Customer Reviews

Joseph Conrad: The Three Lives : A Biography

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Mark Twain once said, "Analyzing humor is a lot like dissecting a frog. It's an interested process, but it kills the frog!" The same can be said for analyzing literature, which is mostly what Mr. Karl did in his book.

For my own self, I very much enjoy biographies and have read a lot of them. Literature being a special interest, I have read a fair number of biographies on writers. Peter Ackroyd's book on Dickens and Jackson J. Benson's book on Steinbeck are nice door-stopper size books (the kind I favor), but unlike Mr. Karl, Acrkroyd and Benson wrote fascinating books. Mr. Karl spent the most of his 900 plus pages of text in trying to determine where Conrad got his ideas. And accomplished nothing!

I cannot tell you how many tedious discussions this book had attempting to determine where Conrad got his inspiration for one book or another. And the bulk of these discussions had the same tagline: "But this is all speculation." THEN WHY BRING IT UP!!!!

I really don't know why I waded through the entire book, but if you try it and find that it's a bit tedious, stop! It does NOT get better!

I do now know the details of Conrad's life, and found that part of things most interesting (hence the one star), but this is not the biography I would recommend for those who want to read about Conrad. I really hate the idea of writing a review that slams a book, but ye gods!

Jozef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski
lived as a child amongst revolutionaries in Poland,
but read about the sea and dreamt of wild adventures.
He watched his mother die in exile in Siberia
and his father follow her to the grave soon thereafter.

Seasons of the mind can be taught to rule the heart.

Joseph Conrad survived a life of tedium and hair breadth escapes at sea,
but dreamt of understanding what drives and saddles men's souls.
He is rumored to have killed a man in a barroom brawl

and then escaped to England to take on a new identity.

There is very little time for true understanding.

Father and author Conrad lived quietly in a London suburb
and wrote in epic stretches that left him sleeping on the floor.
One day he emerged from his writing studio
and did not recognize his own son in the hallway.

Life stumbles on through fields of crowded emotion.
There is no loss of honor in fearing life's many deaths.