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This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery. ... Read more

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This volume contains "Typhoon," "The Secret Sharer," "Falk," and "Amy Foster." "Typhoon", a story of a steamship and her crew beset by a tempest, is a masterpiece of descriptive virtuosity and moral irony, while "The Secret Sharer" excels in symbolic ambiguity. Both stories vividly present Conrad's abiding preoccupation with the theme of solidarity, challenged from without by the elements and from within by human doubts and fears.

Conrad's experiences as a captain of the ship Otago in 1888 provided material for both "The Secret Sharer" and "Falk". "Amy Foster", written in 1901, is bleak and stark in its depiction of human isolation and incomprehension.

In a range of tones extending from the sombre to the radiant, Conrad's central preoccupations are displayed at their best, strangest, and most plangent in this selection of stories. ... Read more

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This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery. ... Read more

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In this authoritative, insightful biography, we see the modernist master Joseph Conrad as a man who consistently reinvented himself. Born in 1857 in the Ukraine, he left home early and worked as a sailor, traveling to the Far East and Africa, and eventually settled in England, beginning a precarious existence as a novelist. John Stape describes a man with a deep sense of otherness, a writer who wrote in his third language and whose fiction became the cornerstone of modernism. With his exceptional understanding of Conrad, Stape succeeds in casting a new light on the life of a man who remains one of the greatest writers of his, and our, time. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

Stape's "Several Lives of J. Conrad" a Bravura Performance
This book by Dr. John Stape is a bravura performance by one of the world's foremost Conrad authorities.Stape is the editor of The Cambridge Companion to Joseph Conrad, co-editor of two volumes of The Collected Letters of Joseph Conrad, head of the Conradian society, and has published many, many articles on Conrad, so he knows of what he writes about.Several things impressed me about this book.First, it is an enjoyable read, beautifully written, with the several lives examined (youth with family in exile; young mariner; First Mate at sea and then Captain; novice writer; and then world famous author).Because of page limitations and its scope, it is not a literary criticism of all that Conrad wrote but one learns so much about the works from the biographical information.For example, we learn that young Conrad while serving in service of the Saint-Antoine, met the man upon whom he modeled Victory's "plain Mr. Jones", Conrad's first known encounter with a [...] man. This is but one example, another being Conrad's first encounter with John Galsworthy on ship. Galsworthy, of course, became a profound friend and influence on Conrad. So, although the book is not intended as an exegesis of each of Conrad's works, we learn about the experiences that affected Conrad's writing and learn vital background information about his writings.The second thing that I must applaud about Dr. Stape's biography of Conrad is his wide historical knowledge; he really shows the eddies and swirls of history that influenced and shaped Conrad and his writings. This is shown in the opening pages by Stape's masterful account of the Polish Question and by Stape's command of French and even the Italian language.A third vital feature of Stape's account is that he carefully weighs claims and controversies surrounding Conrad and gives new insights about them.Stape does not just accept anything Conrad or others say or write, he balances it, and checks it for its accuracy and its "ring of truth".This is a showpiece of biography written by a Conrad authority at the height of his powers.It is a must read for both generalists and for Conrad scholars.

Homo multiplex
This is definitively not the definitive Conrad biography.
For one, Stape explicitely focuses on the life, or 'several lives', and nearly ignores the work, usually just mentioning titles and extremely briefly what they were about and how they fared in the market place.
Second, there are still so many gaps in the life story. That seems to be largely due to the fact that the man moved about a lot and much documentation got lost. This problem gets more and more difficult to solve with time.

Which 'several lives' are we looking at?
The Catholic- Polish 'gentleman' (not quite aristocrat), who never lived in Poland (because that country was not a political entity at his time; rather, born in the Ukraine in the Russian empire, then moved to the Polish part of the Austrian/Hungarian empire); not a good Catholic either, Conrad never was a religious man, God bless him.

Then seaman in France and England, travelling the world, but not quite making a success out of his chosen career.
Then, out of nowhere, he becomes a writer in his third language, quits the sea, becomes a family man and a literary professional with literary friends. Conrad produces a string of masterpieces, but never has enough money and never seems to be able to handle money well when he has some.
Then a good English patriot with proper anti-Russian, anti-German, and also anti-American sentiments. Not anti-French, that he couldn't do.
In his last years financial sanity, but dwindling artistic power, and terrible health trouble, as well as great sorrows with a failing son.

Many of his books were praised by the critics, but ignored by the public. In his own words:his books dropped into the past like stones in water. Henry James, a friendly colleague, said: being serious and subtle isn't one of the paths to fortune. Many of Conrad's books achieved lasting fame in later times. The man was too modern for his world.

I had read most of Conrad's books in the 70s and 80s and am now re-visiting him. I realize that I underestimated him in the past. I saw him as some kind of older Graham Greene. I did not realize the full extent of his importance. And I had some struggles with his language, which I found often unnecessarily compact and slow. I realize now that was largely my own fault.

Stape's biography is useful, but too much is missing, and not all in it is necessary. It gets a little repetitious with all the gout attacks and the wife's knee operations and Walpole coming for lunch etc etc.
Most bios of writers have the habit of placing the target in a social context of other writers. That is also one of the strong sides of Stape's book too. I never knew that Conrad was close to Stephen Crane; SC died while JC was writing the ending of Lord Jim. The death may have influenced the tone of the book. What I find a little irritating is Stape's habit of hinting vaguely at Conrad's friendships with younger men, somehow not quite saying that he suspects an underlying unspoken motive. (The Melville bio that I read recently did the same, ie hint at hidden homosexual streaks in the pattern of the man.)

Other friends and good colleagues: Galsworthy, Henry James, H.G.Wells, Ford Maddox Ford (the target of much scorn from Stape), Hugh Walpole, J.M.Barrie, Hardy, Russell, Gide... It seems Conrad was seriously hoping for the Nobel, and he was a giant in his world.
As we know, he wasn't the only giant who was not en-Nobled by Stockholm. A smaller move from Britain's royalty was rejected by him, in line with his some of his peers.

A solid biography, but not wholly satisfactory
As might be expected from a distinguished Conrad scholar -- among other things, author John Stape is co-editor of Conrad's published letters -- THE SEVERAL LIVES OF JOSEPH CONRAD is a sober, responsible biography of one of the great novelists of the 20th Century.But it is not wholly satisfactory.It certainly is not the definitive or the ideal biography of Conrad.

Noting that "biographies of late have tended to bloat" (how true!), Stape states in his Preface that his objective is "brevity."In a sense, he succeeds:THE SEVERAL LIVES OF JOSEPH CONRAD comes in at 272 pages of text.(Additional pages contain photos, maps, family trees, biographical profiles of people of note who interacted with Conrad, and extensive footnotes and bibliography -- all of which are welcome.)But the last two-thirds of the book, dealing with Conrad's career as a writer, bogs down in the details of a seemingly endless cycle of gout and depression, financial irresponsibility followed by scuffling and cadging for funds, visits with assorted literary and cultural figures, and Conrad's continuous bemoaning of the toil of the writing life.All in all, as relatively short as it is, the book is too much biographical fact and too little biographical essence.

Stape, in his Preface, also disavows any effort to pursue "literary criticism," and indeed THE SEVERAL LIVES OF JOSEPH CONRAD contains only the barest and briefest discussion of the literary aspects of Conrad's works.That is unfortunate because what little Stape does offer in the way of literary analysis is worthwhile.For example: "Although incontestably a great writer, having contributed to shaping the way his own and the generations after him 'see', [Conrad] is, perhaps, in the scheme of things, not quite a 'great' novelist, missing -- just -- the glacial perfection, of a Stendhal or Flaubert, and in this perhaps more closely resembling the achievement of a Tolstoy or Dostoevsky."

On the plus side, THE SEVERAL LIVES OF JOSEPH CONRAD is tolerably well-written and I believe one can trust what it says about the facts of Conrad's life.On balance, I prefer it slightly over the one other biography I have read of Conrad, "Joseph Conrad" by Jeffrey Meyers.But, as noted, it is not a fully satisfactory biography.To be sure, Conrad -- to indulge in a gross understatement -- was an exceedingly complex person.And his fiction reflects again and again his dismissal as futile and delusory any effort to fully comprehend any human being, even oneself. Perhaps, then, it is too much to expect any biographer to fully capture the essence of Joseph Conrad.Still, knowledgeable Conrad scholar that Stape undoubtedly is, he is not supremely skilled in the art and craft of biography.So I maintain hope that some day we will get a thoroughly responsible biography of Joseph Conrad that, if not definitive or ideal, does bring us much closer to this elusive, and great, writer.

A Beautiful and Engaging Biography! Wow!
One of the best bios on this exceptional writer and very complex man. Stape opens the life of Conrad to those who may not know much about him, but love his immortal stories. I learned so much from this new biography and highly recommend it to anyone interested in this incredible writer.

The many lives of the same fascinating man
When you hear Lord Jim, Heart of Darkness, or The Secret Agent, does "Joseph Conrad" come to mind? Reading about Conrad's jinxed life turned those books more intimate and all the more tragic.

John Stape opens his Conrad biography with notes and appendices as you into Conrad's life. Without these pieces, any Conrad non-professional would most likely be lost, as Conrad's world was so vastly different from anything imaginable.

Born to Polish parents, he was exiled to northern Russia before he could read. His father, a Polish Revolutionary, was forced to flee after defying the Tzar. His mother had died in Siberia when he was 7; then at 11 he became an official orphan. At 16 he moved to France and then moved onto England, where he became a sailor with the Merchant Marines. This job fuelled his writing power, though he led such a brilliant life in solitude.

Conrad quickly married working-class, Jessie. As with the sailing voyages, his fragile marriage also gave birth to plots and the passion put into his earlier short stories. Fears that his wife may leave him should he become delusional was one main plot, and in another a wife killed her husband due to his sexual advances-which he wrote on his honeymoon.

Conrad who seemed to attract bad luck. As he was finishing a lengthy novel, a tipped oil lamp destroyed the manuscript, as another was being shipped on the Titanic. Enough said. Misfortune and scarring events gave him material to write fictional portrayals of his own experiences. On a voyage through the Belgian Congo, he produced Heart of Darkness, even though his health and morale were shattered by the experience.

Stape writes an eloquent portrait of Conrad's life. Overall, the book was so intensely in tune with what one could imagine Conrad's experiences to be, that I had to balance out the depressing read with something lighthearted.

Clearly Stape is a Conrad expert. Despite the absence of good fortune during Conrad's life, the literary community was blessed with a writer no less than a genius.

Armchair Interviews says: If you love biographies that paint vivid and realistic pictures of a famous writer, this is for you. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (2)

Mental Unrest
In these tales, people are put under heavy mental stress by fatal accidents, hostile environments or insoluble doubts. Their reactions become uncontrollable.
The short stories give a good picture of Conrad's themes, story building with surprising outcomes and view on mankind: `Morality is not a method of happiness'.

In `Karain: a Memory', a Malay war-chief makes an odyssey trying to kill a woman who left her native village with a white man. He becomes haunted by the spirit of his dead brother.
In `The Lagoon', the adduction of a woman turns into a fatal accident. `There is no light and no peace in the world; but there is death - death for many. I left him in the midst of the enemies; but I am going back.'
In `An outpost of Progress', two lonely `progressive' colonialists become haunted by their hostile environment; `a suggestion of things vague, uncontrollable, and repulsive, whose discomposing intrusion tries the civilized nerves.'
In `The Return', a marriage turns sour on the impossible `certitude of love and faith'.
In `The Idiots', a less successful offspring puts a marriage under extreme pressure.

These sometimes furiously written stories with their high evocative power of landscapes, feelings and conflicts should not be missed.

Probing the Murky Waters ot the Soul
his anthology of 216 pages provides an excellent introduction for new readers to Polish-born Joseph Conrad, who deftly paints on an English canvass.Having selected five of his tales the editors present readers with settings in both the exotic tropics of Malaysia and Africa, as well as the chilly social milieus of socialite London and pastoral France.Perhaps the editors chose the word UNREST for their title, because all the protagonists experience psychological malaise from a diversity of causes.

KARAIN.This Malay chieftain feels cursed by his past, so he desperately seekst a new English charm to ward off his fatal stalker.

THE IDIOTS.A simple French peasant couple are cursed by bearing children who are severely mentally retarded.

OUTPOST OF PROGRESS.The title is sheer irony, since a useless African trading station is run by two ineffectual English agents. The men are pursued by their failed pasts, general laziness, incompetence, extreme heat and company indifference.

THE RETURN.A young socialite husband returns home to discover a note from his wife, explaining that she has left him for another man.In this most psychological of the tales, the wronged husband undergoes a series of intense emotions and decisions, ultimately defying the very Society he represents.

THE LAGOON.A native is pre-grieving the death of his beloved wife, unburdening his soul before his only white friend.Although this represents Conrad's first published short story, curiously it concludes this particular anthology.Prepare to explore the murky waters of the human heart and soul.
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The finest of all Conrad's tales, Heart of Darkness is set in an atmosphere of mystery and menace, and tells of Marlow's perilous journey up the Congo River to relieve his employer's agent, the renowned and formidable Mr. Kurtz. What he sees on his journey, and his eventual encounter with Kurtz, horrify and perplex him, and call into question the very bases of civilization and human nature. Endlessly reinterpreted by critics and adapted for film, radio, and television, the story shows Conrad at his most intense and sophisticated. The other three tales in this volume depict corruption and obsession, and question racial assumptions. Set in the exotic surroundings of Africa, Malaysia, and the east, they variously appraise the glamour, folly, and rapacity of imperial adventure. This revised edition uses the English first edition texts and has a new chronology and bibliography. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (15)

Why are we still reading this?
I'd been intending to read this one for awhile, since I've read several other novels based on it, but it's not all it's cracked up to be. As Chinua Achebe points out in his article on Conrad, the man is a "bloody racist." I'm sort of confused why we still hold this novel to be one of the greatest of the 20th century when it treats an entire group of people as cultural and social inferiors, whatever Conrad's stance on imperialism may be. He presents Africa as a land of corruption, greed, and destruction-- for white people. The reason why imperialism is bad is because it destorys people, not because it's unethical and assumes that every non-European is an animal. Conrad's language throughout the novel may be superb, but it's not divine. However, just because we shouldn't consider this novel the best English novel of the century doesn't mean it shouldn't be taught. Conrad does provide an interesting cultural study for the pervasiveness of racism in European society, even as the British Empire began to crumble. So, it's a short read and worthwhile if you're intrested in looking at historical accounts of racism and imperialism, but otherwise I wouldn't bother.

I still haven't received it!
I ordered this book over a month ago and it still hasn't arrived. I needed the book for a class and I had to go to a bookstore and purchase it, when I bought it online to save money. When and if I do ever receive this book, I will be returning it immediately because I no longer have need for it. I do not recommend this seller.

"Mistah Kurtz--he dead."An influential work on five 20th century seminal works
I read this book for a graduate Humanities course.Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, written in 1899 is a seminal work about the ills of colonialism, as well as a postmodern look at the subject of mankind.Conrad's book had a crucial influence on five important works of the twentieth century: J. G. Frazier's book The Golden Bough.Jessie L. Weston's book From Ritual to Romance, T. S. Elliott's poem the Waste Land, Joseph Campbell's Hero with a Thousand Faces, and Francis Ford Coppolla's movie Apocalypse Now, screenplay by John Milius, was based on Conrad's book.Another interesting fact is that this work was read by Orson Welle's Mercury Theater Players on the radio and was to be his first movie.After doing some work on it he abandoned the project to do Citizen Kane!I would have loved to of seen what Welles could have done with this story.Conrad's story is so riveting in part, because he himself served as a riverboat captain.High school teachers and college professors who have discussed this book in thousands of classrooms over the years tend to do so in terms of Freud, Jung, and Nietzsche; of classical myth, Victorian innocence, and original sin; of postmodernism, postcolonialism, and poststructuralism.

Just a taste of the plot reels you in! Marlow, the narrator of Heart of Darkness and Conrad's alter ego, is hired by an ivory-trading company to sail a steamboat up an unnamed river whose shape on the map resembles "an immense snake uncoiled, with its head in the sea, its body at rest curving afar over a vast country and its tail lost in the depths of the land" (8). His destination is a post where the company's brilliant, ambitious star agent, Mr. Kurtz, is stationed. Kurtz has collected legendary quantities of ivory, but, Marlow learns along the way, is also rumored to have sunk into unspecified savagery. Marlow's steamer survives an attack by blacks and picks up a load of ivory and the ill Kurtz; Kurtz, talking of his grandiose plans, dies on board as they travel, downstream.

Sketched with only a few bold strokes, Kurtz's image has nonetheless remained in the memories of millions of readers: the lone white agent far up the great river, with his dreams of grandeur,his great store of precious ivory, and his fiefdom carved out of the African jungle.Perhaps more than anything, we remember Marlow, on the steamboat, looking through binoculars at what he thinks are ornamental knobs atop the fence posts in front of Kurtz's house and then finding that each is "black, dried, sunken, with closed eyelids-a head that seemed to sleep at the top of that pole, and with the shrunken dry lips showing a narrow white line of the teeth" (57).

I especially became interested in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness from the movie Apocalypse Now.There is a scene in the movie that shows Colonel Kurtz's nightstand in his cave.T. S. Elliott's poem the Waste Land is one of three books on the nightstand.The other two are Jessie L. Weston's book From Ritual to Romance, and J. G. Frazier's book The Golden Bough.Anyone wanting to understand the movie Apocalypse Now, especially the character of Colonel Kurtz, and what Milius and Copolla are trying to tell their audience need to read these three books as well as Conrad's Heart of Darkness!

As a graduate student reading in philosophy and history I recommend this book for anyone interested in literature, myth, history, philosophy, religion and fans of Apocalypse Now.

"Mistah Kurtz--he dead."An influential work on five 20th century seminal works
I read this book for a graduate Humanities course.Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, written in 1899 is a seminal work about the ills of colonialism, as well as a postmodern look at the subject of mankind.Conrad's book had a crucial influence on five important works of the twentieth century: J. G. Frazier's book The Golden Bough.Jessie L. Weston's book From Ritual to Romance, T. S. Elliott's poem the Waste Land, Joseph Campbell's Hero with a Thousand Faces, and Francis Ford Coppolla's movie Apocalypse Now, screenplay by John Milius, was based on Conrad's book.Another interesting fact is that this work was read by Orson Welle's Mercury Theater Players on the radio and was to be his first movie.After doing some work on it he abandoned the project to do Citizen Kane!I would have loved to of seen what Welles could have done with this story.Conrad's story is so riveting in part, because he himself served as a riverboat captain.High school teachers and college professors who have discussed this book in thousands of classrooms over the years tend to do so in terms of Freud, Jung, and Nietzsche; of classical myth, Victorian innocence, and original sin; of postmodernism, postcolonialism, and poststructuralism.

Just a taste of the plot reels you in! Marlow, the narrator of Heart of Darkness and Conrad's alter ego, is hired by an ivory-trading company to sail a steamboat up an unnamed river whose shape on the map resembles "an immense snake uncoiled, with its head in the sea, its body at rest curving afar over a vast country and its tail lost in the depths of the land" (8). His destination is a post where the company's brilliant, ambitious star agent, Mr. Kurtz, is stationed. Kurtz has collected legendary quantities of ivory, but, Marlow learns along the way, is also rumored to have sunk into unspecified savagery. Marlow's steamer survives an attack by blacks and picks up a load of ivory and the ill Kurtz; Kurtz, talking of his grandiose plans, dies on board as they travel, downstream.

Sketched with only a few bold strokes, Kurtz's image has nonetheless remained in the memories of millions of readers: the lone white agent far up the great river, with his dreams of grandeur,his great store of precious ivory, and his fiefdom carved out of the African jungle.Perhaps more than anything, we remember Marlow, on the steamboat, looking through binoculars at what he thinks are ornamental knobs atop the fence posts in front of Kurtz's house and then finding that each is "black, dried, sunken, with closed eyelids-a head that seemed to sleep at the top of that pole, and with the shrunken dry lips showing a narrow white line of the teeth" (57).

I especially became interested in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness from the movie Apocalypse Now.There is a scene in the movie that shows Colonel Kurtz's nightstand in his cave.T. S. Elliott's poem the Waste Land is one of three books on the nightstand.The other two are Jessie L. Weston's book From Ritual to Romance, and J. G. Frazier's book The Golden Bough.Anyone wanting to understand the movie Apocalypse Now, especially the character of Colonel Kurtz, and what Milius and Copolla are trying to tell their audience need to read these three books as well as Conrad's Heart of Darkness!

As a graduate student reading in philosophy and history I recommend this book for anyone interested in literature, myth, history, philosophy, religion and fans of Apocalypse Now.

"Mistah Kurtz--he dead."An influential work on five 20th century seminal works
I read this book for a graduate Humanities course.Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, written in 1899 is a seminal work about the ills of colonialism, as well as a postmodern look at the subject of mankind.Conrad's book had a crucial influence on five important works of the twentieth century: J. G. Frazier's book The Golden Bough.Jessie L. Weston's book From Ritual to Romance, T. S. Elliott's poem the Waste Land, Joseph Campbell's Hero with a Thousand Faces, and Francis Ford Coppolla's movie Apocalypse Now, screenplay by John Milius, was based on Conrad's book.Another interesting fact is that this work was read by Orson Welle's Mercury Theater Players on the radio and was to be his first movie.After doing some work on it he abandoned the project to do Citizen Kane!I would have loved to of seen what Welles could have done with this story.Conrad's story is so riveting in part, because he himself served as a riverboat captain.High school teachers and college professors who have discussed this book in thousands of classrooms over the years tend to do so in terms of Freud, Jung, and Nietzsche; of classical myth, Victorian innocence, and original sin; of postmodernism, postcolonialism, and poststructuralism.

Just a taste of the plot reels you in! Marlow, the narrator of Heart of Darkness and Conrad's alter ego, is hired by an ivory-trading company to sail a steamboat up an unnamed river whose shape on the map resembles "an immense snake uncoiled, with its head in the sea, its body at rest curving afar over a vast country and its tail lost in the depths of the land" (8). His destination is a post where the company's brilliant, ambitious star agent, Mr. Kurtz, is stationed. Kurtz has collected legendary quantities of ivory, but, Marlow learns along the way, is also rumored to have sunk into unspecified savagery. Marlow's steamer survives an attack by blacks and picks up a load of ivory and the ill Kurtz; Kurtz, talking of his grandiose plans, dies on board as they travel, downstream.

Sketched with only a few bold strokes, Kurtz's image has nonetheless remained in the memories of millions of readers: the lone white agent far up the great river, with his dreams of grandeur,his great store of precious ivory, and his fiefdom carved out of the African jungle.Perhaps more than anything, we remember Marlow, on the steamboat, looking through binoculars at what he thinks are ornamental knobs atop the fence posts in front of Kurtz's house and then finding that each is "black, dried, sunken, with closed eyelids-a head that seemed to sleep at the top of that pole, and with the shrunken dry lips showing a narrow white line of the teeth" (57).

I especially became interested in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness from the movie Apocalypse Now.There is a scene in the movie that shows Colonel Kurtz's nightstand in his cave.T. S. Elliott's poem the Waste Land is one of three books on the nightstand.The other two are Jessie L. Weston's book From Ritual to Romance, and J. G. Frazier's book The Golden Bough.Anyone wanting to understand the movie Apocalypse Now, especially the character of Colonel Kurtz, and what Milius and Copolla are trying to tell their audience need to read these three books as well as Conrad's Heart of Darkness!

As a graduate student reading in philosophy and history I recommend this book for anyone interested in literature, myth, history, philosophy, religion and fans of Apocalypse Now.

... Read more

Product Description
Lord Jim is a novel by Joseph Conrad, originally published in Blackwood's Magazine from October 1899 to November 1900.

The central occurrence of Lord Jim appears to be based on true events. Although Conrad never confirmed this, there seems to be too much similarity for mere coincidence. On 17 July 1880, S.S. Jeddah sailed from Singapore bound for Penang and Jeddah, with 778 men, 147 women and 67 children on board. The passengers were Muslims from the Malay states, traveling to Mecca for the hajj (holy pilgrimage).

Jeddah sailed under the British flag and was crewed largely by British officers. It was owned by the Singapore Steamship Company, whose managing director, Syed Mohamed Alsagoff, came from a wealthy Arab family well established in Singapore. Syed Omar Alsagoff, Muhammad’s nephew, was on board at the time of the incident. After terrible weather conditions in the first week of passage, the ship's boilers ‘started adrift from their seatings’ and Jeddah began taking in water. The hull sprang a large leak, the water rose rapidly, and the captain and officers abandoned the heavily listing ship, taking Syed Omar with them. They were picked up by another vessel and taken to Aden where they told a story of violent passengers and a foundering ship. The pilgrims were left to their fate, and apparently certain death.

However, to much astonishment, on 8 August 1880 a French steamship towed Jeddah into Aden - the pilgrims had survived. They had been abandoned by those meant to protect them and an official inquiry followed into this great scandal. It is strongly suspected that this dishonourable tale inspired Conrad, who had landed in Singapore in 1883, and he wove the main themes of Lord Jim around it, using the name S.S. Patna for his fictional pilgrim ship.
(Description obtained from Wikipedia)


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Leatherbound Easton Press edition of the 100 Greatest Books Ever Written series ... Read more

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For many years Heart of Darkness has been considered a great novella, one of a few great short novels in the Western canon. Because it addresses directly the ambiguity of good and evil, when it was first published the novel foreshadowed many of the themes and stylistic devices that define modern literature.One of Conrad's finest stories, loosely based on the author's experience of rescuing a company agent from a remote station in the heart of the Congo, Heart of Darkness is set in an atmosphere of mystery and lurking danger, and tells of Marlow's perilous journey up the Congo River to relieve his employer's agent, the fabled and terrifying Mr. Kurtz. What Marlow sees on his journey horrifies and perplexes him, and what his encounter with Kurtz reveals calls into question all of his assumptions about civilization and human nature.Endlessly reinterpreted by critics and read in schools by countless students, the novel has been adapted numerous times for film-most famously Apocalypse Now-and shows Conrad at his finest, most intense, and most sophisticated.Heart of Darkness was originally published in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine in 1899 and published in book form in 1902. The present text derives from Doubleday's collected edition of Conrad's works, published in 1920-1921. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

"Mistah Kurtz--he dead."An influential work on five 20th century seminal works
I read this book for a graduate Humanities course.Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, written in 1899 is a seminal work about the ills of colonialism, as well as a postmodern look at the subject of mankind.Conrad's book had a crucial influence on five important works of the twentieth century: J. G. Frazier's book The Golden Bough.Jessie L. Weston's book From Ritual to Romance, T. S. Elliott's poem the Waste Land, Joseph Campbell's Hero with a Thousand Faces, and Francis Ford Coppolla's movie Apocalypse Now, screenplay by John Milius, was based on Conrad's book.Another interesting fact is that this work was read by Orson Welle's Mercury Theater Players on the radio and was to be his first movie.After doing some work on it he abandoned the project to do Citizen Kane!I would have loved to of seen what Welles could have done with this story.Conrad's story is so riveting in part, because he himself served as a riverboat captain.High school teachers and college professors who have discussed this book in thousands of classrooms over the years tend to do so in terms of Freud, Jung, and Nietzsche; of classical myth, Victorian innocence, and original sin; of postmodernism, postcolonialism, and poststructuralism.

Just a taste of the plot reels you in! Marlow, the narrator of Heart of Darkness and Conrad's alter ego, is hired by an ivory-trading company to sail a steamboat up an unnamed river whose shape on the map resembles "an immense snake uncoiled, with its head in the sea, its body at rest curving afar over a vast country and its tail lost in the depths of the land" (8). His destination is a post where the company's brilliant, ambitious star agent, Mr. Kurtz, is stationed. Kurtz has collected legendary quantities of ivory, but, Marlow learns along the way, is also rumored to have sunk into unspecified savagery. Marlow's steamer survives an attack by blacks and picks up a load of ivory and the ill Kurtz; Kurtz, talking of his grandiose plans, dies on board as they travel, downstream.

Sketched with only a few bold strokes, Kurtz's image has nonetheless remained in the memories of millions of readers: the lone white agent far up the great river, with his dreams of grandeur,his great store of precious ivory, and his fiefdom carved out of the African jungle.Perhaps more than anything, we remember Marlow, on the steamboat, looking through binoculars at what he thinks are ornamental knobs atop the fence posts in front of Kurtz's house and then finding that each is "black, dried, sunken, with closed eyelids-a head that seemed to sleep at the top of that pole, and with the shrunken dry lips showing a narrow white line of the teeth" (57).

I especially became interested in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness from the movie Apocalypse Now.There is a scene in the movie that shows Colonel Kurtz's nightstand in his cave.T. S. Elliott's poem the Waste Land is one of three books on the nightstand.The other two are Jessie L. Weston's book From Ritual to Romance, and J. G. Frazier's book The Golden Bough.Anyone wanting to understand the movie Apocalypse Now, especially the character of Colonel Kurtz, and what Milius and Copolla are trying to tell their audience need to read these three books as well as Conrad's Heart of Darkness!

As a graduate student reading in philosophy and history I recommend this book for anyone interested in literature, myth, history, philosophy, religion and fans of Apocalypse Now.

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The book has no illustrations or index. Purchasers are entitled to a free trial membership in the General Books Club where they can select from more than a million books without charge. Subjects: Fiction / Literary; ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Excellent Story, Questionable Edition
"Youth" is one of Conrad's most famous and acclaimed stories though not in my view one of his best. It is certainly well worth reading, but the fact that it is in so many collections - e.g., Heart of Darkness and Selected Short Fiction or Typhoon and Other Tales - makes it difficult to justify purchasing a standalone, especially as some collections cost little or no more than this.

Like the better-known "Heart of Darkness," "Youth" is told by the character Marlow through another first-person narrator, but the plot is more akin to the symbolic, adventure-esque seafaring stories of prior Conrad. There is more traditional excitement and suspense than in most Conrad, especially later work, which may attract those who usually dislike his fiction. However, as nearly always with him, symbolism is the real point. As the title suggests, this is a tale about youth and all it stands for and arguably one of its best literary representations. Marlow recalls the excitement and elation he felt when he first captained a ship, fondly recalling exuberance and naïveté long since lost. However, as so often in such situations, nearly everything goes wrong, and youthful ideals are put to experience's harshly dramatic test. "Youth" is thus a sort of mini-bildungsroman, though Marlow's mad rush for the symbolic finish at the end of his story proper shows he learned very little at the time. However, he is now wiser and older, and retelling the old story brings several ambivalent feelings. He sees how much he has conventionally grown and learned but cannot help lamenting the loss of idealism that is possible only in youth and that steadily dissipates with age to the extent that it becomes hardly recognizable. Many will unfortunately relate strongly to this, and there is a good dose of Conrad's always beautiful prose and, very unusually for him, even a little humor. "Youth" would easily be most writers' masterpiece but lacks the scope, ambition, and style of Conrad's best works. Anyone interested in Conrad should read it, but not necessarily here.
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Product Description
Chance(1914) was the first of Conrad's novels to bring him popular success and it holds a unique place among his works. It tells the story of Flora de Barral, a vulnerable and abandoned young girl who is "like a beggar, without a right to anything but compassion." After her bankrupt father is imprisoned, she learns the harsh fact that a woman in her position "has no resources but in herself."Her only means of action is to be what she is.Flora's long struggle to achieve some dignity and happiness makes her Conrad's most moving female character.

Reflecting the contemporary interest in the New Woman and the Suffragette question, Chance also marks the final appearance of Marlow, Conrad's most effective and wise narrator. This revised edition uses the English first edition text and has a new chronology and bibliography. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

The 'Chance' is Yours to Take!
Henry James didn't like Conrad's eighth novel, Chance. He criticized it as being "steeped in perfect eventual obscuration", with difficulties "wantonly evoked." I disagree completely. "Chance" seems to me one of Conrad's most deliberate novels, one in which he achieved narrative virtuosity, making the title subtly ironic since from a structural viewpoint nothing is left to `chance' and every twist of narration is superbly controlled. Curiously, the reading public in England and America may have felt the same admiration for this complex novel, since it became Conrad's first real `best seller.'

Henry James. Stephen Crane, Thomas Hardy, Edith Wharton, William Dean Howells, Ford Madox Ford, and Joseph Conrad. Are there any writers in English today who approach them in artistic `specific gravity'? That is, in the density of nuance and complexity of characterization, let alone the sheer scope of language? Could any of them even get published today, or have a career as a writer? The perspicacity of the reading public of their generation is not to be despised!

This novel is a tale retold by an unidentified narrator, of a tale told in several sessions by that consummate teller of tales, Marlow. But most of what Marlow tells is in turn second-hand retelling of what he has learned in explanation of events after the fact. Pay heed to the punctuation when you read this book; quotes within quotes within quotes abound. Yet this is anything but `wanton.' Much of Conrad's understanding of life can be perceived in his characters' need to act on information they don't yet have and to proceed through the passage of time without the foresight of a novelist with a plot outline in hand.

"High drama - suicide, swindles, elopement, love, murder - for a rousing good tale!" That's what the blurb on the dust-cover of my edition of Chance promises to the reader, and it's essentially true. But those crowd-pleasing elements could be written into a much less allusive, elusive pot-boiler by any old hack. Conrad, as usual, has written a novel that gets better the more you think about it, both while you read and after. "Chance" truly is the subject here, and I `think' that Conrad was struggling to redefine the meaning of chance, in fictional illustration, from the older concept of `luck' to a modern concept of `contingency' or accident. The older sense of chance represented something internal - intrinsic - to the individual. That's why coincidences and chance encounters seemed so plausible to Victorian novelists; such `chances' were bound to happen! The `chances' that occur in Conrad's novel certainly determine the course of events, but they are NOT bound to happen. It's not claiming too much to say that Conrad was one of the first novelists in English to write in the post-Darwin climate of scientific relativism, of atomistic, impersonal chance.

Long live Marlow! I'd give a gland to run across him in a hoary harbor tavern on the Thames, and to sit spellbound for an evening, listening to one of his wanton narrations!

Marlow mostly landlocked, mastering irony
This is one of the few Conrads that I had not read before. From the descriptions I had gotten a wrong impression and had stayed away in the past. I expected a sombre rumination of female problems. Wrong expectations!

It is Marlow's last performance, and it is more land-based than his 3 previous tales; but not entirely! Marlow has matured and has broader interests, he is looking into society, describes a strangely modern financial fraudster, takes up women's movement as a subject, with less than full enthusiasm.

Marlow has changed his sense of humour, he is an ironist now. Past Marlows were entirely un-humorous, to the extent that I mistook him for Conrad and was surprised how funny some of Conrad's non-Marlow tales are. Take Secret Agent!
Chance is as funny as Secret Agent. And yet it is also a Victorian standard plot, a damsel in distress story as any of the wildest romances of the previous century. If one would want to summarize the 'plot', it would sound very pedestrian, so I don't do it.

Like Lord Jim, this novel started as a short story, initially called Dynamite. Like Rescue, Chance was interrupted and took years to be completed. Like Victory, it was an amazing commercial success for a writer who was a typical writer's writer: high reputation, little business. This book sold like hot cakes in the US and gave Conrad a comfortable last decade of his life.
One might suspect the bestseller status was due to a misunderstanding, and the introduction to this edition presumes that Chance was a very unread bestseller. I am not so sure. The novel is quite entertaining. While the plot (fraudster's daughter in existential trouble gets rescued by sailor after going through all kinds of other people's schemes) is nothing spectacular, the manner of telling it is a very amusing way of the Marlow narration style: he collects bits and pieces from several sources and the tale's story is happening over 17 years. It is never a difficult structure and Marlow's ponderous style in, say, the Heart, is replaced by light-handed banter.

I found it very enjoyable.
'Luckily people are for the most part quite incapable of understanding what is happening to them; a merciful provision of nature to preserve an average amount of sanity.'

Marlow does it again
Chance is a wonderful Conrad novel that no one really pays attention to nowadays. True, it does not have the same magic as Lord Jim or Heart of Darkness, but it is brilliant in that Conradian way. It features the return of Marlow, so it is an especially interesting read for Conrad fans who have been with Marlow through other novels and stories. His role in this book is less hands-on. He does not have a very strong tie to the two characters he most discusses. He does, however, have a more active role in the actual narration. His audience this time is not passive, but questions his analyses and puts in their own ideas. A hilarious example:
"You are the expert in the psychological wilderness. This is like one of those Redskin stories where the noble savages carry off a girl and the honest backwoodsman with his incomparable knowledge follows the track and reads the signs of her fate in a footprint here, a broken twig there, a trinklet dropped by the way."

For those unfamiliar with Marlow, the commentator is refering to his capacity for putting together pieces of information to create a sketch of a person, and we have to filter through some of Marlow's pretensions to get a real view of what is going on in his story. At one point, he compares women to electricity. Both have been captured, "but what sort of conquest would you call it? (Man) knows nothing of it. And the greater the demand he makes on it in the exultation of his pride the more likely it is to turn on him and burn him to a cinder." Ah, Marlow, you rambling fool.

This is the novel that brought Conrad popular success, rather late in his career. It is one of his only female characters with a dominant role, but don't expect a strong feminist type. Flora de Barral is naive, at the mercy of others and their wills. I didn't feel quite as close to the characters, and Conrad tries a little too hard to philosophize on the role of chance and circumstance in our lives. Still, very enjoyable, witty, pure Conrad that you shouldn't miss. ... Read more

Product Description
Heart of Darkness is a novella written by Joseph Conrad. Before its 1902 publication, it appeared as a three-part series (1899) in Blackwood's Magazine. It is widely regarded as a significant work of English literature and part of the Western canon.

The story details an incident when Marlow, an Englishman, took a foreign assignment as a ferry-boat captain, employed by a Belgian trading company. Although the river is never specifically named, readers may assume it is the Congo River, in the Congo Free State, a private colony of King Leopold II. Marlow is employed to transport ivory downriver; however, his more pressing assignment is to return Kurtz, another ivory trader, to civilization in a cover up. Kurtz has a reputation throughout the region.

This very symbolic story is actually a story within a story, or frame narrative. It follows Marlow as he recounts, from dusk through to late night, his adventure into the Congo to a group of men aboard a ship anchored in the Thames Estuary. It should be noted from a structuralist point of view that Marlow is also the name of a town situated on the Thames further upstream from London.(Description obtained from Wikipedia)

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Customer Reviews (1)

A classic, but free on Gutenberg
I won't bother you with details about the book itself, beyond saying that it's a far easier read than a lot of other "classic" books you either suffered through (or avoided) during high-school or college.Joseph Conrad's native language wasn't English, and I think that shows in how he uses much simpler prose than a lot of other late Victorian authors--think of him more like a British Hemingway.This would be a great companion piece to a viewing of "Apocalypse Now", which, of course, was based upon this book.

Be forewarned--if you're the politically correct type and offended by pejorative language, this book is not for you.Conrad uses the "N-Word" more than a Jay-Z download; you have to remember that he was a late 19th century European.

Lastly, the cheap price for "direct from Amazon" for the Kindle isn't bad, but you can get it even cheaper (like, free) from Project Gutenberg, and then have Amazon convert the text file into a Kindle-friendly format.I bought this to have the interactive table of contents, to discover that there's only something like four chapters for the entire book.If there were more chapters (say, for something like the Bible), then paying for an interactive TOC would be worth it. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (3)

A Thought Mine Novel About a Silver Mine
Nostromo is one of Joseph Conrad's longer novels, and one in which he doesn't make use of his typical "undependable narrator." Instead, the tale is told by an omniscient narrator. That is, I think, a source of weakness. The narrator wants to tell too much, wants to analyze too much, describes too much. In other words, the book is too long and too diffuse. It has too many themes: notions of human behavior and motivation, insights into the nature of political brutality and corruption, counter-insights into the virtues of simple working people and their loyalties, a flaming love story, a burned-out love story, and a tale of the temptation and 'fall' of the everyman Nostromo. Conrad expounds the ideals of the "blancos" - the upper-class globalizing developers - who are the central characters of the novel with complete sympathy, and yet he also tosses in the rhetoric of the rebels, called 'liberals' although in normal economic terms the blancos are the liberals. The n-word is thrown at these peasants and poor folk rather freely, but underneath Conrad's commitment to the interests of his 'blanco' hero, one can detect a strong taint of revolutionary sympathy for the underdogs. I wish it were clear that Conrad was deliberately undercutting the 'victory' of the progressive classes by revealing the injustices and exploitations they commit to the working classes, but it's not so clear. One has to suspect Conrad of wanting to have it both ways, to "have his cake and eat it too."

Nonetheless, I can't imagine NOT enjoying such a vivid, picturesque, risk-taking novel. It's full of lusty humor and sardonic wit. It has glorious descriptions of the tropical sights and sounds of the imaginary Latin American country where the story happens. It has a cast of powerful and believable characters. I can't conceive of giving any Conrad novels less than five stars when police thrillers and Avon romances get rave reviews. Nostromo is not close to Conrad's best novel, but even Conrad's weakest novels are rich concoctions of ideas and action. If you've read "Under Western Eyes" - Conrad's finest social/political novel - you might well want to read Nostromo in particular, in that it expands and complicates Conrad's perceptions of the abuse of authority.

Overwrought and tedious
I wish I had a better review for this book, but I really can't say I enjoyed it. It's clear that Conrad put a lot of work into writing the book. At least, he put a lot of work into the writing of the book. Every single sentence of this book is a work of art. Conrad writes each sentence as if his life depended on it. Pure, unabashed, overwrought tedium.

The story is about political change in the fictitious South American country of Costaguana and its crown jewel Sulaco. It's also about the rich silver mine on the island. And it's about the foreigners who come to take so much from the country for their own gain. It never really brings these themes together coherently.

The first half of the book (up to the second section, 6th chapter) sets up the scene. Characters are introduced and thrown away, locations are presented and detailed from the tips of the mountains to the smoldering candles of the inns. This part of the book reads very slowly. It's like slogging through mud in a dense fog. The reader is tempted to skim this section, but I found myself more confused if I didn't read a sentence carefully than if I spent a minute on each one.

The second half of the book, starting at the second section, 6th chapter, is where the book starts moving. The political revolution occuring in Costaguana threatens the safety and tranquility of Sulaco, so a plan is hatched to resist the marching armies of Montero and to make Sulaco an independent country. This story is interesting compared to the rest of the book, but it is by no means a captivating story.

For all the work that the book requires of the reader, the payoff is slight. Compare the difficult poetry of Nostromo to All the King's Men. Nostromo suffers greatly because of its lack of cohesion and minimal plot. It relies on the strength of the prose to carry the book, but the text is uninviting and difficult. All the King's Men, on the other hand, is wordy and terribly over-written, but the story is never subordinated to the prose.

I can't in good conscience recommend this book. It may be worth it if you are dying to read Joseph Conrad, but otherwise the book is hopelessly long and unfulfilling. The writing gets 2 stars and the story gets 1, so 3 stars total, but these are a hesitant 3 stars.

"Costaguana will always be run by butchers and tyrants."
Often regarded as Conrad's masterwork, Nostromo is also Conrad's darkest novel, filled with betrayals at all levels and offering little hope for man's redemption. A novel of huge scope and political intrigue, it is also a novel in which no character actually wins. All must accept the ironies which fate has dealt them. Setting the novel in the imaginary South American country of Costaguana, the story centers around a silver mine in the mountains outside of the capital, Sulaco, vividly depicting its allure and the price each character pays for its success.

When Charles Gould, returns from England to claim and reopen the rich silver mine he has inherited from his father, he has good intentions-- to provide jobs for the peasants and contribute to the economy of the town at the same time that he also profits. Soon, however, he becomes obsessed with wealth and power, and as the political climate gets hotter, he must pay off government officials, bandits, the church, and various armed revolutionaries to be able to work. Each of these groups is vividly depicted as working for its own ends and not for the good of the people, and with their goals focused on the real world, these characters have no self-awareness, nor do they develop it during the novel.

In contrast to these "unrealized" humans, Conrad presents several characters who develop some self-awareness through their experiences. Nostromo, a local legend, is a man of principle who has always kept his word. Martin Decoud, a newspaper man, is a nihilist who has editorialized against the revolution, though he has yet to test himself. Dr. Monygham, captured during a past revolution, broke under torture, and is now seeking absolution by fighting against this revolution. And the good and long-suffering wife of Charles Gould, Dona Emilia, spends her time helping others.

When Nostromo agrees to protect a load of silver from revolutionaries by taking it out to sea, Conrad provides a bleak commentary on idealism and human nature. The conclusion, which includes a love story that feels tacked on, reveals Conrad's darkest self and offers little hope of change and even less hope for man's redemption. Rich in atmosphere, vibrant in description, filled with characters representing all walks of life and philosophy, and set in a country where revolution is a way of life, the novel is full of dark portents and bleak political outcomes.Mary Whipple
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Product Description
This seventh of the eight-volume edition of the collected letters of Joseph Conrad covers Conrad's letters during the period 1920-22.Like its predecessors, this volume includes a high proportion of previously unpublished letters, or letters which have only previously appeared in small-circulation journals. Nearing his 70th year, and with his literary career drawing to a close, Conrad still manages to impress the reader with his interests in literature and the public events of his time. ... Read more

Product Description
This unique editon brings together twelve classic Conrad tales which mirror, in form and theme, Conrad's own ambiguous and hybrid status in imperial England. This edition is the first to reprint these stories as they first appeared in popular magazines of the time. William Atkinson's introduction explores the "double-voiced" nature of Conrad's narratives as well as his ironic treatment of the adventure-romance genre popularized by his contemporaries, Stevenson, Kipling, and Rider-Haggard. ... Read more

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The shallow sea that foams and murmurs on the shores of the thousand islandsbig and littlewhich make up the Malay Archipelago has been for centuries the scene of adventurous undertakings. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

Very weak book from a very strong writer
I have read several of Joseph Conrad's books.I was very disappointed with this one.It was difficult to follow the action.The characters were 2 dimensional.The only good part was the usual Conrad capture of place.

Ponderous, Powerful, Prescient and definitely worth a read.
Conrad is one of those authors whose books I read years apart in order to make his oeuvre last the course of my lifetime, and because they are emotionally disturbing.This book is one that I would put in the same category as his book titled 'The Rover.' Although the themes of the two books are dissimilar, they pull upon the same heartstrings in their treatment of love, loyalty and duty.
'The Rescue' expands these themes beyond the merely personal and places them within the context of the clash of cultures; social, historical, and political.
Enough of pretentiousness.What happens is that a magnificent specimen of a man gets caught up in native intrigue in the Indonesian Archipelago as he seeks to make good on a promise made years ago to a native prince intent upon restoring his claim to the throne.Problems arise when the personal yacht of a British diplomat enroute from Manila to Singapore runs aground at precisely the spot where our hero's promise is to be kept.
Suffice it to say that the yacht and its contents become the objects of desire to all the parties involved for various conflicting reasons.
Resolution of these conflicts invariably ends in tragedy, as Conrad himself predicts numerous times in the course of his narration.
Anyone who has been smitten by love at first sight will find this story especially engaging and sad and wonderful.
I take especial pleasure in Conrad's wonderfully improbable sentence structure and eccentric word play.His are the only sentences that I can take pleasure from reading repeatedly to myself in order to fully appreciate or comprehend the thought being conveyed.
I call this novel prescient because it appears obvious to me that F. Scott Fitzgerald borrowed heavily from this book when writing 'The Great Gatsby,' as the underlying themes of the two books are too similar and non-universal for there not to be a connection.Read them both and see if you don't agree.

Fascinating love/adventure story, but tedious, cryptic, and somewhat unsatisfying
The Rescue is another of Joseph Conrad's oft-overlooked later novels.It is significant because Conrad started it early in his writing career, but set it aside until much later, when as some critics have characterized the great writer was in a creative decline, no doubt emboldened by Conrad's own words.Also noteworthy is the prominence of Tom Lingard, a familiar Conrad character from Almayer's Folly and An Outcast of the Islands.
Whether in decline or not (and this is not a foregone conclusion), Conrad works hard here, employing a deliberate pace and exhaustive atmosphere reminiscent of one his earlier masterpieces, Nostromo. Yet, the somewhat familiar choice between honor and passion is, as critics have argued, ultimately less successful in The Rescue. It tells a brooding love story set against island adventure.Captain Tom Lingard, a man of action, finds his characteristic resolve paralyzed by romantic passion when called to honor his promises to a man he owes his life.Conrad spends a lot of time painting the passion between Lingard and the tragic Mrs. Travers, but the inevitability and impossibility of their relationship is confused and unsatisfying.
I particularly enjoyed the first 100 pages. Telling so little action, but thoroughly setting the mood, this is the quintessential Conrad one either loves or hates. Then, when the plot takes off, he tries to shroud the characters and story in mystery.Think Heart of Darkness, but the mysterious tension here does not leave the book and surround you with the rhythmic sound and pressure of a beating heart.If you are a fan of Conrad's style, you will be in familiar territory, but again, this is not one of his most accessible or gripping novels.
Nor is The Rescue Conrad's best adventure or love story.It is tedious, and I was left feeling let down by Mrs. Travers.It is in many ways a retelling of An Outcast of the Islands, but I do not fault Conrad for again trying to tell the reader about the choice between love and passion, especially when he employs different characters in different phases of life.I enjoyed The Rescue more the second time, after having read all of Conrad's stories, and I believe there is reward in approaching his recurring themes from different perspectives.

Conrad - What more needs to be said.
As an avid Conrad fan, I found it refreshing to come across a book which I didn't know existed. Not his best work, but well worth reading because Conrad always comes through with descriptive scenery, and interesting character interaction. KLM

Lingards Dilemna
The familiar Conrad hero Captain Tom Lingard(Outcast of the Islands) comes to the rescue of an English pleasure yacht that has foundered in the shallows just as war is about to break out between Malay tribes.Tom has war supplies including gunpowder stored in his own boat that has been turned into a fort and Tom's decisions will greatly effect the outcome of the war. Meanwhile though there is the English problem which Tom sees as being just that until he spies on board a lovely woman. Thats enough to distract our hero from his more pressing war time duties. Romantic Tom recalls Lord Jim and is in fact Jims brother, but heis not as complex or as troubled as Jim was so this is more a tale of pure adventure. External events take precedence over internal conflicts and so the adventure can be enjoyed for just that. Not one of Conrads most important works but still it exerts a lot of appeal. Anything by the best writer ever of sea and island tales is worth my time. ... Read more

Product Description
Joseph Conrad is not only one of the world's great writers of English -- and world -- literature, but was a writer who lived a particularly full and interesting life. For the biographer this is a double-edged sword, however: there are many periods for which documentation is uncommonly difficult. Zdzislaw Najder's meticulously documented biography first appeared in English in 1983, garnering high praise as the best, most complete biography of Conrad. Najder's command of English, French, Polish, and Russian allowed him access to a greater variety of sources than any other biographer, and his Polish background and his own experience as an exile have afforded him a unique affinity for Conrad and his milieu. All this has come into play once again in the present, extensively revised edition: much of its extensive new material was unearthed in newly-opened former east-bloc archives. There is new material on Conrad's father's genealogy and his role in Polish politics; Conrad's service in the French and British merchant marines; his early English reading and correspondence; his experiences in the Congo; the circumstances of writing his memoirs, and much more. In addition, several aspects of Conrad's life and works are more thoroughly analyzed: his problems with the English language; his borrowings from French writers; his attitude toward socialism, his reaction to the reception of his books. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Conrad as a man
This book helps greatly in understanding the background and viewpoint of Conrad's works.It also characterizes Conrad as a very human and simple man.I came away almost pitying the man. ... Read more

Product Description
Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness is not simply a critique of colonialism in the Congo; it is a tale of the human tendency toward self-endangering corruptibility. Harold Bloom suggests it has taken on some power of myth.

The title, Joseph Conrad's’s Heart of Darkness, part of Chelsea House Publishers’ Modern Critical Interpretations series, presents the most important 20th-century criticism on Joseph Conrad's’s Heart of Darkness through extracts of critical essays by well-known literary critics.This collection of criticism also features a short biography on Joseph Conrad's, a chronology of the author’s life, and an introductory essay written by Harold Bloom, Sterling Professor of the Humanities, Yale University. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

"Mistah Kurtz--he dead." An influential work on five 20th century seminal works
I read this book for a graduate Humanities course.Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, written in 1899 is a seminal work about the ills of colonialism, as well as a postmodern look at the subject of mankind.Conrad's book had a crucial influence on five important works of the twentieth century: J. G. Frazier's book The Golden Bough.Jessie L. Weston's book From Ritual to Romance, T. S. Elliott's poem the Waste Land, Joseph Campbell's Hero with a Thousand Faces, and Francis Ford Coppolla's movie Apocalypse Now, screenplay by John Milius, was based on Conrad's book.Another interesting fact is that this work was read by Orson Welle's Mercury Theater Players on the radio and was to be his first movie.After doing some work on it he abandoned the project to do Citizen Kane!I would have loved to of seen what Welles could have done with this story.Conrad's story is so riveting in part, because he himself served as a riverboat captain.High school teachers and college professors who have discussed this book in thousands of classrooms over the years tend to do so in terms of Freud, Jung, and Nietzsche; of classical myth, Victorian innocence, and original sin; of postmodernism, postcolonialism, and poststructuralism.

Just a taste of the plot reels you in! Marlow, the narrator of Heart of Darkness and Conrad's alter ego, is hired by an ivory-trading company to sail a steamboat up an unnamed river whose shape on the map resembles "an immense snake uncoiled, with its head in the sea, its body at rest curving afar over a vast country and its tail lost in the depths of the land" (8). His destination is a post where the company's brilliant, ambitious star agent, Mr. Kurtz, is stationed. Kurtz has collected legendary quantities of ivory, but, Marlow learns along the way, is also rumored to have sunk into unspecified savagery. Marlow's steamer survives an attack by blacks and picks up a load of ivory and the ill Kurtz; Kurtz, talking of his grandiose plans, dies on board as they travel, downstream.

Sketched with only a few bold strokes, Kurtz's image has nonetheless remained in the memories of millions of readers: the lone white agent far up the great river, with his dreams of grandeur, his great store of precious ivory, and his fiefdom carved out of the African jungle.Perhaps more than anything, we remember Marlow, on the steamboat, looking through binoculars at what he thinks are ornamental knobs atop the fence posts in front of Kurtz's house and then finding that each is "black, dried, sunken, with closed eyelids-a head that seemed to sleep at the top of that pole, and with the shrunken dry lips showing a narrow white line of the teeth" (57).

I especially became interested in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness from the movie Apocalypse Now.There is a scene in the movie that shows Colonel Kurtz's nightstand in his cave.T. S. Elliott's poem the Waste Land is one of three books on the nightstand.The other two are Jessie L. Weston's book From Ritual to Romance, and J. G. Frazier's book The Golden Bough.Anyone wanting to understand the movie Apocalypse Now, especially the character of Colonel Kurtz, and what Milius and Copolla are trying to tell their audience need to read these three books as well as Conrad's Heart of Darkness!

As a graduate student reading in philosophy and history I recommend this book for anyone interested in literature, myth, history, philosophy, religion and fans of Apocalypse Now.

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