Paris in the 20th Century
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| French edition | |
| Author | Jules Verne |
|---|---|
| Original title (if not in English) | Paris au XXème siècle |
| Country | France |
| Language | French |
| Genre(s) | Science fiction |
| Publisher | |
| Released | |
| Media Type | Printed |
Paris in the 20th Century (Paris au XXème siècle) is a science fiction novel by Jules Verne.
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[edit] Plot introduction
Written in 1863 but first published only in 1994, about a young man who lives in a technologically advanced, but culturally backwards future. Often referred to as Verne's "lost" novel, the work, set in August, 1960, paints a grim, dystopian view of the future.
[edit] Plot summary
Paris in the Twentieth Century's main character is 16-year-old Michel Dufrénoy, who graduates with a major in literature and the classics, but finds they have been forgotten in a futuristic world where only technological writing is valued.
The arts are all government-sponsored, leading to what amounts to lowbrow theater for the masses. Dufrénoy’s alienation is said to be inspired by Verne’s own experience. When Verne was the same age as Dufrénoy, he too feared that he would be unable to succeed if he followed in his family’s career plans. Verne was to inherit his father’s law practice, but like Dufrénoy, he abandoned the path that had been set out for him, instead aspiring to become a writer.
Dufrénoy wants to be an artist, working on his own, but finds that his book of poetry is impossible to sell, and soon, he's starving in the winter's cold, one of the few forces of nature that the science of Verne's fictional 20th Century had yet been unable to overcome.
In despair, he spends his last bit of money on violets for his beloved, but finds that she has disappeared from her apartment, evicted when her father lost his job as the university’s last teacher of rhetoric.
In a moving but excessively melodramatic climax, the heartbroken Dufrénoy, bereft of friends and loved ones, wanders through the frozen, mechanized, electrical wonders of Paris. The subjectivity becomes steadily more surreal as the dying artist, in a final paroxysm of despair, unconsciously circles an old cemetery before his death.
[edit] Publication deferred
Pierre-Jules Hetzel, his publisher, thought the book's pessimism would damage Verne's then-booming career, and suggested he wait 20 years to publish it. In a scathing rebuke to Verne, Hetzel writes about a draft of the novel he has just seen:
- "I was not expecting perfection — to repeat, I knew that you were attempting the impossible — but I was hoping for something better."
Hetzel was also critical of Verne for not covering new ground with the novel:
- "In this piece, there is not a single issue concerning the real future that is properly resolved, no critique that hasn’t already been made and remade before. I am surprised at you ... [it is] lackluster and lifeless."
With that, Verne put the manuscript in a safe, where it was forgotten, only to be discovered by his great-grandson in 1989. It was finally published in French in 1994, and in English, by Random House, in 1997. The English translation was said to be one of the slowest to be made of the French work.
[edit] Trivia
In his Paris in the 20th Century, Verne predicted or alluded to a wide variety of modern technological items we, and earlier generations, have come to take for granted. Among them are:
- gasoline-powered automobiles
- high-speed trains
- calculators
- The Internet (a worldwide "telegraphic" communications network)
- electric chairs (criminals "executed by electric charge")
[edit] Literary significance and criticism
The appearance of Verne's lost novel caused a stir among modern critics, who mostly received the book warmly, greeting it as "prescient and plausible" [1]. But ironically, some [2] saw the book every bit as unnecessarily pessimistic about the future as did Verne's editor.
The book was a best seller in France, where it was heavily hyped before publication. Some critics were put off by the publisher's hype of the book, although most readily admitted it was "a work of inestimable historical importance." [3]
Critic Evelyn C. Leeper suggested (presumably jokingly) that Verne might be a good candidate for a Hugo Award in 1996, noting that she had not read very many novels that were much better than Verne's work that year. The award is given annually to honor the best science fiction of the preceding year.
The work is also of importance to scholars of Verne's literature, some of whom had long asserted that none of his works ever came close to prophesying the future of a society as a whole.[4]
Within two years of the novel's appearance, it had been adapted as a stage play in the Netherlands.[5]
