Current book: Lord Jim
Pages read: 186-302
Man, I just do not know about Conrad's talent as a writer. And by "I don't know," I mean, "I know, and he doesn't have any." I don't mean to sound harsh, and actually, I think that Heart of Darkness, when I read it again, is going to be much better written than Lord Jim, but this book suffers from extremely poor craftsmanship. While I was able to appreciate Henry James's ability to pace and plot The Bostonians, regardless of how I didn't particularly identify with any of the characters and found the statements it was making muddy and mildly offensive at best, Lord Jim is handily defeating my intention to give it the chance to prove that Conrad is worthy of his many accolades. The guy can't stick to a timeline to save his life, which I can accept as a valid literary technique (even though I hate it so much that I find it difficult to express the loathing), but he does it to absolutely no purpose whatsoever.
He switches narrative styles in the same fashion; presumably it's always Marlow who's narrating, but sometimes he gives us play-by-play explanations of events he's personally witnessed, and sometimes he tells us about what Jim's told him, but in such a fashion that it seems like third-person omniscient narration. It's ridiculous. You're never sure who's talking about whom, or even who's speaking, due to the fact that the parts that are direct quotes from Jim are often dozens of pages long, but sporadically interspersed with irrelevant commentary by Marlow. I mean, Christ on a crutch, if somebody tried this in a college writing course, his workshop would devour him alive. The emperor is naked, guys. Seriously.
Well, anyway, there's some plot, at least. Jim, accompanied by his letter of introduction, goes off to manage a rice mill for a friend of Marlow's, and secures himself a happy situation for a short while. Soon, however, one of the ex-crewmen from his ship shows up, and the recollection of his dishonour is so great that he feels he can't bear it. He gives up his job with no notice and runs away. There are a few more incidents like this that make it clear that Jim can't stand to be reminded of his past, and as result, he ends up taking an assignment in Patusan, a remote state in an unnamed Southeast Asian country. (Patusan was created by Joseph Conrad, but Surf Ninjas totally used it for the name of their fake country, and now I'm pretty much forced to think of Rob Schnieder being an idiot and that one kid's enchanted Game Gear every time Conrad uses the name. It's sort of distracting.)
When he gets there, he finds it extremely hostile, due to the fact that there's a crazy Rajah in power, whom he immediately, in all his Great White Savior-ness, ousts through military force, becoming quite the local legend in the process. The local people are, of course, eternally grateful and beholden to him. Before he accomplished his great coup, it seems, he fell in love with a local girl whom he calls Jewel, and he's now taken her to wife. Marlow relates all of this to us during a visit to Patusan, which he seems to have made his way to quite easily, despite the fact that it's supposed to be so remote that Jim will never be located by anyone who might know anything about his shameful past.
That's about it, in, again, way too many pages. Also, it makes no sense that Marlow has gone to all this trouble to secure positions for and travel to visit this guy whom he barely knows. He met him at the trial, for God's sakes, and now they're BFFs? What is the deal with that?
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
We ain't no delinquents; we're misunderstood
Current book: Lord Jim
Pages read: 88-186
Well, we've gotten more of Jim's story, by way of Marlow, and the nearly 100 pages worth of it boil down to this: his ship hit something, probably a wreck, around midnight and was damaged beyond the possibility of repair. The crew members immediately decided to abandon ship in the crew lifeboat with no regard to the 800 passengers aboard. Jim argued vehemently to help them, but in the end, there was neither time nor the possibility of making any difference, so he ended up joining the crew in their escape boat, though they accused him of committing the murder of another crew member to secure himself a spot.
Upon hearing this testimony in court, the judge at the hearing chooses to believe that Jim didn't commit murder, but that his abandonment of the ship constitutes criminal negligence, and he strips Jim of his seaman's license as punishment. (If you're wondering why none of the crew is getting tried, a couple of them are, and the rest cheezed it before the fuzz caught up with them.) After the verdict, Marlow offers to help Jim get back on his feet financially by offering him a letter of recommendation that he can take to future job opportunities. It's unclear what those opportunities might be, but there you have it.
I think Conrad is largely making the point that in situations where survival is on the line, those who act with honor are largely tread upon, either at the moment of the crisis or in the period immediately afterward, in retribution for the guilt they've caused those who didn't act with honor. (I just impressed myself with the brevity and clarity of that assessment, so I'm going to quit while I'm ahead.)
Pages read: 88-186
Well, we've gotten more of Jim's story, by way of Marlow, and the nearly 100 pages worth of it boil down to this: his ship hit something, probably a wreck, around midnight and was damaged beyond the possibility of repair. The crew members immediately decided to abandon ship in the crew lifeboat with no regard to the 800 passengers aboard. Jim argued vehemently to help them, but in the end, there was neither time nor the possibility of making any difference, so he ended up joining the crew in their escape boat, though they accused him of committing the murder of another crew member to secure himself a spot.
Upon hearing this testimony in court, the judge at the hearing chooses to believe that Jim didn't commit murder, but that his abandonment of the ship constitutes criminal negligence, and he strips Jim of his seaman's license as punishment. (If you're wondering why none of the crew is getting tried, a couple of them are, and the rest cheezed it before the fuzz caught up with them.) After the verdict, Marlow offers to help Jim get back on his feet financially by offering him a letter of recommendation that he can take to future job opportunities. It's unclear what those opportunities might be, but there you have it.
I think Conrad is largely making the point that in situations where survival is on the line, those who act with honor are largely tread upon, either at the moment of the crisis or in the period immediately afterward, in retribution for the guilt they've caused those who didn't act with honor. (I just impressed myself with the brevity and clarity of that assessment, so I'm going to quit while I'm ahead.)
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
Why do they call it a kangaroo court, anyway?
Current book: Lord Jim
Pages read: 3-88
Ok, so before I get to Conrad, I have to report that I had a dream last night in which I expounded to my mother, father, and older brother upon the absolute wretchedness of Rabbit, Run. I believe I called it "pornographic in its utter awfulness". (Pornographic, here, in the sense of having no redeeming social value.) The extent to which I dislike John Updike is fairly astonishing, since he has managed to invade my subconscious months after I read his novel. I mean, really. I have to admit that I woke up fairly amused. Also, subconscious, even I feel that pornographic may take it a bit too far.
Anyway, Conrad. Um. I remembered him being kind of terrible from when I read Heart of Darkness for high school senior English, but I was willing to entertain the possibility that that was the undeveloped impression of a 17-year-old who read the entire novel in one day. While it no doubt was, I'm afraid that Mr. Conrad has failed to redeem himself thus far in my subsequent experience. Lord Jim starts out fairly well, actually, with a rather poetic portrait of Jim, a sometime seaman in the service of the colonial British navy and various merchant organizations, working his way around the South China Sea and experiencing Malaysia and other points of Southeast-Asian interest. There are some beautiful descriptions of Malaysian flora and fauna, as well as the general atmosphere of the cities and ports, that I found quite compelling and surprisingly accurate to my personal experience (which happened in the late 80's and early 90's, so it's kind of cool that it meshes with Conrad's 1899 novel).
So that's all fine and good, but eventually Jim gets on a ship that ends up in some kind of disastrous accident, and suddenly we're thrust from a vague hint of said accident into a narrative provided by an officer witnessing Jim's trial for his role in that accident. It's an incredibly abrupt shift, and this officer, Captain Marlow (Ring any bells, Heart of Darkness readers? Yeah, I thought so.), begins his story by talking about several completely unrelated events and people. It's an entire chapter, then, before we learn why this guy is even talking to us and what the hell he has to do with Jim; I found it quite maddening, actually. (It kind of reminded me of Faulkner, who also can't keep a timeline together to save his life. Or his reader's sanity.) So, eventually, as I said, we find out that Marlow is a spectator at Jim's trial, and we're just now beginning to get the story of the fateful accident from Jim as he speaks to Marlow in the evenings after the day's hearings have concluded. It seems that the two are going to become fast friends.
We know a little about Jim's character at this point, and it mostly consists of the fact that he's a man who puts enormous store in personal pride and integrity. He embodies the idea of honor to such an extreme degree that he lets no insult go unnoticed or unavenged, but also feels duty-bound to do the right thing in every circumstance. The trial, then, is suspect to the reader already because it implies that Jim did something immoral or incorrect by allowing the ship he was on to run aground (Or something. Frankly, it's pretty unclear what happened at this point, or why, precisely, Jim is on trial, but it seems that he's being blamed for the accident and the deaths it caused.), and that clearly doesn't fit with what we've learned about his character at this point. We'll find out more as his story unfolds, which I hope that it will do in a way that makes at least some vague kind of sense and occurs in roughly chronological order. (But I'm not holding my breath, dear readers. I know the ways of Mr. Conrad.)
Pages read: 3-88
Ok, so before I get to Conrad, I have to report that I had a dream last night in which I expounded to my mother, father, and older brother upon the absolute wretchedness of Rabbit, Run. I believe I called it "pornographic in its utter awfulness". (Pornographic, here, in the sense of having no redeeming social value.) The extent to which I dislike John Updike is fairly astonishing, since he has managed to invade my subconscious months after I read his novel. I mean, really. I have to admit that I woke up fairly amused. Also, subconscious, even I feel that pornographic may take it a bit too far.
Anyway, Conrad. Um. I remembered him being kind of terrible from when I read Heart of Darkness for high school senior English, but I was willing to entertain the possibility that that was the undeveloped impression of a 17-year-old who read the entire novel in one day. While it no doubt was, I'm afraid that Mr. Conrad has failed to redeem himself thus far in my subsequent experience. Lord Jim starts out fairly well, actually, with a rather poetic portrait of Jim, a sometime seaman in the service of the colonial British navy and various merchant organizations, working his way around the South China Sea and experiencing Malaysia and other points of Southeast-Asian interest. There are some beautiful descriptions of Malaysian flora and fauna, as well as the general atmosphere of the cities and ports, that I found quite compelling and surprisingly accurate to my personal experience (which happened in the late 80's and early 90's, so it's kind of cool that it meshes with Conrad's 1899 novel).
So that's all fine and good, but eventually Jim gets on a ship that ends up in some kind of disastrous accident, and suddenly we're thrust from a vague hint of said accident into a narrative provided by an officer witnessing Jim's trial for his role in that accident. It's an incredibly abrupt shift, and this officer, Captain Marlow (Ring any bells, Heart of Darkness readers? Yeah, I thought so.), begins his story by talking about several completely unrelated events and people. It's an entire chapter, then, before we learn why this guy is even talking to us and what the hell he has to do with Jim; I found it quite maddening, actually. (It kind of reminded me of Faulkner, who also can't keep a timeline together to save his life. Or his reader's sanity.) So, eventually, as I said, we find out that Marlow is a spectator at Jim's trial, and we're just now beginning to get the story of the fateful accident from Jim as he speaks to Marlow in the evenings after the day's hearings have concluded. It seems that the two are going to become fast friends.
We know a little about Jim's character at this point, and it mostly consists of the fact that he's a man who puts enormous store in personal pride and integrity. He embodies the idea of honor to such an extreme degree that he lets no insult go unnoticed or unavenged, but also feels duty-bound to do the right thing in every circumstance. The trial, then, is suspect to the reader already because it implies that Jim did something immoral or incorrect by allowing the ship he was on to run aground (Or something. Frankly, it's pretty unclear what happened at this point, or why, precisely, Jim is on trial, but it seems that he's being blamed for the accident and the deaths it caused.), and that clearly doesn't fit with what we've learned about his character at this point. We'll find out more as his story unfolds, which I hope that it will do in a way that makes at least some vague kind of sense and occurs in roughly chronological order. (But I'm not holding my breath, dear readers. I know the ways of Mr. Conrad.)
Monday, May 4, 2009
Take care of yourselves and each other.
Current book: The Bostonians
Pages read: 322-350 (end)
Oh, right. Now I remember what happens: soap operatic confrontation backstage at a crowded lecture hall. Of course.
Basil follows Verena back to Boston, where he shows up on the night of her most-advertised, most-anticipated speech ever. When she sees him in the audience before the show, she loses her nerve completely. He goes backstage to try to speak to her, and after a lot of stalling from a security guard hired by Olive to prevent just such an eventuality, finds her, all undone by his presence, and sweeps her away so that they can get married. There's kind of an awesome Jerry Springer moment when Olive, Verena's parents, and the lecture tour agent all have a giant fight in the dressing room. Verena's mother offers to abase herself at Basil's feet in order to keep Verena there, at least for the duration of the evening, but to no avail. Olive comports herself unexpectedly well, and ends up going on the stage to speak in Verena's place, regardless of the fact that she's always claimed to be an abysmal public speaker. Basil, for his part, continues to act like a complete ass, telling Verena that he's sorry to make her suffer so, but he knew that she would be unable to resist marrying him, and that it's for the best that she give up all her silly ideas of freedom, which she pretty much confirms entirely by dissolving into tears and collapsing into his arms. James, at least, ends on a note of skepticism about their future; Verena is lead away, sobbing, by Basil, and the last line of the book promises that such tears will be her lot in marriage.
In some ways, James comes off as an arrogant jerk who thinks that the cause of women's rights is a ridiculous crusade led by hysterics and dreamers. That said, he also comes off as an arrogant jerk who thinks southerners are backward and incapable of adapting themselves to modern society. I hate to extrapolate the author's views based solely on the content of the characters' statements and feelings, but that's all I've got to go on. In the end, I suppose that James didn't really choose a side, but maintained a lofty, omniscient distance from the issues and left us to judge for ourselves. It's well written; I'll give it that. The characters are crafted with care and precision, the pacing is tuned and deliberate, and the issues compelling and timely. That said, I don't particularly like any of the characters, and here at the close of the novel I'm left with the feeling that I don't know why James wrote it. Perhaps he didn't have a reason. Then again, it makes a nice change from proving everyone in the world is destined for misery, which seems to have been the theme of quite a few of the books on the list so far.
Conrad tomorrow. Oh, joy.
Pages read: 322-350 (end)
Oh, right. Now I remember what happens: soap operatic confrontation backstage at a crowded lecture hall. Of course.
Basil follows Verena back to Boston, where he shows up on the night of her most-advertised, most-anticipated speech ever. When she sees him in the audience before the show, she loses her nerve completely. He goes backstage to try to speak to her, and after a lot of stalling from a security guard hired by Olive to prevent just such an eventuality, finds her, all undone by his presence, and sweeps her away so that they can get married. There's kind of an awesome Jerry Springer moment when Olive, Verena's parents, and the lecture tour agent all have a giant fight in the dressing room. Verena's mother offers to abase herself at Basil's feet in order to keep Verena there, at least for the duration of the evening, but to no avail. Olive comports herself unexpectedly well, and ends up going on the stage to speak in Verena's place, regardless of the fact that she's always claimed to be an abysmal public speaker. Basil, for his part, continues to act like a complete ass, telling Verena that he's sorry to make her suffer so, but he knew that she would be unable to resist marrying him, and that it's for the best that she give up all her silly ideas of freedom, which she pretty much confirms entirely by dissolving into tears and collapsing into his arms. James, at least, ends on a note of skepticism about their future; Verena is lead away, sobbing, by Basil, and the last line of the book promises that such tears will be her lot in marriage.
In some ways, James comes off as an arrogant jerk who thinks that the cause of women's rights is a ridiculous crusade led by hysterics and dreamers. That said, he also comes off as an arrogant jerk who thinks southerners are backward and incapable of adapting themselves to modern society. I hate to extrapolate the author's views based solely on the content of the characters' statements and feelings, but that's all I've got to go on. In the end, I suppose that James didn't really choose a side, but maintained a lofty, omniscient distance from the issues and left us to judge for ourselves. It's well written; I'll give it that. The characters are crafted with care and precision, the pacing is tuned and deliberate, and the issues compelling and timely. That said, I don't particularly like any of the characters, and here at the close of the novel I'm left with the feeling that I don't know why James wrote it. Perhaps he didn't have a reason. Then again, it makes a nice change from proving everyone in the world is destined for misery, which seems to have been the theme of quite a few of the books on the list so far.
Conrad tomorrow. Oh, joy.
Sunday, May 3, 2009
Nervous affliction
Current book: The Bostonians
Pages read: None
Still haven't finished. It's because I'm a woman, you see, and my feeble intellect is incapable of sustained attention. Forgive me whilst I lie down and attempt to quiet my feminine hysteria (caused, as I'm sure you're all aware, by my wandering uterus).
Pages read: None
Still haven't finished. It's because I'm a woman, you see, and my feeble intellect is incapable of sustained attention. Forgive me whilst I lie down and attempt to quiet my feminine hysteria (caused, as I'm sure you're all aware, by my wandering uterus).
Saturday, May 2, 2009
The horror!
Current book: The Bostonians
Pages read: None
One chapter left, and still I've failed you. It's because I can't stand to hasten the approach of Conrad. I mean, could you?
Pages read: None
One chapter left, and still I've failed you. It's because I can't stand to hasten the approach of Conrad. I mean, could you?
Friday, May 1, 2009
Middle-class white suburban opression
Current book: The Bostonians
Pages read: 246-322
Well, we're heading into the home stretch now. You can tell because Olive's starting to completely flip out all the time, and that's fun for everyone. Also, James says "I" a lot more when you get toward the end. If anyone has a theory as to why, I'm willing to entertain it.
The prolonged visit that Basil and Verena were still conducting when Olive returned to the house at the close of my last post turns out to be a jaunty stroll (again with the strolling - it only ends in ruined maidens, I'm telling you) through Central Park, during which Basil espouses his conservative views on The Woman Question (Do you think I'm going to stop capitalizing that? Because I'm so not.) and hits on Verena something terrible. She rebuffs his advances, but not before she finds herself intrigued, albeit against her will, by his impassioned pleas for the rights of man. It is not, apparently, that he has anything against women per se, but rather that he feels his sex must also be championed. (It just smacks of Neo-Nazism, doesn't it? It's not that we want to denounce and debase all other races, it's just that we want to stand up for white rights. Because whites need so much defending. It amazes me how people don't understand the problem with that kind of philosophy.)
Somehow Verena allows this to endear him to her, rather than rolling her eyes and sighing at his idiocy (Which is what I would do. But you may have noticed that I'm something of a cynic.), but, in the end, she takes her leave of him with her honor still intact. (Oh, I almost forgot - James throws several random barbs about the vulgarity of the design of Central Park into this section, and it's kind of awesome in a "Why are you vindictively critical of something that's clearly now stood the test of time?" way. Seriously, the man is obviously deeply disgruntled with Frederick Law Olmsted, and it's difficult to say why. I may be biased in Olmsted's favor, however, since he also designed the layout of the village in which I spent my formative years. And he designed the gardens of the Biltmore Estate. Don't tell me you don't love the Biltmore Estate. There's an underground bowling alley and three kitchens, one of which is exclusively devoted to pastries. Are you going to argue with that?)
A short while later, Verena and Olive decide to take a vacation to Cape Cod (The descriptions of the small towns that are nearly overrun by the wilderness of the wild shoreline are both beautiful and fascinating, since Cape Cod and wilderness are no longer ideas that even remotely relate to one another.) in order to relax and to plan a grand lecture tour for Verena, which is to begin at some giant, famous music hall in New York. (I mean, you know, it's not Carnegie, but Christ - she's really moving up in the world.) Basil ends up following them there, where he renews his advances toward Verena. She is increasingly unable to resist him, but quite refuses to gallivant off in order to avoid him, insisting to Olive that she at least do him the justice of listening. He hangs around for the subsequent month, and they have many a jaunty stroll and attendant discussion of their mutual values. During these discussions, Basil makes it clear to Verena that she would have to cease all lecturing immediately upon their marriage, and not just that, but that he views her plans for Radio City Music Hall as nothing short of despicable. (Have I mentioned he's a regressive jerk? I thought I'd reiterate, just in case that wasn't coming through clearly.) At the end of a month, though she clearly wishes to do precisely the opposite (because somehow she's fallen for him, even though he's a regressive jerk) Verena refuses Basil. When he comes to see her one last time upon the morning of his departure, he finds her gone, with only Olive's obvious triumph for a farewell.
It's astonishing to me that I have completely and totally forgotten how this book ends. Regardless of the fact that I read it and wrote a paper on it only a few years ago, I have no idea what the conclusion is. I think they get married, but that's conjecture as much as recollection - conjecture, I might add, based on the proposition that Henry James is not going to come down on the side of female emancipation. I mean, have you read Daisy Miller? Poor girl dies at the end, and all she really did was break a few social conventions. (It's a rough life, being a James character. I mean, besides the dying, there's the fact that you have to examine everyone you meet in an absurdly meticulous fashion and then make judgements about their relationship to you based on your observations. Ahem.)
Pages read: 246-322
Well, we're heading into the home stretch now. You can tell because Olive's starting to completely flip out all the time, and that's fun for everyone. Also, James says "I" a lot more when you get toward the end. If anyone has a theory as to why, I'm willing to entertain it.
The prolonged visit that Basil and Verena were still conducting when Olive returned to the house at the close of my last post turns out to be a jaunty stroll (again with the strolling - it only ends in ruined maidens, I'm telling you) through Central Park, during which Basil espouses his conservative views on The Woman Question (Do you think I'm going to stop capitalizing that? Because I'm so not.) and hits on Verena something terrible. She rebuffs his advances, but not before she finds herself intrigued, albeit against her will, by his impassioned pleas for the rights of man. It is not, apparently, that he has anything against women per se, but rather that he feels his sex must also be championed. (It just smacks of Neo-Nazism, doesn't it? It's not that we want to denounce and debase all other races, it's just that we want to stand up for white rights. Because whites need so much defending. It amazes me how people don't understand the problem with that kind of philosophy.)
Somehow Verena allows this to endear him to her, rather than rolling her eyes and sighing at his idiocy (Which is what I would do. But you may have noticed that I'm something of a cynic.), but, in the end, she takes her leave of him with her honor still intact. (Oh, I almost forgot - James throws several random barbs about the vulgarity of the design of Central Park into this section, and it's kind of awesome in a "Why are you vindictively critical of something that's clearly now stood the test of time?" way. Seriously, the man is obviously deeply disgruntled with Frederick Law Olmsted, and it's difficult to say why. I may be biased in Olmsted's favor, however, since he also designed the layout of the village in which I spent my formative years. And he designed the gardens of the Biltmore Estate. Don't tell me you don't love the Biltmore Estate. There's an underground bowling alley and three kitchens, one of which is exclusively devoted to pastries. Are you going to argue with that?)
A short while later, Verena and Olive decide to take a vacation to Cape Cod (The descriptions of the small towns that are nearly overrun by the wilderness of the wild shoreline are both beautiful and fascinating, since Cape Cod and wilderness are no longer ideas that even remotely relate to one another.) in order to relax and to plan a grand lecture tour for Verena, which is to begin at some giant, famous music hall in New York. (I mean, you know, it's not Carnegie, but Christ - she's really moving up in the world.) Basil ends up following them there, where he renews his advances toward Verena. She is increasingly unable to resist him, but quite refuses to gallivant off in order to avoid him, insisting to Olive that she at least do him the justice of listening. He hangs around for the subsequent month, and they have many a jaunty stroll and attendant discussion of their mutual values. During these discussions, Basil makes it clear to Verena that she would have to cease all lecturing immediately upon their marriage, and not just that, but that he views her plans for Radio City Music Hall as nothing short of despicable. (Have I mentioned he's a regressive jerk? I thought I'd reiterate, just in case that wasn't coming through clearly.) At the end of a month, though she clearly wishes to do precisely the opposite (because somehow she's fallen for him, even though he's a regressive jerk) Verena refuses Basil. When he comes to see her one last time upon the morning of his departure, he finds her gone, with only Olive's obvious triumph for a farewell.
It's astonishing to me that I have completely and totally forgotten how this book ends. Regardless of the fact that I read it and wrote a paper on it only a few years ago, I have no idea what the conclusion is. I think they get married, but that's conjecture as much as recollection - conjecture, I might add, based on the proposition that Henry James is not going to come down on the side of female emancipation. I mean, have you read Daisy Miller? Poor girl dies at the end, and all she really did was break a few social conventions. (It's a rough life, being a James character. I mean, besides the dying, there's the fact that you have to examine everyone you meet in an absurdly meticulous fashion and then make judgements about their relationship to you based on your observations. Ahem.)
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