Lord Jim
by Joseph Conrad
1. Heart of Darkness.
It took me a while to get past the first few pages of Heart of Darkness. To me, the sentences seemed to be blunted. Read in isolation, they were fine, even elegant; yet one sentence did not lead to the next naturally, to the point that I would even notice such a issue might exist and feel the pulsating pain in how the words, images and meanings might have been threaded together. At least twice, I flipped my kindle away utterly bored and annoyed. It came as a surprise, as I was expecting nothing less than the best possible English to flow through, like the deed and dark river. Most likely, I recognize, I am totally wrong about this writing of Conrad's; but truthful to my own subjective judgement.
Across the long "opening" water, the writing became more engaging and less irksomely meaningful. Still I could see what the author was leading to all too clearly, for he had been dropping foreboding hints and winks all over the places. way ahead of time. It was so heavy-handed that I decided to stop reading one night, anticipating the overwhelming climax. It came in the morning reading. only so lamely. by the time, this reader had factored in all possible catastrophic scenarios to be even mildly shocked. Besides, it lacked absorbing stories and plots. Characters are mostly qualitatively and vaguely described, but not enlivened by their actions. the frame-in-frame story telling technique might be original but felt too polished and artificial - Marlow, an old sailor, just kept talking, talking and talking, talking beautifully, articulately and intellectually, to a deafening and invisible audience. "really?"
Having done with my complaints, I did find the book thought-provoking and insightful in depicting human psyche: as dark, as deep and as impenetrable as water (river, ocean...). How Jungian. Yes he would have loved it. The morale of the story is a little dated but adequate, even a little advanced, to the times Conrad had lived. By the former, I mean that he considered the Jungles and whoever lived there the beginning, the primitive of life, only to be civilized to the (Western) light of the day. on the other hand, he did question the brutality and effectiveness of such an endeavor and depicted the danger of one gave in to "darkness". The book illuminates Conrad's complex mind: deep emotion, high intellect and intense creativity.
So I looked for another book of his to read. I had to abandon Secret Agents after another few false starts: it sounded so artificial. But I was quite satisfied with Lord Jim.
2. Lord Jim.
It was Marlow again telling a long long story to an unresponsive and irrelevant audience; but this time there were stories to tell - the sad life of Jim, a romantic sailor who failed in the ocean and on the land. Writing was consistent with that of Heart of Darkness, but it was a far better novel with touchable characters and track-able story lines. While the pace was rather slow, and occasionally tiring, an absorbing and intense narrative was able to hold the reader's attention and steer his sympathy to a startling question: could anyone redeem himself after one momentous but catastrophic loss of courage that breaks the unwritten code of conduct of humanity? This was Jim's journey of life, with Marlow as witness and half-minded supporter. Conrad's answer was a long convoluted NO, in the sense that a faulty mind has no means to right itself. What's missing in Jim, however, was hardly clear: the moral courage, intellect, practical judgement, or all of them. It seems easier to see what he does have: he wanted to be good despite himself.
Ultimately, his books illuminate Conrad's pessimism and disillusion towards human nature and civilization, his disheartening suspicion of imperialistic expansion and keen prophesy of the eventual breakdown of humanity: as with Lord Jim, the voyage started on the wrong foot, in the middle of chaos, and a jump off of it only led to a spiraling down into the abyss.
