Nostromo

Nostromo
by Joseph Conrad
read: 2012
Modern Library #47, Guardian 1000 Novels

As I read the first half of Nostromo, I tried to put my finger on exactly what I dislike about Joseph Conrad's writing.  I found his use of characters jarring; he would focus on Charles Gould or Martin Decoud or Nostromo for long stretches of the book, then drop them entirely for other long stretches to focus on Montero's brother or something.  I kept thinking, "There's a lot going on here.  This would make a good movie, but I'm not sure I like it as a novel."

I realized I was dead wrong about the time Conrad made it obvious.  He describes a journey the titular character takes that is integral to the revolutionary battle: "The history of that ride, sir, would make a most exciting book."  But Conrad leaves this exciting story out of his book!  Indeed, most of the drama and adventure that would make Nostromo an epic movie is incidental to the real story: a story of love, greed, and corruption in colonial South America.  People die, but their deaths are not tragedies; the tragedies are in a woman whose husband has built their lives around a business enterprise, in an old statesman who sees the same patterns of revolutionary ideals crumbling in corrupt realities, in a doctor who has been scarred for so long his heart has closed.  There is drama and heroism in the story of the revolutionary struggle of Sulaco, but ultimately the reader is left wondering, "What's the point?"  Triumph is hollow and morally bankrupt, wealth is at odds with love and happiness, and no heroism is beyond corruption.  And yet, like Edith Wharton's Age of Innocence, it's a tragedy that's somehow not pessimistic or cynical.  Conrad's narrative voice is so democratic and so withholding of judgment, we can never utterly condemn even the worst sinners.  It's a terrific book, and I now see Conrad's writing in a whole new light.