Is Conrad part of the Great Tradition?

Friend WS notes that I don't seem to have a lot of appreciation for or enthusiasm about Conrad, based on recent posts on Victory and before that on Nostromo - which may be so for those two novels, about which I've shared my views - but I wouldn't say that's true for all of Conrad. Like many, maybe all, prolific writers there are highs and lows, and like many the later works seem attenuated compared with the works that brought early fame (and suffering). In the scheme of things, even weaker Conrad novels have something to offer and are far grander in scope, style, character development, complexity of plot, and ambition than almost anything written today - yet, that said, I can't quote tell people to get in line or go on line and read late Conrad novels: Nostromo and, more so, victory seem to be striving to be exciting and complex yarns or tales - the one about a political revolution and the desperate attempt to save some of the plunder from a silver mine, leading to the literal death of several men and the moral death of the title character; Victory, which I've not quite finished, is about a man who's in retreat from the world, which he believes to be godless and pointless, yet out of his own benevolence he rescues 5 people, by my count, yet puts himself in great danger doing so. These sound great, right? But in the actual reading the move along slowly with some very clunky scenes, and Conrad's colonialism and even his hints of racism (or at least xenophobia and exceptionalism) add another discomforting element. Yes, they're worth reading at least once - but there are other Conrad works so much greater, the obvious ones being Lord Jim, Heart of Darkness (I love great novellas and this is one of the greatest ever), stories notably The Secret Sharer (and almost anything about life on shipboard, too, especially if my memory is correct, Youth), and surprisingly some of his European espionage novels, The Secret Agent and the overlooked Under Western Eyes. WS suggested I read Leavis on The Great Tradition, and I'm not really drawn to do that but I'm sure he made the case for Conrad as one of the great writers and thinkers of his time, which he was - but in my view not consistently across all novels, and the later "potboilers" fall flat in many ways, despite their ambition and occasional passages of extraordinary beauty and mystery (discovery of the hanged body in Nostromo, the arrival of the three thugs on the nearly deserted island in Victory).