Volume 44, Number 12 · July 17, 1997
Cosmic Adventurer
By John Weightman
Jules Verne: An Exploratory Biography
by Herbert R. Lottman
St. Martin's, 366 pp., $26.95
Paris in the Twentieth Century
the lost novel by Jules Verne, translated by Richard Howard
Random House, 222 pp., $21.00
Jules Verne poses an unusual problem. He enjoys the unique distinction of being the most widely translated, and therefore in a sense the most genuinely world-famous, of all French writers, yet it is still debatable whether he belongs to serious literature at all. During his lifetime, his books were immensely popular in France, but they were rarely, if ever, discussed by critics as part of the contemporary literary canon. The fact that they were often first serialized in a periodical intended for adolescents as well as adults may have something to do with this, but it cannot be the whole explanation. Several volumes were given the modest accolade of being 'couronnés par l'Académie Française,' but Verne, to his private sorrow, was never considered as a possible candidate for election to the Academy itself. He received only the banal recognition of the Légion d'honneur; he was made Chevalier in 1870 and promoted to Officier in 1892, and even then not so much for his novels as for his service to the town council of Amiens, his wife's home town, where he settled in middle life in preference to Paris.
Review, 4452 words
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