Reading Joseph Conrad is sheer pleasure. Regarded as one of the greatest writers of fiction in English, Conrad is particularly convincing in his treatment of seafarers' life, their exile from their own people, and their inevitable entanglement with life on distant shores. Rivalled probably only by Herman Melville, this insight of Conrad's owes much to his own sailor's life for some 20 years before his career change. Equally convincing is his representation of settings and characters' inner worlds. Often a scene of action comes to life full of color, images, and motion after a few brisk but forceful strokes, while a full range of human desires, vanity, and contradictions is laid bare through the skillful distillation of a character's thoughts in a few lines. Such is Conrad's power with words.
Less free of controversy are probably readers' takes on the larger author's choices Conrad makes, e.g. the way he tells his stories, the perspectives he brings to readers' experience with them, and the public he tries to reach. Writing in the tradition exemplified in earlier works such as Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Conrad often tells his story through a narrator that relates another narrator's accounts of the events that make up the story. The second narrator is usually a minor character that acts as the eyes and ears of the primary narrator or the reader. This is the case with Lord Jim and Under Western Eyes. While having a character confide in us all that happens presumably enhances a story's credibility, the effect can feel contrived when overdone or stretched beyond what is remotely possible. This problem is especially acute with Under Western Eyes.
Conrad professes his intent in writing to be no other than to inform his readers about the human conditions as he sees them. The reality is more complicated. While his Polish childhood in Russian-controlled Ukraine, his later adoption of British nationality, and his wandering in the far-flung corners of an empire swathed in its final glory invariably color the lens through which he chooses to watch and make sense of the world, the demands of a professional writer's career dictate that he be sensitive to the wishes of a readership that still indulges in self-aggrandizement and self-affirmation. Given his background and his chosen calling, one wonders whether Conrad has any other choices in these matters. Regardless, the choices he does make shape what we read today.
Lord Jim is a story of a disgraced young sailor seeking and finding redemption among native tribes in a Southeast Asian jungle. Victory tells the tale of a drifter that scorns and then accepts human relationships, also set in Southeast Asia, amidst a group of Malay islands. Under Western Eyes is about a Russian young man's involuntary involvement in the struggle between an autocracy and revolutionary fanatics that supposedly exposes the sorry aspects of the Russians' national character. As such it can be seen as Conrad's subtle revenge on the Russians for the wrongs his family suffered at their hands during his childhood.
Enjoy these books.
