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The Portable Conrad (Penguin Classics)

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I was amazed to see that I am the first to review this classic book. I borrowed this book and brought it with me to read while helping deliver a yacht.

The trip was a memorable one, for many reasons, not least among them was finishing "The Nigger in the Narcissus" a story of a dying black man's anger during last days of life aboard a ship, "Typhoon" the story of a steam trapped in a hurricane, and "Youth" the story of a second mate's trip to Asia on a dilapidated ship.

I especially enjoyed the descriptions of the storms in "Narcissus " and "Typhoon".

It is said that truth is stranger than fiction. Conrad's stories may be fiction, but they evoke a sense of realism that no other author manages to capture.

Conrad, a Pole, is arguably the best English writer of all time. His characters are unique and real, and the stories are real world, challenging situations that are unpredictable and yet follow the laws of human nature, and are therefore somewhat more than real.

This book is a nice compact size and print in type that is also easy to read. There is enough material here to carry with you on your voyage, wherever that may be.

If you want to bring only one book with you on your next trip, this would be a good choice.

CONRAD

Joseph Conrad (born Konrad Korzienowski) spoke no language but his native Polish until his early twenties, when he embarked on mercantile ships to find himself.

In short order, he acquired not only a facility with English, but a genius for distilling the human experience into a few short paragraphs. In "The Nigger of the Narcissus," he examines both the alientation of a minority member , and the insularity of shipboard life in the 19th Century.

It is impossible to read a page of Conrad without being absorbed into the Scenario.
For instance:

"Men stood around very still and with exasperated eyes. It was just what they had expected, and hated to hear, that idea of a stalking death, thrust at them many times a day like a boast and like a menace by this obnoxious nigger. He said to take a pride in that death, which so far, had attended only upon the ease of his life. ....Was he a reality - or was he a sham... this ever-expected visitor...?

The short novel is a demanding genre, of which Conrad is a master. "Typhoon," "Benito Cereno" , "Heart of Darkness" and "The Secret Sharer" are other classics. "Typhoon" contains some of the most vivid descriptions of a storm at sea as have ever been written.
"It was something formidable and swift, like the sudden smashing of a vial of wrath. It seemed to explose all round the ship with an overpowering concussion and a rush of great waters, as if an immense dam had been blown up to windward. .... A fuirious gale attacks him like a personal enemy, tries to grasp his limbs, fastens upon his mind, seks to rout his very spirit out of him."
"Benito Cereno" is a study in suspended animation... the action takes place below the surface.
And "Heart of Darkness" explores the very nature of evil.
In all...this is an excellent collection, with an outstanding introduction by Morton Dawen Zabel. (Five Stars)

This great collection has three of Joseph Conrad's excellent short novels -- The...Narcissus (Amazon won't allow the full title), Heart of Darkness, Typhoon) -- and two excellent short stories "Youth" and "The Secret Sharer." This is not only convenient but a great value, making the book a great buy for anyone who can track it down.

Though not in Joseph Conrad's top tier, The...Narcissus (Amazon won't allow the full title) is an excellent novel that would be most writers' best. Conrad turned to writing when nearly forty after more than twenty years at sea, and his early work is dominated by what he experienced on his many voyages. This is no different but significant in coming after his last trip, thus serving as both a goodbye to the sea and a formal introduction to writing. It is not his first novel but is in many ways his most representative - the culmination of his early sea adventure slant and the real beginning of the dense psychological penetration characterizing his masterpieces. Conrad wrote that it was the book by which he would stand or fall as an artist, and so it is; nearly everything great about his later work is here, and there are bits of excellence to which he rarely or never returned. He stands tall indeed.

Like nearly all Conrad, the book works on two levels. The most obvious is a rollicking sea adventure. Those who love the picaresque voyages so common in nineteenth century literature will hardly find a better one; this has all the excitement, suspense, and drama one could want. The voyage has many trials: grueling challenges, hairs-breadth escapes, great tests of strength and stamina, and more. Nearly everything bad that could happen does, pushing weathered sailors to the max in a way that is both entertaining and a tribute to human will and endurance. Even many who find classic literature boring will be engrossed.

This aspect is also of great historical value as a fascinating peek into a bygone era. Life on a ship was practically its own world, often with little connection or similarity to life on land. Conrad vividly shows what a merchant ship voyage was like, painstakingly detailing every aspect from departure to arrival. We see ship life's ups and downs, its bright and dark sides, and also learn much about sailors; everything from daily routines to customs and speech are memorably and believably dramatized.

Here we come to the more important part - the book's dark symbolism. Oscar Wilde said that all art is at once surface and symbol and that those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril; this proves it. Few writers - nay, few people - have been as pessimistic as Conrad, and this lays bare much of his dark vision. While he clearly shows that people are capable of bravery, remarkable feats, and other conventional virtues, he also unflinchingly displays human nature's dark side. As he was always ready to reveal, this lurks always beneath even an ostensibly calm or formidable surface and can jump out without warning - often destructively. Moral ambiguity was his favorite subject, and this explores it profoundly. Specifically, it shows how a single dying black sailor unnerves a white crew - not because of the xenophobia one might expect but ironically because he elicits sympathy. This is in one sense moving, a tribute to human empathy that in many ways shows what is best in people - that, indeed, even the most outwardly selfish and shallow have latent humanity that can come out in extremity. However, the seemingly paradoxical fact that the same stimulus leads to arguments, fights, and near mutiny hints at the other pole of existence that Conrad never lets us forget. One of his great strengths is that, while he dramatizes a wealth of weighty issues, he never stoops to the heavy-handedness so common in writers handling such material and nearly always fatal. He raises the difficult question of empathy vs. unmoved strength and the consequent one of whether the former, however otherwise sublime, has any place in situations like ship life, where truly only the strong survive and even a tinge of weakness may prove disastrous.

This hints at some of the more notable ship life aspects that are still largely unknown - namely that, as in military life, a rare camaraderie is achieved among people who are often very different and would perhaps hardly get along otherwise or even have anything to do with each other. Also noteworthy is just how cosmopolitan ships were, making general concord all the more incredible. However primitive ship life was beside land life in many ways, it was certainly well ahead here.

Inevitably, this brings up the issue of the title, which seems not only politically incorrect but thoroughly perverse. Much has been written on Conrad's race views, and the issue is of great interest and relevance not merely to scholars but to anyone interested in his work. There are of course many who understandably will take the ostensible high road and refuse to read anything with such a title, and probably at least as many apologists are ready to defend Conrad against claims of racism or anything else. However, it is important to avoid knee-jerk reactions and recall a few essential facts. First, it is important to realize that the term as then used in England referred not to Africans or African Americans but West Indians; the character in question is from St. Kitts. Second, though it clearly had racist overtones, it was often used without conscious racism - perhaps even a majority of the time - as a way of designating race or nationality, much as one might say "Irishman" or "Yankee." That said, later sensitivity to the word and all it stands for is a positive development, and we must not excuse Conrad or the book as the product of an era, since there were after all even then some aware of the harm that could come from the word and its significations.

With this in mind, we can proceed to how things work in context. It is certainly true that James Wait, the titular personage, is presented in a way that is often clearly racist; such a characterization would now be near-unpublishable. However, there is far more going on than it first appears. Wait enters the story as an enigma, and the various whites view him with unsurprising distrust and suspicion. Yet it soon becomes clear that he is the subtlest character; though often described as variously primitive, he may well be the most intelligent and well-spoken and is certainly the most resourceful. This is reflected in how the narrator refers to him. The title slur is first used near-ubiquitously, and he is described in overtly racist ways. However, his real name or neutral references are used once his individuality becomes known; the pejorative and racist descriptions are almost gone by the middle of the book, never to return. This suggests that racism and xenophobia generally stem mainly from ignorance and gradually recede with familiarity, the outsiders in question becoming individuals rather than racial cutouts. Regardless of how far Conrad meant this to extend, Wait is anything but a Victorian stereotype and has many traditionally admirable qualities. Even so, like the other characters, we are never quite sure what to make of him. Is he sincere or a fraud? Loathsome and despicable or sympathetic and misunderstood? Conrad has no easy answers, but his nuanced portrait of a true Victorian outsider earns both our sympathy and our fascination and is remarkably subtle for its time despite the title.

Perhaps the foremost thing to remember is that the titular epithet refers specifically to Wait; the book makes no sweeping claims about race or anything else. Indeed, for what it is worth, many ethnic groups and nationalities are disparaged with pejoratives and other condemnations, all others being white. This may be a sign of Conrad's misanthropic streak but is above all simply realistic; he was devoted to realism however harsh the subject and would not have shrunken from showing how sailors really thought, acted, and spoke, however unwholesome to Mrs. Grundy. We can easily and legitimately debate his motives in using the title as well as insisting on it despite controversy. Perhaps he wanted attention or was being provocative, but it was again most likely a realist instinct. Even knowing all this, some may find it hard to buy or read a book with such a title, especially to keep it on their bookshelf - perhaps even only because of what the uninitiated may say. Those who like the book or want to read it but just cannot make the plunge can, if they choose, take the easy way out by getting one of many collections containing the work without including it in the title.

Wait is in any event not the only interesting character. This has one of Conrad's largest and most diverse casts, and all are drawn with memorable vigor. As anyone at all familiar with him would expect, he puts none on a pedestal. Most are indeed at least partly vile, again showing human nature's dark side, but there is something courageous or otherwise admirable - even noble - about most of them as well, giving further nuance. The penetrating psychological characterization of a single character so characteristic of Conrad is not here, but he distributes his artistry more evenly, which is about equally compelling.

Conrad certainly wrote many more seagoing tales, and themes dealt with for the rest of his career are largely anticipated here, but this also differs from other work in important ways. For instance, he is infamous for lacking humor, but this has many light-hearted elements, especially in regard to characters - some of whom are comical in a near-Dickensian manner - and their actions; Chapter One in particular is almost a burlesque. This gives some relief from the alternating high adventure and high seriousness that some miss in more representative work. Also, in great contrast to most later works, the narrative is straight-forward - linear and simply told without nested dialogue or other ambiguous subjectivity. The feeling of being lost and/or confused that makes Conrad hard going for so many is absent. This will be a great relief to some but also holds the book back. Those who value Conrad's ground-breaking and influential narrative techniques will be disappointed, but more importantly, the narrator himself is uncertainly drawn. He first seems to be a third-person omniscient narrator but eventually reveals himself as first-person. However, he never really seems to be present, often describing things he could not have seen without saying how he knows, and he is not addressed until the last few pages. Conrad at times even seems to forget that the narration is supposed to be first-person, seemingly slipping into third-person without warning only to return as quickly. This may have been deliberate, either to introduce ambiguity or perhaps even influenced by Moby-Dick, of which much the same can be said. In the end, though, it seems simply sloppy - an early instance of indecision in an area he later mastered.

One strength that was fully in place even at this early date is mesmerizing prose. Conrad is one of the great English stylists, which is almost incredible in that he was not a native speaker. His descriptions are lush and memorable, eminently quotable and often unforgettable, whether about the sea, the ship, or human thoughts and feelings. The prose is indeed so strong that one could read for it alone, though there is of course far more.

All told, this is essential for fans, while the combination of being representative and straight-forward makes it an ideal place for neophytes to start. It has been overshadowed by admittedly better later works but deserves more recognition. Do not be scared by the title or the difficulty of other Conrad works; this is excellent, enlightening, readable, moving, and thought-provoking - a true classic.

"Heart of Darkness" is Conrad's most famous and arguably best work - not only one of the greatest short works ever but simply one of the greatest period. At once vividly realistic and profoundly symbolic, it on the one hand did much to expose the Belgian Congo's atrocities and on the other is a brilliant allegory whose precise meaning is still hotly debated over a century later. One would be very hard-pressed to find a text of such length with so many and various interpretations - nay, a text of any length; Shakespeare and a few other mainstays aside, hardly any other English language text has proven so malleable. It has been seen through lenses ranging from historical to psychoanalytic to seemingly everything between them - not least including biographical, as the scariest thing about the story is just how closely it is based on Conrad's experience. "Heart" is in many ways the culmination of early Conrad, which featured, among other focuses, a strong sea element and an emphasis on European colonialism in Africa and elsewhere. It fuses both into a dark masterpiece that works on many levels. Most simply and obviously, it can be appreciated as a sort of adventure story involving exploration and human endurance pushed to its limit; it has some fine suspense in this sense. Far more importantly, it is an unflinching look into the darkness of humanity's heart - a dramatization of just how low human nature can sink. This is most overt in the depiction of brutal inhumanity toward fellow human beings, but multiple symbolic layers make it all the more disturbing. Conrad shows that, for all civilization's supposed progress, the bestial instincts underlying humanity are only repressed - and quite weakly at that. It takes only an ostensibly primitive setting to bring them out, and when unleashed they can be at least as vicious as any wild animal's and worse in being malicious. Marlow's own harsh experience suggests all this, but it comes across most forcefully in the legendary character Kurtz. Like many ambitious but unethical Europeans of the era, Kurtz had no problem exploiting those in the Congo for personal gain, but the shocking conditions and enforced brutality eventually wear him down to the point where he snaps. It is debatable whether his days end in madness or some extreme guilt/shock combination, but his immortal final words - "The horror! The horror!" - sum up the whole story and all it symbolizes. The realization of just how bad things are hits Marlow so hard that he cannot bring himself to tell Kurtz's widow the truth, letting her think that his last words were her name, though he was so far gone that he had no time to even think of such things. As his final comment says, "It would have been too dark--too dark altogether..." Much the same may be said of the story itself, so realistically unflattering is its humanity depiction, which is a large part of the reason it is a masterwork. There are many others, not least Conrad's hauntingly beautiful and complex prose. Much of his reputation as a stylist comes from this, and it is simply incredible that he was not a native English speaker.

These factors among many others made "Heart" a standard of English curricula for decades, and its popularity shows no sign of lessening. However, it has been the focus of attention for another reason in the last few decades - racist accusations stemming from African writer Chinua Achebe's famous essay. Conrad was certainly prejudiced and ethnocentric, if not necessarily racist in today's sense, which is reflected in "Heart" and most of his other work. That said, for what it is worth, he was no more so than the average writer - much less the average person - of his day. Indeed, his experience as a Polish, initially non-English speaking outsider on ships around the world and in England gave him more empathy for those outside mainstream Western culture than nearly anyone else in it could have had. One can even argue that it is perverse to pick on "Heart" when racist overtones can be found in nearly every work from the Victorian era - nay, nearly everything right up until the last few decades - since it shows some empathy for Africans, is generally seen as anti-colonialist, and eventually helped lead to reform. Many also say that such a stance misses the story's larger point, racist or not. Yet there is much to Achebe's reading, and all serious fans should read it and make their own decision. Many editions include it, but all should seek it out.

"Youth" is one of Conrad's most famous and acclaimed stories but is in my view the weak link. Like the better-known "Heart of Darkness," it 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.

Though not Joseph Conrad's most ambitious or important work, Typhoon is a strong short novel that fans will enjoy. Like nearly all Conrad, it can be enjoyed on a very basic level as an exciting adventure. As the title suggests, the majority of the action describes a typhoon's monumental effects, specifically how it impacts a ship. The extended scene portraying it is one of the best of its kind. We get a powerful impression of nature's astounding force and just how insignificant humanity and its creations can be in the face of it.

Engrossing as this is, it is of course really just fodder for Conrad's larger themes, the most immediate being the vast amount of things beyond humanity's control; for all our arrogance, there are many situations where we can do little or no more than sit back - or, in this case, hold on - and hope for the best. Typhoon is also in part a bildungsroman, though a somewhat unconventional one. The middle-aged Captain Macwhirr is ostensibly the protagonist, but the young Chief Mate Jukes takes center stage here. He enters the voyage with a considerable ego and pokes much fun at the literal-minded Macwhirr but comes to see that, for all his eccentricities, the latter's simple practicality, level-headedness, and strict determination are not without worth. Hapless as Macwhirr may be in numerous ways, he succeeds where many - perhaps most - ostensibly more intelligent people would fail. Jukes comes to see his value even if he cannot bring himself to give all deserved credit. The same is true of other characters to a lesser degree. Macwhirr himself also learns something in the course of the tale; though experienced and in many ways competent, he had never sailed through harsh weather and is tested in a way he never thought he would be. His near-surreal stubbornness means he perhaps did not learn nearly as much as he should have, but he made it through after all. Conrad leaves it open whether this is due to subtle strength or pure luck; it is certainly debatable whether Macwhirr is capable and even heroic in his own way or simply a fool. In any case, he and other characters find that, as he repeatedly says, you can't learn everything from books; Conrad leaves no doubt that there is often no substitute for experience.

The setting and some of the action are very similar to several other Conrad works, but Typhoon also has its own strengths and is in some ways unusual. For example, characterization is very strong - not in the sense of being rounded, Macwhirr in particular being almost a Dickensian caricature, but in being simply memorable. The characters may be archetypes but are very entertaining - and many readers will see people they know in them. Typhoon is also quite humorous, which is surprising in an author whose humor is nearly always black in the rare cases where it exists at all. Macwhirr is of course the butt of much comic fodder, but there is a light-heartedness to many descriptions outside the central scene. Some, such as those in the sailors' households, have satirical bite, which will please those who miss Conrad's cynicism, but those who normally find him too dark may well be pleasantly surprised overall.

This is certainly not Conrad's strongest story; the frustratingly abrupt way in which the storm's second half is passed over even seems to suggest he grew bored with the work and rushed toward the end. I personally think further storm descriptions would have simply been too much, and he perhaps thought so too, but there certainly should have been a less jerky transition. Some will also dislike the indirect narration toward the end, but I found it a successful, if not overly ambitious, experiment from an author renowned for constantly pushing narrative's proverbial envelope. More fundamentally, Typhoon lacks the astonishing psychological depth and dense philosophical dramatization that were always Conrad's top strengths. The latter is here to a certain extent but far less so than elsewhere, automatically putting the book below his best, though some of the other elements partly atone.

"The Secret Sharer" is one of Conrad's final works of major short fiction and one of his best. It finds him returning to the sea after a long absence and has much of the suspense and adventurous spirit of his early works. Indeed, it may well be his most suspenseful and conventionally entertaining work of all; its influence on later writers is easy to see. This is so much so that it can be enjoyed by nearly anyone on this surface level, but as always with Conrad, there is deep symbolic value. "The Secret" again dramatizes outsider status, though more subtly and ambiguously than "Amy." It also deals with other important themes, including the clash of rules and personal morality, authority vs. individualism, etc. The story ends the collection on a very high note and will, along with the rest, lead readers to seek more Conrad.

All told, anyone who has not read these stories would do well to pick them up here.

I just want to say that this is a great concentration of essays, and Conrads writings, both pro and against Joseph Conrad. If you are not ready to sit down and delve into the mystery and multiple connotations his writings have to offer, then don't purchase this book, it takes time, patience and most of all a desire to understand. His novels have been viewed racist, apocalyptic, humanistic, sympathetic or even as a visual tool of his time. Enjoy!