Lord Jim

Lord Jim
by Joseph Conrad
read: 2013
Modern Library #85, Guardian 1000 Novels

The story of Lord Jim is told largely through a frame story, with Charles Marlow, an alter-ego of Conrad that appears in a few of his works, relating the tale of the titular character in person and, towards the end of the book, in a letter. Many works - Absalom, Absalom!, for one - employ the frame story as a narrative technique. Since the frame story embeds the main narrative as a story within a story, it often becomes a meditation on storytelling itself, prompting the reader to ask questions like, "Who is narrating? Why is he telling the story? What is he leaving out (by ignorance or intentionally) that might be germane?"

Marlow's narration consumes the first 80% or so of the story, at which point he has told the story as far as he knows at the time. At this point, Conrad seems to offer a meditation on unfinished stories:

... the last image of that incomplete story, its incompleteness itself, and the very tone of the speaker, had made discussion in vain and comment impossible. Each of them seemed to carry away his own impression, to carry it away with him like a secret ...  

Conrad then offers a take on the phenomenon of writing and reading:

That was all then - and there will be nothing more; there will be no message, unless such as each of us can interpret for himself from the language of facts, that are so often more enigmatic than the craftiest arrangement of words.

Marlow then proceeds to grace one particular listener (and, by extension, the reader) with the remainder of the tale via letter. This closes the loop on the main narrative and makes for a more satisfying story. Does it take away from the meta-fictional musings quoted above? Maybe philosophically, but I think they stand on their own.

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.

The Secret Agent

The Secret Agent
by Joseph Conrad
read: 2011
Modern Library #46, Guardian 1000 Novels

I read The Secret Agent around Christmas last year, a bit more recently than Heart of Darkness.  I want to like Conrad more than I do; he plays in the realms of moral ambiguity, which I've been known to appreciate.  The protagonist Verloc exploits his mentally challenged brother-in-law Stevie to commit a terrorist act, but he is caught between forces outside of his control.  The exploitation is odious but stems partially from a moral inability to commit such a horrific act personally.  Ultimately Verloc only wants to run his modest shop and live out a quiet life with his wife.  Conrad portrays the tension between Verloc and his wife less as a result of a failure on the part and either of them and more as a tragic misunderstanding that exists between all people.  There are great themes in the story, complex and universal.

Despite that, The Secret Agent left me a little bit cold.  The characters feel empty.  Part of that is no doubt deliberate on Conrad's part, as he portrays the aloofness that exists even between man and wife, but it makes the moral dilemmas and serious choices the characters have to make less compelling.  Ambiguity is great, but too often when reading The Secret Agent my feelings strayed more to indifference.

Heart of Darkness

Heart of Darkness
by Joseph Conrad
read: circa 1997
Modern Library #67, Guardian 1000 Novels

I rarely enjoy movies more than the books on which they are based.  One exception is Apocalypse Now, which is loosely based on Conrad's Heart of Darkness.  Francis Ford Coppola moved Kurtz from colonial Africa to the jungles of Vietnam and turned it into an absurdist statement on the Vietnam War.  I remember really liking the last 20% of this book and have forgotten almost all of the first 80%.  But how can you forget surfing amidst falling shells or "I love the smell of napalm in the morning?"