Joseph Conrad

Heart of Darkness and The Secret Sharer (Signet Classics)
$4.95
I work in tech and haven't had time to read as much fiction as I would like. I feel that 'Heart of Darkness' is a masterpiece of the English language. I found myself re-reading many individual sentences multiple times just to appreciate the pure beauty of Conrad's construction and choice of words. (I've also earned a living as a non-fiction writer of training and ad copy.) There are writers that are a level above the others, Conrad is one of them. I said writer instead of author because this is indeed a wonderful example of the writer's craft, not simple authorship. Now, off to 'Secret Agent' and 'Lord Jim'.

The Secret Agent: Centennial Editon (Signet Classics)
$5.95
You know this isn't a political piece right on page one when Conrad nicely suggests (with tongue-in-cheek Victorian-era delicacy) that the key business of his seedy little "double agent" is really just selling diry postcards to pervy men in raincoats. Verloc is sucked into this bombing plot solely because it has been so long since he has gathered any useful information for the foreign embassy paying him off. Although Nabokov would have sneered at being compared to another writer, this novel (by another master prose stylist who came to English as a second language) surely anticipates Nabokov's ouevre with its mounting pattern of bitter ironies. The Secret Agent is a very funny book, and really Conrad's only work I admire unhesitatingly.

The Portable Conrad (Penguin Classics)
$18.00
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)

Sea Stories
$15.99
These stories give an eminent picture of Conrad's craftsmanship in building short tales and in brushing a vitally true portrait of live on the sea. For him, `the sea is the only world that counted' and ships `the test of manliness, of courage and fidelity - and of love.'

`Typhoon' relates the brutal battle between a ship (and its crew) against the combined forces of raging winds and water. The violent struggle for survival sharpens the already strained relations between friends and foes within the crew and the passengers (Chinese coolies).
In `Falk: A Reminiscence', the storyteller becomes a match-maker between a German girl and a `cannibal'. Cannibalism was forced on him by the cruel sea, which has `no respect for decency. An elemental force is ruthlessly frank.'
In `The Shadow Line' (`warning one that the region of early youth must be left behind'), the storyteller relates his first job as a captain: `a ship, spellbound, unable to live, to get into the world (till I came), like an enchanted princess.' The journey becomes a nightmare with a sick crew, no medicines and no wind. After the voyage, `well I am no longer a youngster.'

In these stories, the elemental forces of nature are combined with professional and emotional frontal collisions between crew members at all levels and even with jealous bureaucrats. `Human nature is, I fear, not very nice right trough. There are ugly spots in it.'

Not to be missed.