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Thursday, August 6, 2015

Two ways in which Conrad falls flat - the limits of his vision

For all his strengths as a great novelist and story-teller, Joseph Conrad pretty much falls flat on two scores, both evident in the chapter I read last night in Victory: Love scenes. Come on are there really any in all of Conrad's work that strike a true note or move you or even surprise you? (Hate scenes between husband and wife? Yes.) In Victory finally, half-way through the novel, we see the main character Heyst return home to his solitary island with the woman whom he'd rescued, Alma, and claims to have fallen love with - and we see and learn almost nothing about them: they arrive, she looks at the house where he lives, she's reluctant to enter for a moment (why? fear of him? of sex? or her decision to run off? of the condition of the house? of the solitude in which they'll live?), but does go in and a few moments later we "hear," from the POV of his Chinese servant, Alma calling to Heyst saying she's in the garden, or something like that. Maybe we'll learn more later, and in a way maybe this particular scene accomplishes its ends by minimalism - her hesitation is a significant message, conveyed without words - but it also seems like there's a whole dimension to this novel, to life in fact, that Conrad is reluctant or unable to examine and "unpack." As to the Chinese servant - I have to say that even making allowances for his time and for some of the long-changed conventions of language regarding racial characteristics (need we say more than "The Nigger of the Narcissus"?), Conrad seems generally unable to see 3rd-world populations and people of color as little more than narrative conveniences. Heyst's servant, Wang (and I can't remember the back story to their relationship - had he been living w/ Heyst on the island? and why?), speaks an embarrassing broken English ("Me savee") and Conrad portrays him in the most cliched and perhaps offensive of terms - e.g., he's "inscrutable" (maybe to Heyst, maybe to Conrad, but not to all). These are quibbles, perhaps, but they do show the boundaries and limitations of Conrad's vision.

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