Joseph Conrad

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Tris_Nook
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Joseph Conrad

Post by Tris_Nook »

Any Joseph Conrad fans? What is your favorite Conrad book? My favorite is Heart of Darkness, I read it back in high school and I loved it. It's been a while though.
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Post by Breeray129 »

I've never heard of him. What's that book about?
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Ryan
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Post by Ryan »

I've only read 'The Heart of Darkness' and I enjoyed that a lot. Kurtz's final words are harrowing: what exactly is "the horror!"? It has a lot of appeal to postcolonial critics and many of them suggest that it's colonialism that's horrific, but it's such an ambiguous phrase that it stuck with me regardless of its associations. I also have 'The Secret Agent', which I will eventually read.
"Reason is intelligence taking exercise. Imagination is intelligence with an erection" -- Victor Hugo.
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Dave
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Post by Dave »

The Duel by Conrad is a great book IMO. I have The Secret Agent & Heart of Darkness in my collection, but have yet to read them. I tentatively started H of D once, but couldn't get interested. I'll try it again sometime.......
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Post by Wreade1872 »

I've only read Heart of Darkness but i thought it was quite beautiful and certainly nothing like i was expecting. I love the way he created this practically imaginary world inside the protagonist's head which was probably quite different from what was really happening.
It reminded me a bit of The Castle by Kafka.
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Post by Blubea »

I just started Heart of Darkness and I love it. It has been criticised as being racist, but I think Conrad was actually trying to show "the horror" of Africa and was, in a way, showing his experience there. He also constantly seems to be against the treatment of the natives, not for it, so I don't think it's racist.
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Post by DATo »

ryanj1 wrote:I've only read 'The Heart of Darkness' and I enjoyed that a lot. Kurtz's final words are harrowing: what exactly is "the horror!"? It has a lot of appeal to postcolonial critics and many of them suggest that it's colonialism that's horrific, but it's such an ambiguous phrase that it stuck with me regardless of its associations. I also have 'The Secret Agent', which I will eventually read.
@ryanj1 - I can think of three instances off the top of my head where characters of novels experienced a transitional death bed epiphany: Adam's forgiveness of Cal in East Of Eden, Denathor recognizes Faramir in Lord Of the Rings: Return Of The King and Don Quixote realizing, and repenting, that he had gone out of his mind and thought himself a knight.

I think Kurtz's last words, "The horror!", were just such an epiphany. I think in his final moment before death he understood the thinness of the veil that separates man from his base and primal animal nature for he had experienced it himself. Much like "Rosebud" his final words were a summation. For Charles Foster Kane it was the realization of the innocence that had been lost when the natural path of his destiny had been diverted, and for Kurtz it was the realization that he had crossed the threshold which separates us from our animal nature and had looked the beast in the eye.
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Post by Fran »

DATo wrote:
ryanj1 wrote:I've only read 'The Heart of Darkness' and I enjoyed that a lot. Kurtz's final words are harrowing: what exactly is "the horror!"? It has a lot of appeal to postcolonial critics and many of them suggest that it's colonialism that's horrific, but it's such an ambiguous phrase that it stuck with me regardless of its associations. I also have 'The Secret Agent', which I will eventually read.
@ryanj1 - I can think of three instances off the top of my head where characters of novels experienced a transitional death bed epiphany: Adam's forgiveness of Cal in East Of Eden, Denathor recognizes Faramir in Lord Of the Rings: Return Of The King and Don Quixote realizing, and repenting, that he had gone out of his mind and thought himself a knight.

I think Kurtz's last words, "The horror!", were just such an epiphany. I think in his final moment before death he understood the thinness of the veil that separates man from his base and primal animal nature for he had experienced it himself. Much like "Rosebud" his final words were a summation. For Charles Foster Kane it was the realization of the innocence that had been lost when the natural path of his destiny had been diverted, and for Kurtz it was the realization that he had crossed the threshold which separates us from our animal nature and had looked the beast in the eye.
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Post by pratap_km »

Lord Jim is also a good read.
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Post by Vivian Paschal »

I don't know much about him, but I know he told a lot of single stories about early Africa and I'm not a fan. And I've had Heart of Darkness long before I ever knew there was something like a single story, but I just couldn't read it. It bored me, maybe cause I was a child; but very few books bored me as a child.
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Post by Zupanatural »

I've read Heart Of Darkness, Lord Jim & Nostromo (my favourite) and enjoyed all of them to varying degrees. I do find that Conrad is unnecessarily wordy in a lot of his work, however, and when you find out that English was his second language (he was of course Polish) it makes you wonder. Was he just showing off?
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Post by mastrobuono »

Lord Jim, by Joseph Conrad, is one of the world's enduring classics. It is a novel with a profound message and should be read by anyone who loves fascinating adventure stories.
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Post by Jeyasivananth »

I read it when I was in College and I thought it was okay. However, his one-dimensional projection of the natives did not go down well with me.
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haveGood
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Post by haveGood »

In my opinion, Heart of Darkness is pretty low in his catalog, so it's kind of sad that that's all most people here read (don't get me wrong, HoD is great and a classic). Nostromo, Lord Jim, The Secret Agent, and ****** of the Narcissus (please don't be put off by the title. The book is not racist, it's really good but unfortunately titled) are all worth reading, and I'd call the first two I listed all-time greats. His prose is beautiful, and I like to just open up my copies of his work and read random passages for the quality of the writing.
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Post by sarahmarlowe »

I don't think I would consider myself a full-blown "fan," but I have read Heart of Darkness and Lord Jim. Of the two, I really preferred Lord Jim. Conrad's characters are so complex! I love that.
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