20000 Leagues Under the Sea

‘Jules Verne vs. Stephen King’ (2013)

leeduigon(patty)November 15, 2018

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I know some of you don’t like Jules Verne, but I do. His 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea captivated me as a little boy and continues to be one of my all-time favorite novels.

I thought Stephen King was great, too, back in the 1970s. But I find it a trial to read him now. What’s the difference between these two authors?

https://leeduigon.com/2013/09/07/jules-verne-vs-stephen-king/

I do get awful tired of Stephen King’s “the college guy is the real man–not those blue-collar oafs” schtick. Whatever made him put that into every book he ever wrote, like, dude–I don’t care.

Souping Up the Classics

leeduigon(patty)June 11, 2017

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Here at Effing University (home of Joe Collidge!), we at the English Dept. have found a solution to the problem of students reading literature that contains objectionable elements of White Privilege, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, Climate Change Denial, cultural appropriation, and funambulism. Most of this problematic content is found in what unenlightened persons call “the classics”–that is, old stuff, most of it written by white males. As hard as we try to restrict students’ reading to material published after 2008, there’s always someone sneaking off to read the classics.

And so, with the help of a $455 million grant from the Foundation for Pure Evil, we are going to get to work rewriting the classics to make them conform to our current understanding of–well, I don’t want to say “truth,” because our position is that there is no such thing; but you get what I mean.

Here, by way of example, is one of the classics that we have rewritten: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Julia Verne. Yes, we changed “Jules” to “Julia” to reflect feminism’s awesome contribution to world literature.

In our rewrite, “Captain Nemo” is an African-American gay woman who has invented and built the super-submarine, the Nautilus, to fight Climate Change. That means she must also fight Climate Change Denial, which she does by sinking ships that have white males on them. All members of her crew are LBGTQ and persons of color. The involuntary guests of the Nautilus–Prof. Arronax, Conseil, and Ned Land–have been rewritten as gay women of color who are in their respective countries without documentation.

We have begun work on rewriting A Tale of Two Cities by Charlene Motumbu, with London and Paris–ugh! horrible cities, crammed full of men!–replaced by Baghdad and Aleppo.

Says our department chair, Dr. Fimbo Pantywaist, “We will not allow any of our students to pick up counterrevolutionary ideas through the medium of literature, classical or otherwise. There is no so-called ‘classic’ that cannot be improved by replacing its reactionary elements with themes of gender fluidity and man-made climate change. From now on, all books are to teach those lessons. All the time!”

My All-Time Favorite Half a Dozen Novels

leeduigon(patty)May 31, 2016

Some folks are going to read this and say, “What a philistine! Why, he has no literary taste at all!” I can’t help that. Anyhow, I enjoy reading other bloggers’ lists of their favorite books, so why not post one of my own?

Here they are, in no particular order.

*The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien. I don’t have to explain this choice, do I?

*The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis. Not only is this, for me, the model of what a Christianity-based fantasy ought to be: but it also features the most fascinating story-start I’ve ever read. It’s been around for going on 70 years, and people will still be loving it 100 years from now.

*20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne. When I’m reading this, I never want it to be over. We’ll never quite figure out what makes Captain Nemo tick, but that only makes him perpetually intriguing. You don’t expect this kind of depth of character in a science fiction novel from the 19th century–or any other century.

*Freddy and the Ignormus by Walter R. Brooks. Fantastic children’s fiction laced with humor that will delight adult readers. Freddy the Pig takes on a terrifying challenge which may or may not be real–and who but Walter R. Brooks would ever describe a beetle as “motherly”?

*Nemesis by Agatha Christie. Miss Marple takes on an investigation without knowing what the crime was, or even if there truly was a crime. More than just a puzzling whodunit, Nemesis explores the deep working of God’s justice in a fallen world.

*The Chessmen of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs. More than any other book the creator of Tarzan ever wrote, Chessmen takes you to a place you never imagined, and makes you think it’s real. Plus it offers the most entertaining non-human character you’ve ever met–Ghek the Kaldane, all head, no body, who, in spite of himself, learns how to be human.

So there you have it–books that I come back to again and again, always with pleasure, and which have taught, and continue to teach me, much of what I know about writing.