithful aide Passepartout, a Frenchman like the author, will succeed in their quest and emerge triumphant some eighty days hence.
But being a good thrills and spills story, nothing is assured and Fogg and Passepartout, who bears the brunt of many of the unfortunate events that punctuate the book with exciting and alarming regularity, have to contend with Sioux attacking the trains in the American West (again no mention of why they are on the attack but this was not seen as an issue at the time the book was written), religious extremists, as they termed, causing all manner of problems in India and a particular English detective deciding that Fogg must be the man who robbed the Bank of England a few days before his departure.
Our man is innocent and without moral stain of course, but Fix, the man in pursuit of his quarry across multiple continents and seas doesn’t see that, and it is up to him to be the thorn in Fogg’s side (though our skillfully capable hero doesn’t know this with only Passepartout finally cottoning on to Fix’s real mission.
Mr Fogg, Aouda, who was with him, and Passepartout hurried out through the lobbies, but outside they found the Honourable Batulcar, who was furious, and claimed damages for the “breakage” of the pyramid. His wrath was soothed by Mr Fogg, who threw a handful of banknotes to him. At half-past six, just as the American boat was about to leave, Mr Fogg and Aouda stepped aboard, followed by Passepartout, with his wings still on, and the 6-feet long nose, which he has not yet succeeded in removing from his face.
You have every conviction that Fogg will succeed in his quest and not only win the bet but the heart of a fair maiden and the undying devotion of Passepartout but Verne keeps you guessing right until the very end, with Around the World in Eighty Days dangling the possibility of failure right up until the very end, even as Fogg and his team finally make it back to London.
While there might be a little too much description woven into the narrative, Verne does give you a fulsome idea of what life in the nineteenth century was like, and how the world was changing so fast that it takes a man like Fogg to fully understand and conquer it.
He is very much a man of his age, unflappable, eminently capable and more than up to the task of proving that all that expectation about a golden age of man is well and truly justified.
One thing that does surprise is that, as a text that’s been adapted down through the decades across all kinds of media, there are no hot air balloons in Fogg’s quest; having only just read Around the World in Eighty Days after seeing multiple adaptations, that was expected and not delivered proving that liberties have been taken as they are with pretty much all classic novels such as A Christmas Carol.
Regardless of what is included or left out of adaptations of Around the World in Eighty Days, and the standard issues that arise with many novels of the period which don’t, understandably, reflect modern values, this is a fun novel to read, whisking you across the world, taking you on adventures you simply can’t replicate today in the modern jet age, and offering up a standard of heroism that is as close to ‘80s/‘90s blockbuster Bruce Willis as any just over 140-years-old text is likely to manage.