Joseph Conrad Books

I did not expect to enjoy this book, and it took a little while to get into it, but I found myself enthralled--and by the conclusion, moved--almost against my will.

Conrad's style here is a bit moody for my personal taste, but beautiful nonetheless. He makes brilliant use of the English language and is a master of the judicious metaphor. He draws you in as he slowly unravels his tale of an "overly romantic" man and his "exquisite egoism."

While Conrad doesn't quite compare with the great romanticists like Hugo and Dostoevsky, Lord Jim is one of the last great romantic novels, certainly far superior to almost any fiction being written today.

I did not expect to enjoy this book, and it took a little while to get into it, but I found myself enthralled--and by the conclusion, moved--almost against my will.

Conrad's style here is a bit moody for my personal taste, but beautiful nonetheless. He makes brilliant use of the English language and is a master of the judicious metaphor. He draws you in as he slowly unravels his tale of an "overly romantic" man and his "exquisite egoism."

While Conrad doesn't quite compare with the great romanticists like Hugo and Dostoevsky, Lord Jim is one of the last great romantic novels, certainly far superior to almost any fiction being written today.

Borys Conrad offers a child's view of a father. He obviously loved and admired his father, and was cherished in return. However, nothing in the book suggests a deeper understanding of Joseph Conrad, or any research done to gain a more adult perspective -- so if you are hoping for a psychological insight into J.C. the writer, you may be disappointed.

Borys is also careful to omit anything that may be too intimate re family matters. For example, he states many times that he and his father were very close. Yet, Borys kept his marriage a secret from his parents for some months before they found out about it, and he offers no explanation for keeping this secret, although he does admit that doing so hurt them very much.

It seems that most of J.C.'s greatest writing was done before Bory's birth, since all the books that he mentions his father working on during his childhood have been forgotten today.

If you are hoping for a biography of Joseph Conrad, or special insight into his relationships, or how or why he wrote, you will get a very incomplete picture. However, the book could still be useful for research purposes and was an enjoyable read. Bory's wrote the book while in his seventies, and as such his memory of humourous childhood incidences was remarkable. A loving portrait.

Karl is an important Conradian scholar, yet there are points at which he makes claims that are almost indefensible. For example, in this treatise, he claims that there is no "cosmic significance" to The Secret Sharer." "The Surface," he writes, "is in this case the story." The novella is, despite Leggatt's protestations to the contrary, merely "a tale for boys,' devoid of any ulterior meaning. How a respected writer could make such a claim about any Conrad narrative is beyond the pale. The Secret Sharer is amongst Conrad's deepest and most symbolically rich excursions in any genre. It is a veritable cornucopia of symbolism and divergent meanings. To reduce it to a story "about growing up," is to miss the boat entirely.

To give Karl his due, he does allow as how "The Secret Sharer" is "one of Conrad's best." But his criterium misses the mark when it comes to the multi-demensionality of the narrative. He states that as far as its "suggestiveness, it is paradoxically, one of the most straightforward and obvious works. Its narrative is a model of clarity, like those uncomplicated narratives "Youth," and "The Shadow Line." In other words, if one accepts Karl's reading, "The Secret Sharer" is the kind of "traditional" text that Roland Barthes calls "sterile," since it becomes "wholly predictable and obviously intelligible" - a sophomoric tall tale easily digested and expunged in countless high school English classes from now 'till doomsday.

I could also expound from now 'till doomsday why this is justifiably not the case and that "The Secret Sharer," like its counterpart "Heart of Darkness," are in fact fraught with meaning and enigmatic depths. Both offer rich lodes of symbolism and psychological investigation, just as Conrad's other meaningful creations invite. To dismiss "The Secret Sharer" as a book for boys undermines and in fact almost torpedos an otherwise valuable treatise.

This is the first biography and one of the few available about Steven Crane, published about a decade after his death, by a personal associate of Crane's (Thomas Beer - a contemporary author in his own right). Beer does a good job at dispelling popular myths at the time of Crane's death about Crane's life. Probably of most interest to those reading Crane's work and wish to know more about Crane. Published in 1933.

Another great read by Joseph Wambaugh. Appears not much as changed since I worked the Hollywood area in the late 70's, brought back some memories. Being retired from police work, just reading the book, I was able to place myself in the shoes of the characters, nothing really changes. Wambaugh does a good job pulling all the characters together, good humor, tells it like it is, and the book was very difficult to put down.

I started reading JW novels in college 25 years ago. I have read them all. After a long pause he put out Hollywood Station--a fun little read but not his best. I was expecting a similar quality in the new one, Hollywood Crows. But I was surprised to find out I could not put it down. I'd have to say...impulsively perhaps...that this is my favorite book of his. I'm just stunned to read the reviews calling this boring. I will admit that I know Hollywood from many visits and that adds to the experience for me. But whatever it is, I just love this novel.

To the author: I hope you keep on cranking out more stories in this Hollywood series Joe; I suspect there's many more like me that want the setting to stay there for a while...it makes for great stories...as you well know! Great job.

I LOVE ALL OF JOSEPH WAMBAUGH BOOKS. HOLLYWOOD CROWS IS CONTINUED FROM HOLLYWOOD STATION. JOSEPH WAMBAUGH WAS A LOS ANGELES COP AND WRITES ABOUT THE HOLLYWOOD POLICE DEPT AND ALL OF THE STRANGE PEOPLE WHO WERE ON HIS BEAT, GOOD AND BAD.

Having been a longstanding admirer of this author, I did not hesitate to purchase this latest penmanship that was on offer.
I was not disappointed: truly magnificent prose, be it at times difficult for me to understand as I am not a native American speaker. Excellent plot, surprising twists as only once could I predict the outcome of a certain development accurately.
If you want to read what I believe is a true account of what policework is really like in one of the most famous places in the world, don't hesitate a minute and purchase this masterpiece!

Joseph Wambaugh has grown into, if not invented, a unique genre: the police story as opposed to the police procedural. In "Hollywood Crows", the emphasis in on the characters and incidents in their lives as opposed to the resolution of specific criminal acts. The technique is not in and of itself new: you can see the seeds of it in the classic movie "Naked City". Wambaugh's distinction is the skill with he tells these stories.

Sequel to his "Hollywood Station", "Hollywood Crows" follows many of the same characters. Hollywood Nate Weiss, a 36 year old cop who still has dreams of becoming a big-time movie actor; Ronnie Sinclair, survivor of two failed marriages; Flotsam and Jetsam, for whom police work is a diversion from their real life as Malibu surfers; the officious Sergeant "Chickenlips" Treakle; Compassionate Charlie, the crude, insensitive detective; Cat Song, the Korean woman police officer and so on. Quite a collection, all of whom - like all of us - are dysfunctional in some way, small or large. Of course, police can't exist without criminals or potential criminals and there's no shortage of those here: Margot and Ali Azizz, the battling soon-to-be divorcees who want misfortune to befall the other; Leonard, the surprisingly sympathetic crackhead who is always looking for an easy and illegal score.

Overall, the plot is thin, but it makes no difference. The focus here is on the insanity of being a Los Angeles cop, not on resolving some crime or other. The story is episodic reflecting the foibles of each of the characters. Hollywood Nate, for instance, when he is not sitting at the Farmer's Market eavesdropping on a group of very old and unemployed movie directors and writers, is always hunting for his big breakthrough part in the movies or seeking new women. He notices the gorgeous Margot Azizz, stops her for a traffic violation and thinks he has wangled an invitation from her. In fact, the beautiful Margot has plans for Nate Weiss.

Ronnie Sinclair is a woman police officer just trying to make it through life. She has a two year old son and two failed marriages in her past when she is appointed to the Community Relations Offices (the Crows in the title), that becomes involved in quality of life issues such as excessive noise in order to free other officers to fight "real" crime. The CRO is also painted in unflattering terms as part of the response to the suffocating consent decree imposed on the LAPD in the wake of the Rodney King incident and Ramparts Division evidence planting scandal. It is clear that the police of Wambaugh's novel don't appreciate this goody two-shoes. They'd rather do things the old-fashioned way and put people away in jail no matter what.

The book moves in fits and starts with often hilarious interludes. Some of the vignettes are out-loud laughing funny, particularly the scenes around Grauman's Chinese Theatre where hustlers dress up as popular movie characters such as Dearth Vader.

There is a big crime afoot and Wambaugh reveals it gradually. A two-bit crack addict, Leonard Stilwell, hovers and flits about the edges of the big crimes - and Stilwell is a sympathetic, if repulsive, character.

This is not a book for people looking for the excitement of a true police procedural where the detecive ploddingly sorts through the false leads to find his way to the perpetrator. This is a collection of stories about police in general and specific police officers. Some are gut busting funny - and a few are tragic. All are fascinating as Wambaugh shows us his skill as a storyteller. A fine and satisfying read.

Jerry

Conrad still suffers today from the same pigeon-hole that his writing was pounded into during his own lifetime. He is still seen as harbinger of distant seas, of the exotic, the foreign. He is best known for Heart of Darkness, a book immortalized in pop culture by Francis Ford Coppola's retelling of this long, tormented short story as a Vietnam epic in Apocalypse Now.

And yet, The Secret Agent is a book that rivals, if not matches or exceeds, that great horror of the English cannon. This is more than a novel about terrorism, this is a terrorist novel. It's a book about poverty and squalor, about the obfuscated struggles of humanity; it conspires to build our ideals into violent extremes, chipping at a suffering domesticity negotiated in silence, then lets them fall in the babble of gutted secrets. This violence is not thrusted upon us in a language that dazzles tired eyes with surreal distortions; Conrad's is a dark, brooding prose as tempered and inauspicious as blinding banalities of our daily lives, and it these complacencies that he uses to deliver an ultimate shock. Conrad aims here at the absolute vortex of the British Empire--really, of the entire West--at that crossroads between global politics and the most individual of covenants. The knowledge found there manifests a total psychological collapse, one that leaves the cruel mechanisms of reality horrifically untouched.

Its important to remember, that the novel is written at a time when democracy is not exactly well spread through Europe, and most of the continental countries are having a hard time trying to understand why the English shelter anarchists and Marxists and even allow them to publish their works.

No doubt that Conrad met a few of them in literary or social circles and found them amusing in their contradictions. That is why the "criminal mastermind" Mr. Verloc is portrayed more as a very lazy bourgeois than someone whose mind is set upon creating the conditions to change society.

On the other hand, Conrad is faithful to its belief on the perennial existence if not preeminence, of a dark side of the soul in everyone. So the atmosphere in which every character dwells is gloomy, sad and purposefully shows that no motivation is really beyond a person's self interest, even if you claim that you are doing it for God and country, to save the planet or your mother.

Anarchism was a big thing in the late 19th century and early 20th century (you can compare it with the situation of Islamic terrorism today). Several kings, presidents and other politicians were killed by anarchists during that epoch (US president McKinley and Austrian Empress Sissi was among them). Conrad's book is one of the best novels about the anarchist world, dealing with an anarchist cell working in London during that time. The protagonist, Verloc, is the head of the cell and also an informer for the police and an agent for an unnamed foreign country (thus, he is a triple agent) and his attempt to blow up the Greenwich observatory ends tragically for an unwitting member of his family. Note: Conrad amusingly says in the prologue that he never personally met an anarchist himself, but the main story is based on real events he probably picked up from the press of the time.

Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent brought up many interesting topics for discussion. The group of motifs Conrad chose to weave into his 1907 novel is highly political in nature: Anarchist views, science, capitalism, socialism, idealization, private ownership, poverty, the police, and possibly even Muslim extremism. For a novel written when it was, in many places The Secret Agent seemed an almost prophetic tale of Mr. Verloc, a secret agent in London.

Interestingly enough, its first prophetic topic is of great importance in today's terror-stricken world, the plot of the story centering mainly on an Anarchist terrorist plot to put one of their followers, Mr. Verloc, in charge of blowing up an observatory. His method of choice, the suicide bomber, is eerily familiar to today's reader. What makes this suicide bomber plot all the more interesting are the obscure details Conrad includes that led me to question whether Verloc and his family were, in fact, Muslim. In Sir Ethelred and the Assistant Commissioner's chapter ten discussion, the Assistance Commissioner's thoughts question the country's domestic policy and focus on his battle against the "paynim (heathen/Muslim) Cheeseman," which is Verloc. Toward the end, Conrad describes Mrs. Verloc as walking around town covered in black except for her eyes. These two details combine to add a Muslim thread to this already visionary terrorist suicide bombing plot in London, curiously reminiscent of recent world events.

Stevie's comments to Mrs. Verloc on the taxi were intriguing as well, receiving new life from the recent New Orleans natural disaster. Stevie's sympathy for the poor taxi driver and poor horse lead him to wonder why the police don't fight to stop injustice. Mrs. Verloc's response, "They are there so that them as have nothing shouldn't take anything away from them who have" is followed by Stevie's question of "What, not even if they were hungry?" The way the media portrayed and the police responded to the "looting" in New Orleans was the answer to Stevie's question: "Yes, that's the police's job even if the poor are hungry."

The Secret Agent, even though nearly a century old, brings to the forefront topics that seem to our world today fairly new. The details connect with the reader because of their strange relevance, spurring conversation about the various topics listed above.

Reviewed by Jonathan Stephens

This novel is confusing, melodramatic and contains too many improbable developments.

Its main character, Verloc, considers himself as an anarchist, although his role is 'the protection of the social mechanism', because 'protection is the first necessity of opulence and luxury'.
As an 'agent provocateur' for a foreign country, he is forced (otherwise he looses his job) to organize a terrorist attack, which should 'waken up the middle classes' against 'unhygienic labour' in Great-Britain.
He is also a spy on revolutionary activities of a small club of leftists fanatics (a combination of marxists and anarchists).

Conrad's superlative style is everything except subtle: 'the shallow enviousness of unhygienic labour' and 'the poor, pathetically mendacious, miserably authenticated by the horrible breath of cheap rum and soap-suds', seem to contradict a 'bad world for poor people'.
The writing is sloppy. One time, an organization is called the Central Red Committee, another time, the International Red Committee. A 'Central' Committee seems rather bizarre for anarchists ('I depend on death, which knows no restraint and cannot be attacked. My superiority is evident.')

A dialogue between a police chief and a pure anarchist ('looking for the blow to open the first crack in the great edifice of legal conceptions sheltering the atrocious injustice of society') seems improbable, as well as the short love story between Verloc's wife and another anarchist, at the end.

However, certain aspects of the novel are very actual, like the use of 'a weak-minded creature with carefully indoctrinated loyalty and blind docility and devotion', to carry out the fatal terrorist attack. Also actual is the following sentence: 'the existence of secret agents should not be tolerated, as tending to augment the positive dangers of evil'.

This book has not the same high standard as Conrad's masterpieces like 'Hearth of Darkness' and 'Lord Jim'.

Only for Conrad fans.

The narrator is writing to a friend, relating a story that author Joseph Conrad had related to him earlier, about an encounter at sea. Got it? Lawrence Thornton's literary device is certainly clever, but it's so complicated that the whole book collapses under its weight. The dust jacket gave the impression that this book had similarities to "The Caine Mutiny," but that's not at all the case.

Thornton's premise is interesting and his descriptive writing is excellent, but this was not an enjoyable read for me. A knowledge and love of Joseph Conrad's novels is practically essential, as is the patience for sorting out Thornton's narrative.

I enjoyed Mr Thornton's "Imagining Argentina" and when I heard of this novel, based on the life and characters of my favorite author, I was excited. So maybe I was too eager, but in many ways this novel was a disappointment. Perhaps it suffers too much from comparisons with the novels of Conrad, connections that are an essential part of the story, but every time I read something like "and I remember Jim doing..." I too would think back to Lord Jim. The characters just aren't as alive as they are in Conrad's novels, and that is no great failing b/c few are, but the insights into the supposedly "real" lives of those who served as inspiration are few and far between. These characters, based on other characters, felt like shadows of the real thing. And even incorporating Conrad himself into the story was surprisingly ineffective, and even felt a bit...sacrilegious?

But that criticism aside, if you've enjoyed Conrad's novels as I have this will at least hold your interest. Thornton, through Malone, interestingly recasts a few of Conrad's scenes and characters (even though when he does so it seems to stymie the plot). And the ending is very strong, after Conrad himself disappears from the story there is a powerful urgency in the narrative, and the reminiscing feels more pertinent.

Sailors on the Inward Sea is narrated by seaman Jack Malone, Thornton's imagined model for Joseph Conrad's most famous character/narrator--Marlow. In his memoir, written as if told to Ford Madox Ford, a friend common to both Conrad and Malone, Malone details how he became Marlow and what impact this had on his and Conrad's friendship. In its examination of a famous author and how he appropriated story material from the lives of friends and family, Sailors is similar in theme to Colm Toiban's recent The Master, concerning Henry James. My own preference is for Sailors, for several reasons.
In both books, a foreknowledge of each author's texts, in this case Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Lord Jim, without a doubt makes the reading experience a more rich and rewarding one. Because Sailors, however, is less focused so microscopically on the author, a lack of knowledge of Conrad's work has less of a negative impact than I think holds true if one reads The Master without knowing James. Thornton also does a nice job of quoting long passages from relevant works (admittedly such quotes are at times awkwardly introduced) to help the reader out when absolutely necessary.
Appropriately for a novel with Conrad as much of its focus, there are layers within layers in Sailors. The book has several stories within stories: Conrad's appropriation of Malone's own stories and Malone's first conversation with Conrad about this, a separate sea tragedy Conrad uses for a later tale, Malone's purchase of the Nellie (the famous ship that opens and closes Heart of Darkness), Malone's tragic love affair, Conrad's funeral, and so on. All of these are neatly layered one within the other, opening up the story at just the right times. They also help to add some compelling interest to a story that could have felt a bit claustrophobic and self-referential. What will happen to the fogged-in ship? What will happen to the captain charged with ignoring the naval code? Will Conrad's use of Malone destroy their friendship? What happened to Malone's girl who is mentioned but never seen? These are simple plot questions that engage the reader beyond the literary and the abstract (another reason I preferred this book over The Master).
The writing itself is beautiful, in its evocation of place and scene-the sun going down on a pier, the exotic settings of the East, a fog-enclosed ship moving out to sea-or equally so in its description of binding friendships and their inevitable loss over time. Thornton examines a much wider world, a much more common world than simply that of a famous author and his source material, and every reader, familiar or not with Conrad's work, will feel him/herself moved by many of the scenes. Highly recommended for both Conrad fans and those not particularly familiar with Conrad but simply looking for a wonderfully written and constructed novel.

Although knowledge of things nautical and the author, Joseph Conrad, and his works make this novel more enjoyable, the work makes for a particularly good read. Written in the first person, Sailors on the Inward Sea takes the reader on a fast-paced voyage that features sojourns in the English Channel, the docks of London a century ago, the English countryside, and exotic ports of call in the Far East. Several twists and turns keep up the pace, and this reader put down the novel anxious to essay several literary routes suggested by the story.
Wonderful writing.

I am not sure how I made it the last 34 years not having read Conrad's Heart of Darkness, especially as a literature buff. What is interesting about Marlow's narrative is that we can pinpoint him as both an anti-imperialist and a racist, two characteristics that are very difficult to reconcile indeed. Of course the book is about the white man going into the hinterland of Africa and taking what his heart desires (in this case, ivory). More than that, though, we meet Kurtz, a man who has given up civilization to live among the "savages." Marlow (the narrator), who is sent on a mission to retrieve Kurtz (who has essentially become a danger to himself and his country), sees much of himself in this spectral figure and his journey up the Congo to find him is rife with diversions, ponderances, lush imagery and precarious dilemmas.
Once you finish the book, I recommend seeing Apocalypse Now. As you may or may not know, it was based on Conrad's book (as well as Frazer's The Golden Bough). In the film, Vietnam is replaced with Africa, but we still get to see, quite clearly, the horror man bestows upon his fellow man, and on himself.
Both the book and the film are worth seeing and discussing.

Arriving at this page, inspired, enthused by Coppola's cinematic masterpiece 'Apocalypse Now'? Or maybe from the documentary 'Hearts of Darkness - A Filmmaker's Apocalypse'? Eager to learn more? maybe drink at the fountain from which perhaps the greatest piece of cinema, was born? Think again. What we have here is purely and simply a VERY mediocre novella, a work that was written not by a writer, but by a Mariner with a typewriter - a hobbyist. On no account could or should this be taken as a seminal work of either fact or fiction, and I wish those who are forever trying to have this work classified as such a literary milestone would find a real cause to champion. I mean why is this one of the supposed greats? Is it original? No! Well written? No! Does it have well-drawn characters? No! an intriguing plot, perhaps? No. Does it use language in a new or creative way? No. Does it re-define the novella? No! Does it have potential to influence, either in style or content, the works of other writers? No! - then what? What is it that reverberates so loudly? If not the work then the noise of the crowd surrounding the pedestal - eager for a glimpse of the masterpiece that (they have been told) is so revered, so special.
Between the pseudo-intellectual and the literary professor's attempts to 'interpret' this work (for interpret read: paint it their colour) there is nothing hidden, nor magical here, no genius lies between the poor structure and the even worse punctuation. A simple tale, nothing more. Had one not know Conrad actually ventured to the African Continent, one could have easily mistaken his poorly drawn figures, his stereotypical characters as being the stuff of a boyhood imagination - too many comics and children's novels read under the blanket with a torch...
The only extra-ordinary factor here is the fact that Coppola, in his undisputed genius, took this simple, fragmented tale of no real literary worth and from its inspiration produced a moment in cinematic history which will never again be glimpsed, a peak never again scaled. That is the only thing one need be in awe of here.

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.

First of all, this is hardly a novel, no matter what they might say; it's only 45 pages. Second, it must be noted that Joseph Conrad has been put in that category of amazing, deep and timeless English Literature. The introduction to the book calls it one of the six greatest short novels in the English language. So is it?

The story concerns a new ship's captain, who while on watch discovers a swimmer in the sea. This man has (inadvertently?) killed another man on his own ship, and jumped overboard after he was put under arrest. The captain, for some reason, considers this man his "double", and takes care of him, hides him, and helps him to escape.

There are, as those who bow down before the altar of literature observe, themes of self-knowledge and identity. This is well and good, but I think it's hardly as profound as it's made out to be. This seems to be one of those times where the intelligentsia has all jumped on the bandwagon of discovering profound revelation where it may or may not exist.

Conrad has a very wordy and heavily descriptive style. Sometimes this works well, as there are scenes vividly portrayed. More often, it drags the story down. The feeling the reader comes away with is "This story is slightly boring." But that, I think it at least in part due to the writing style of 100 years ago.

So is there something deep here? Or am I too stupid to see it? That may well be, because I certainly don't see it.

This book seems to fit with my long-held Deepness Theory. The Deepness Theory is this: when you see a piece of art or read a piece of writing, and you just don't see what's so great about it, or you don't understand it or what the big deal is, you have to have a reason why, particularly when others think highly of it. So you could say "it's boring" or "it sucks", but then you look uncultured to the others, all of whom apparently think it's the cat's pajamas. So then you say, "Oh, it's so deep! I can't even understand it!" So then pretty soon everybody's doing that. It's like the Emperor's New Clothes. I also think it's similar to the way we treat the theory of evolution, but that's a whole other discussion.

So I'll say it. The Secret Sharer was slightly boring, and I didn't think it was anywhere near as profound as the literature kings say.

NOT RECOMMENDED

if i wasnt rushed to read it i probably could've focused on the details and the parallelism. but that's why i'm here cuz i'm tryin to understand it better.

When I first read "The Secret Sharer" I was left thinking about our minds wonderful experiences and how good can come from bad. Conrad writes about the truth of human experiences and the corruption of mankind in such a briliant way it is unbelievable. You can feel the captain trapped with the choice of keeping the murderer, that reminds him so much of a gloomy side of himself, or turn him in.