From the Lists: Joseph Conrad Tag Team

Joseph Conrad

Like the D. H. Lawrence grouping in my last literary blog installment, the next two novels are by Joseph Conrad. Most readers will recognize him as the author of Heart of Darkness (#67), but he also has three other novels on the list: #85 Lord Jim, #47 Nostromo, and #46 The Secret Agent. One can only marvel that someone whose first language was Polish, was so proficient in languages that he landed 4 novels in the 100 best English novels of the 20th century.

Heart of Darkness (1902) is probably the most widely-read of Conrad's works in that it is pretty much required reading in American high schools and colleges. The movie Apocalypse Now (1979) was also loosely based on this novella, thus insuring its longevity. However, Conrad considered Nostromo (1904) to be his masterpiece. The author, a notorious complainer, often wrote while working on the serialized release of the book that this work would lead to his death by exhaustion. As a reader, I too was nearly brought to death by the lack of action within the novel.

Nostromo

As someone who appreciates the art of writing, I feel a little guilty about the above pronunciation, but boiled down to its essence - this novel is a bit like a Central American War and Peace - complete with a long list of characters with complicated histories, but without the war and with very little peace. Imagine your country is in a civil war and you are chasing the action, but you always arrive just a few hours late or you are stranded just a few streets away from the action. In this way, the narrative is quite inventive in that all the action is related through the experiences of people who are recalling events the reader just missed experiencing. Since the events in the novel are all filtered through unreliable narrators motivated by greed, nationalism, jealousy, and love - the reader is left to draw their own conclusions about the action, the characters, and their motivations.

What I did find quite interesting, and somewhat contemporary in the novel is the continued debate about the importance of business in civil society. Conrad proposes through his characters that without commerce, there can be no civilization. That a successful business venture results in roads, railroads, harbors, hospitals, churches, and commerce that would not otherwise exist. Without these arteries of commerce, European style society could not flourish. 100 years later, this idea seems to still be hotly debated. The flip side to this argument is that prosperity also fuels the less noble tendencies of man leading to war, suffering, and needless death and destruction.

The Secret Agent

The second book in this tag team, The Secret Agent (1907), had a bit of resurgence in popularity following the September 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center. However, instead of religious radicals planning and executing an effective attack, this work is loosely based on a bungled attempt by anarchists to initiate a social revolution by bombing the Greenwich observatory in England.

While the author's intent in Nostromo is literary, The Secret Agent is blatant satire. Its characters are caricatures of notable anarchists of the period. The characters personify all the stereotypes of the shiftless anarchist - they are over-weight, under-educated, frequently jailed, or making their livings off of wealthy women or by selling French pornography. Based on the phrenological sentiments of the day, their craniums are all described as lumpy due to the criminal quality of their thoughts and their skin is sallow and oily. Apparently bad intentions make for bad health and unsightly appearance. Let this be a lesson!

As with all good satire, such as The Daily Show, one must be informed on the issue being discussed to understand the humor - hence the prodigious number of footnotes included in this edition. An early 20th century Londoner would no doubt understand the satiric intent of this novel and get the joke, but the ironic skewering of figures who have been largely lost in the sweep of history, tends to lose its humor when read by a contemporary audience.

Recommendation: Of these two novels, it is difficult to choose one over the other as I am unenthusiastic about both. I suffered great frustration in the first and found the second somewhat difficult to read - a bit like being the new guy in a group of friends who communicate using only inside jokes.