Around the world in eighty yawns
Recently I picked up Around The World In Eighty Days. Well, I thought, It's Jules Verne, and there have been several reasonable films, so it might be interesting.

No. No it isn't.

It's amazingly bad. Being a Victorian Gentleman, our "hero" strives to remain aloof from everything that's going on around him. It's almost as if the world below, and the adventure they're having crossing it, is not worthy of his attention - beneath him figuratively as well as literally. The only time he breaks this detachment is when he sees some lions. And shoots them for fun.

This makes the book very flat, like reading a stationery catalog. Odd. I generally enjoy Jules Verne.
(moon monkey is busy making memories worth repressing, Thu 5 Jan 2012, 16:32, 2 replies)

I read this thing once about how television changed writing because it gave rise to the widened availability of
changing time and place in plots - ie "Meanwhile, back in Egypt", and "Previously" etc.

Also that a lot of Shakespeare's stuff is so descriptive because they didn't tend to do the plays with backdrops - hence "Halt! Who goes there?" immediately portrays that it is night time, there is a guard, he is tense, and that someone is approaching.

I also understand that also the Victorians were quite keen on drawing the backdrop in explicit detail in a similar vein.

I didn't really buy it myself, but I thought it was an amusing distraction to consider when reading.
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Thu 5 Jan 2012, 16:38, closed)

It's a Frenchman writing about an Englishman.
Basically Verne is taking the piss
(sittingduck Attention seeking, bullshitting fuck-knuckle, Thu 5 Jan 2012, 16:39, closed)