Joseph Conrad Books

I read this book for a graduate Humanities course. Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, written in 1899 is a seminal work about the ills of colonialism, as well as a postmodern look at the subject of mankind. Conrad's book had a crucial influence on five important works of the twentieth century: J. G. Frazier's book The Golden Bough. Jessie L. Weston's book From Ritual to Romance, T. S. Elliott's poem the Waste Land, Joseph Campbell's Hero with a Thousand Faces, and Francis Ford Coppolla's movie Apocalypse Now, screenplay by John Milius, was based on Conrad's book. Another interesting fact is that this work was read by Orson Welle's Mercury Theater Players on the radio and was to be his first movie. After doing some work on it he abandoned the project to do Citizen Kane! I would have loved to of seen what Welles could have done with this story. Conrad's story is so riveting in part, because he himself served as a riverboat captain. High school teachers and college professors who have discussed this book in thousands of classrooms over the years tend to do so in terms of Freud, Jung, and Nietzsche; of classical myth, Victorian innocence, and original sin; of postmodernism, postcolonialism, and poststructuralism.

Just a taste of the plot reels you in! Marlow, the narrator of Heart of Darkness and Conrad's alter ego, is hired by an ivory-trading company to sail a steamboat up an unnamed river whose shape on the map resembles "an immense snake uncoiled, with its head in the sea, its body at rest curving afar over a vast country and its tail lost in the depths of the land" (8). His destination is a post where the company's brilliant, ambitious star agent, Mr. Kurtz, is stationed. Kurtz has collected legendary quantities of ivory, but, Marlow learns along the way, is also rumored to have sunk into unspecified savagery. Marlow's steamer survives an attack by blacks and picks up a load of ivory and the ill Kurtz; Kurtz, talking of his grandiose plans, dies on board as they travel, downstream.

Sketched with only a few bold strokes, Kurtz's image has nonetheless remained in the memories of millions of readers: the lone white agent far up the great river, with his dreams of grandeur,his great store of precious ivory, and his fiefdom carved out of the African jungle. Perhaps more than anything, we remember Marlow, on the steamboat, looking through binoculars at what he thinks are ornamental knobs atop the fence posts in front of Kurtz's house and then finding that each is "black, dried, sunken, with closed eyelids-a head that seemed to sleep at the top of that pole, and with the shrunken dry lips showing a narrow white line of the teeth" (57).

I especially became interested in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness from the movie Apocalypse Now. There is a scene in the movie that shows Colonel Kurtz's nightstand in his cave. T. S. Elliott's poem the Waste Land is one of three books on the nightstand. The other two are Jessie L. Weston's book From Ritual to Romance, and J. G. Frazier's book The Golden Bough. Anyone wanting to understand the movie Apocalypse Now, especially the character of Colonel Kurtz, and what Milius and Copolla are trying to tell their audience need to read these three books as well as Conrad's Heart of Darkness!

As a graduate student reading in philosophy and history I recommend this book for anyone interested in literature, myth, history, philosophy, religion and fans of Apocalypse Now.

Nobody has made these connections before. The author has found similarities in the lives and writings of authors not usually considered similar. Her analyses of the works are fresh and valid. Daniels shows these works to be true literature of the world.

These are not Conrad's most famous stories: Until I read the book, I had not heard of any of them. Nonetheless, this is one author whose worst work is better than most others' best. On a recent plane trip to Seattle, I found two of the four stories merely diverting, and the other two equal to his best.

"The Partner" is a grim tale of human weakness spiralling down to a predictable horror; whereas his humorously baroque "The Inn of the Two Witches" reminds me in its tone of Washington Irving in LEGENDS OF THE ALHAMBRA, though set in a later time period.

What happens when you fall so deeply in love so fast that you can't act to save your life? Conrad gives his answer in "The Planter of Malata," in which a successful loner named Renouard confronts the yawning vastness of an empty life. Felicia Moorsom is a bit two-dimensional and a prim and proper Victorian to the nth degree. This tale is a psychological thriller that does not let you breathe until the last line.

The final tale -- "Because of the Dollars" -- is my favorite. It reminds me of ALMAYER'S FOLLY and OUTPOST OF THE ISLANDS with its shallow-draft vessels penetrating into the heart of remote islands. Captain Davidson is a classic Conrad hero caught in a trap: How he manages to escape it at the cost of a wife who doesn't love him and, by the way, his ability to smile is one of the author's most perfectly taut stories.

It is amusing to read Conrad's preface to the stories: He seems to be wincing excessively in response to early criticism after circulating the stories to his friends. Needless to say, his friends were over-critical: WITHIN THE TIDES struck me as a treasure that I had somehow overlooked all these years.

"Rich in allusions to the scholarly context and well annotated, this book is recommended for graduate students." --Choice

"Drawing on an impressive array of recent theoretical writing about sociology, history, and psychoanalysis, and a wide range of hermeneutical technologies, Ash's study of Conrad's psychosical dilemmas attempts to show how Conrad as an individual responds in his writings to the historical processes and socio-psychological crises engendered by industrialism, imperialism, and the political tensions, latent and manifest, of Edwardian society...Ambitious, original and engaging." --English Literature in Transition

I read this book for a graduate Humanities course. Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, written in 1899 is a seminal work about the ills of colonialism, as well as a postmodern look at the subject of mankind. Conrad's book had a crucial influence on five important works of the twentieth century: J. G. Frazier's book The Golden Bough. Jessie L. Weston's book From Ritual to Romance, T. S. Elliott's poem the Waste Land, Joseph Campbell's Hero with a Thousand Faces, and Francis Ford Coppolla's movie Apocalypse Now, screenplay by John Milius, was based on Conrad's book. Another interesting fact is that this work was read by Orson Welle's Mercury Theater Players on the radio and was to be his first movie. After doing some work on it he abandoned the project to do Citizen Kane! I would have loved to of seen what Welles could have done with this story. Conrad's story is so riveting in part, because he himself served as a riverboat captain. High school teachers and college professors who have discussed this book in thousands of classrooms over the years tend to do so in terms of Freud, Jung, and Nietzsche; of classical myth, Victorian innocence, and original sin; of postmodernism, postcolonialism, and poststructuralism.

Just a taste of the plot reels you in! Marlow, the narrator of Heart of Darkness and Conrad's alter ego, is hired by an ivory-trading company to sail a steamboat up an unnamed river whose shape on the map resembles "an immense snake uncoiled, with its head in the sea, its body at rest curving afar over a vast country and its tail lost in the depths of the land" (8). His destination is a post where the company's brilliant, ambitious star agent, Mr. Kurtz, is stationed. Kurtz has collected legendary quantities of ivory, but, Marlow learns along the way, is also rumored to have sunk into unspecified savagery. Marlow's steamer survives an attack by blacks and picks up a load of ivory and the ill Kurtz; Kurtz, talking of his grandiose plans, dies on board as they travel, downstream.

Sketched with only a few bold strokes, Kurtz's image has nonetheless remained in the memories of millions of readers: the lone white agent far up the great river, with his dreams of grandeur,his great store of precious ivory, and his fiefdom carved out of the African jungle. Perhaps more than anything, we remember Marlow, on the steamboat, looking through binoculars at what he thinks are ornamental knobs atop the fence posts in front of Kurtz's house and then finding that each is "black, dried, sunken, with closed eyelids-a head that seemed to sleep at the top of that pole, and with the shrunken dry lips showing a narrow white line of the teeth" (57).

I especially became interested in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness from the movie Apocalypse Now. There is a scene in the movie that shows Colonel Kurtz's nightstand in his cave. T. S. Elliott's poem the Waste Land is one of three books on the nightstand. The other two are Jessie L. Weston's book From Ritual to Romance, and J. G. Frazier's book The Golden Bough. Anyone wanting to understand the movie Apocalypse Now, especially the character of Colonel Kurtz, and what Milius and Copolla are trying to tell their audience need to read these three books as well as Conrad's Heart of Darkness!

As a graduate student reading in philosophy and history I recommend this book for anyone interested in literature, myth, history, philosophy, religion and fans of Apocalypse Now.

I read this book for a graduate Humanities course. Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, written in 1899 is a seminal work about the ills of colonialism, as well as a postmodern look at the subject of mankind. Conrad's book had a crucial influence on five important works of the twentieth century: J. G. Frazier's book The Golden Bough. Jessie L. Weston's book From Ritual to Romance, T. S. Elliott's poem the Waste Land, Joseph Campbell's Hero with a Thousand Faces, and Francis Ford Coppolla's movie Apocalypse Now, screenplay by John Milius, was based on Conrad's book. Another interesting fact is that this work was read by Orson Welle's Mercury Theater Players on the radio and was to be his first movie. After doing some work on it he abandoned the project to do Citizen Kane! I would have loved to of seen what Welles could have done with this story. Conrad's story is so riveting in part, because he himself served as a riverboat captain. High school teachers and college professors who have discussed this book in thousands of classrooms over the years tend to do so in terms of Freud, Jung, and Nietzsche; of classical myth, Victorian innocence, and original sin; of postmodernism, postcolonialism, and poststructuralism.

Just a taste of the plot reels you in! Marlow, the narrator of Heart of Darkness and Conrad's alter ego, is hired by an ivory-trading company to sail a steamboat up an unnamed river whose shape on the map resembles "an immense snake uncoiled, with its head in the sea, its body at rest curving afar over a vast country and its tail lost in the depths of the land" (8). His destination is a post where the company's brilliant, ambitious star agent, Mr. Kurtz, is stationed. Kurtz has collected legendary quantities of ivory, but, Marlow learns along the way, is also rumored to have sunk into unspecified savagery. Marlow's steamer survives an attack by blacks and picks up a load of ivory and the ill Kurtz; Kurtz, talking of his grandiose plans, dies on board as they travel, downstream.

Sketched with only a few bold strokes, Kurtz's image has nonetheless remained in the memories of millions of readers: the lone white agent far up the great river, with his dreams of grandeur,his great store of precious ivory, and his fiefdom carved out of the African jungle. Perhaps more than anything, we remember Marlow, on the steamboat, looking through binoculars at what he thinks are ornamental knobs atop the fence posts in front of Kurtz's house and then finding that each is "black, dried, sunken, with closed eyelids-a head that seemed to sleep at the top of that pole, and with the shrunken dry lips showing a narrow white line of the teeth" (57).

I especially became interested in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness from the movie Apocalypse Now. There is a scene in the movie that shows Colonel Kurtz's nightstand in his cave. T. S. Elliott's poem the Waste Land is one of three books on the nightstand. The other two are Jessie L. Weston's book From Ritual to Romance, and J. G. Frazier's book The Golden Bough. Anyone wanting to understand the movie Apocalypse Now, especially the character of Colonel Kurtz, and what Milius and Copolla are trying to tell their audience need to read these three books as well as Conrad's Heart of Darkness!

As a graduate student reading in philosophy and history I recommend this book for anyone interested in literature, myth, history, philosophy, religion and fans of Apocalypse Now.

For me, "Heart of Daekness" is one of the most powerful books I have ever read. Even though it is rather short (about 100 pages), I have read it for quite a long time, since it is a very difficult book to understant. So far, I have read it twice, and I am only now beginning to understand it. It was (and still is) a joy to read it and it changes me forever.

I first watched this movie with a group of my guy friends from work and soon it was clear we couldn't make it through a day without quoting a line from it! Norm McDonald at his funniest!

i love norm macdonald and this is the dumbest movie of all time

if your into dumb humor...or watching artie lang trying to act in a PG 13 arena....this is a good buy

If I could have rated this movie 0 stars I would have. It is terrible, save your money.

OK, this film bombed at the theaters and I am guessing it was panned by the critics. HOWEVER, it has some of the funniest lines and scenes in movie history. Artie and Norm work beautifully together. MOREOEVR, there is one scene in this movie that makes me literally cry because it is so funny, no change that, because it is so ridiculous.

I first watched this movie with a group of my guy friends from work and soon it was clear we couldn't make it through a day without quoting a line from it! Norm McDonald at his funniest!

i love norm macdonald and this is the dumbest movie of all time

if your into dumb humor...or watching artie lang trying to act in a PG 13 arena....this is a good buy

If I could have rated this movie 0 stars I would have. It is terrible, save your money.

OK, this film bombed at the theaters and I am guessing it was panned by the critics. HOWEVER, it has some of the funniest lines and scenes in movie history. Artie and Norm work beautifully together. MOREOEVR, there is one scene in this movie that makes me literally cry because it is so funny, no change that, because it is so ridiculous.

Don't give up on this book, especially if you are reading it for fun. If you are reading it as an assignment, you don't have that choice, but either way, don't give up on the book. The first 126 or so pages can be hard and difficult to follow, but when a character named Decoud comes in, the whole plot, the characters and the thrust of the book come together. Seemingly little things and small characters in the first 100 pages take on epic proportion for the remaining pages. Once Decoud is in the story, it takes off, to a surprising and unexpected conclusion. How we react to that conclusion tells us, the reader, how we view ourselves and the world around us. Good book.

The story takes place in a Latin American country torn by revolution and counterrevolution. It is not about war and revolution, however. It is about the people who live through those revolutions, what kind of lives they have, what kind of lives they seek, what kind of lives have meaning for them.

It is about the corruptibility and incorruptibility of man, even good men. Every man has his price, even in pursuit of good causes. What do we value, what do we care for, to what extent would even the best of us use others to further our own ends, interests, ambitions and values.

Follow Nostromo's venture as he found out about the good and bad in his country,the people he trusted and cared about. It is a good and fascinating story. But it does take some time, 100 or so pages, to get there.

A memorable thought from the book, from Donna Gould at the end of Chapter 11, Part III, The Lighthouse: "For Life to be large and full, it must contain the care of the past and of the future in every passing moment of the present. Our daily work must be done to the glory of the dead, and for the good of those that come after..."

The question becomes: "What part of the past is worth honoring; what part of the future is worth having?"

"Nostromo" takes too long to get started, never really gels into anything worthwhile, and sputters out like a Roman candle in mud. Other than that, I guess I liked it.

Near the western coast of the Latin American country of Costaguana is a vast silver mine owned by one Charles Gould, an English expatriate who enjoys near-kingly powers over the nearby port town of Sulaco. When revolution threatens Gould's empire, "Don Carlos" gets his doughty employee Nostromo to spirit away his silver reserves. That help comes at a price, though, to Gould, to Nostromo, and all who covet the silver.

Many call "Nostromo" Conrad's masterpiece, saying it challenges readers to accept a bleak vision of a world where all are damned by greed or apathy. I agree it's challenging; it took me long enough to read through it. But it doesn't instill the same kind of awe in me Conrad classics like "Lord Jim" and "Heart of Darkness" did.

I think the problem lies in part with a plot that is all over the place, starting with a lengthy inventory of the topography around Sulaco, then an opening episode which occurs about 30% into the story, which Conrad presents at length before rewinding the plot spool to the actual beginning. Time shifts are Conrad's thing, he uses them effectively in "Lord Jim" and they are one of his principal contributions to the post-modern literary vocabulary. But as he does this over and over, the mind swims for no good reason, looking in vain for some chronology to sink its teeth into.

The other problem is the message of the book. Judging from its many champions, "Nostromo" is about the evils of colonialism. But I wonder how much of that mindset is being imported from the less ambiguous "Heart Of Darkness."

We do see how the mine is being used to enrich a distant North American tycoon, and one of our earliest images of Nostromo shows him pulling local peasantry out of their humble huts to work at the mine. But are the peasants really being exploited any more than if they were working a mine in Kentucky? They think enough of Gould to rally around him when his empire is threatened, and one of the few non-European characters we hear from calls him "a just man." The revolution Gould and his cronies snuff out is a bloody farce, and the people of Costaguana, nearly mute in Conrad's narrative, seem to deserve no better than they get.

"Stratagems, providing they did not fail, were honorable; the easy massacre of an unsuspecting enemy evoked no feelings but those of gladness, pride, and admiration," Conrad writes by way of explaining the endless parade of revolutions that rowel Costaguana. (The country's name is about the only tinge of humor in the book.)

Conrad does score better in presenting the human condition as a thing of wretched glory, of transitory pleasures and interludes of seeming value trickling restlessly toward pointlessness. If he was a rock band, Conrad would have been Pink Floyd. He's always lifting the veils of appearances to expose people's base selves.

Even love is phony: "She was incapable of sustained emotion. She was sincere in what she said, but she slept placidly at night...For her soul was light and tender with a pagan sincerity in its impulses."

There's also Dr. Monygham, a sardonic character who sees through everything with his bitter, gimlet eye. His relationship with Nostromo is the closest the book gets to a synthesis of ideas, of the value of living entirely through thought or action. But like everything else in "Nostromo," this never quite gels.

I admire Conrad, and see in "Nostromo" a book that advanced the conception of the novel, with its wide scope, multiple story arcs, time shifts, and resolute presentation of happiness as an illusion. But those same strengths keep the book from being as comprehensible or enjoyable as it could be.

Protagonist Nostromo experiences the life which the author seeks for the reader to envy - or does he or she?

Living amid the fictional South American country torn with civil war and military coup's strife, Nostromo works for foreign miners whose ill begotten gain is admonished by the countrypeople and the leaders of the coup. Eventually, even the loyal and most helpful to the English Nostromo must concede that his purpose should be more than aiding the rich to extract his country's riches for their personal financial gain.

Conrad is a master of telling great stories in incredible detail. And "Nostromo" is his only novel set on land - although a great amount involves a boat pulling off shore to an island not far away from the site of the majority of the novel. And, quite candidly, the boat parts of this book are the most gripping in detail and style.

Conrad's other great novels have dealt with great characters of the sea: the almost perfection of man with "Lord Jim" ; or the eery recantations of the life in the third world where people would kill another for nickels and dimes in "Heart of Darkness." This novel mixes the greatness of "Lord Jim" in the character of Nostromo and encircles him in a world of relative anarchy as the warring coups' leaders and the old government involve serious and severe physical harm to all.

The major theme of the story is about the cache of silver derived from the foreign man's efforts in the town in which Nostromo lives. Those involved must ask: Let the military leaders come in an take the silver or save it for the old rule or for those who mined it? Not previously involved in the politics of his own country which are grotesquely intertwined and muddied by foreign money or manipulation, Nostromo becomes very much involved in politics with his handling of the hiding of the silver ingots. People are subsequently tortured to death for information about the silver. But, only one man knows what happened to it and where it lies. Is this good? Conrad described Nostromo as "The slave of the San Tome silver [who] felt the weight of the chains upon his limbs. . . " He was fettered by the knowledge and being involved with the hiding of the silver. Before he became involved, life was good. After the hiding, life remained good - until he suffers an unfortunate disruption with a woman scorned.

Like a Greek tragedy, this novel laments the hero for his humanity and human weaknesses. Unlike a Greek tragedy, this is a long and drawn out struggle involving a great amount of reading.

Conrad learned English after the age of 21, and when he wrote, he wished to convey to the reader his knowledge of the vocabulary of the English language. In short, Conrad writes in a style that is neither quick paced nor easily absorbed as many uncommon words are shoehorned into certain sentences for what can commonly be proclaimed as affectation or even grandiloquence. Regardless of this truism, this book should be read.

Nostromo is simultaneously a great political novel and a great psychological novel. A large part of Conrad's achievement is his fusion of these 2 elements into one seamless narrative. Nostromo describes the penetration of a Latin American country by European/North American capitalism and the ensuing revolution. All the characters in Nostromo are engaged in the intensely political acts carrying the plot forward. Conrad based his narrative on a considerable amount of research on contemporary Latin America and the articulation of the plot elements is elegantly realistic and gripping. The psychological elements concern characters' motivations for their acts. A recurrent ironic theme is that important characters are driven to act by motivations that have nothing to do with political objectives or economic gain per se. Unlike most of his other novels which offer a psychological portrait primarily of a single character, Nostromo features several characters whose motivations and actions are explored by Conrad. The focus shifts from character to character is a way that consistently advances the plot, a brilliant piece of formal construction. Finally, Nostromo features some of Conrad's best descriptive writing. Because of the complexity of the plot and characterization, Nostromo is not the easiest of Conrad's novels to read. Nostromo is ultimately well worth the effort expended.

Joseph Conrad is one of my favourite writers - so often his philosophies, his points of view become my own. Why is it then that this novel was such hard going for me? I have just finished the novel - I had tried at least twice previously and failed to get to the end - an unusual occurrence for me. Perhaps, because it was Conrad I wouldn't go on as I lost concentration, failed to have any sense of direction. Perhaps I had to put it aside to attack it again with renewed vigour at a later time. Another author I might have put aside altogether.

Certainly the start of 'Nostromo' is very slow - and for much of it - where is Nostromo; that man with so many names? Perhaps the languid mood of the story - despite the underlying threats - created the feeling Conrad wanted for this tropical colonial setting with all those immigrant peoples (again, I think - as I have noted before - Conrad misses the indigenous locals, almost as if they don't exist).

Gradually themes emerged for me - lines of thought that gave me a sense of direction. And Conrad is such a master at weaving these together - threads of time, threads of location, threads of the unfolding (and closing) of lives. But the novel is very bleak, with hardly a positive outcome anywhere. The best we see is dogged resolve. Can life be so bad? Can even the best of us be corrupted by a hoard of silver, so corrupted as to lose the greatest reward that was available? Conrad, does take the breath away with surprising but ever-so-logical sequences of events.

I'm glad I completed 'Nostromo' and suspect I will read it again - perhaps with outcomes already in mind, it may go better for me. But if I was to recommend a Conrad novel to a Conrad novice it wouldn't be 'Nostromo'.

other recommendations:
Joseph Conrad - 'Chance'
Joseph Conrad - 'Victory'
Joseph Conrad - 'Lord Jim'
Ivan Turgenev - 'Torrents of Spring'