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4.06 AVERAGE
4.06 AVERAGE
This book does everything that a good literary biography should do. It makes me see the writer deeper and better and in a surprising new light and makes me want to read Conrad again. It also argues convincingly for his relevance today.
Beautifully written history through the words of Conrad
Jasanoff has written an incredible “history” of Conrad’s world. She weaves together stories from Conrad’s life, his novels, and other historians.
Jasanoff has written an incredible “history” of Conrad’s world. She weaves together stories from Conrad’s life, his novels, and other historians.
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
Picked this up on a whim. While the book does document Conrad’s life, it’s much more than just a dry timeline. It puts him and his work into the context of the world order. It does a great job of capturing Conrad’s views and what motivated him as a human being.
Incredible - whether you like Conrad's work or not, this is a fascinating (and disturbing) look at the politics and power struggle of the time, and what influence it was on his writing and his life. I am especially pleased to see the mention of his literary agent, the great James Brand Pinker, shared with Henry James, Stephen Crane, H.G. Wells, and nearly a hundred other authors. As noted, Pinker was not only an agent, but in Conrad's case and many others, a personal banker and supporter, but is often left out of any discussion of his clients or the publishing period in general. This is a must for Conrad fans as well as those interested in imperialism and the colonization and exploitation of Africa, along with the changes in trade and seafaring (sail to steam) during the 19th century.
How Conrad’s life and times influenced four of his major works.
Amazing book. The author did a great job of synthesizing history, literary criticism and biography to produce an outstanding portrait of the author. Absolutely compelling stuff, and well-rounded with key insights into the period during which Conrad was writing.
It's hard for me to imagine anyone, especially a native English speaker, not having heard of Joseph Conrad. It would seem to be like not having heard of Shakespeare, though I'm sure the world is filled with people who have heard of neither, as the world is full of people who don't read. I don't remember when I first heard of Conrad. Probably as a teenager - precocious lad that I was. Maybe, just maybe it was with the Peter O'Toole movie of Lord Jim in 1965, which would have made me 19, and maybe not so precocious after all. All I really remember of the movie is Peter O'Toole's incredibly blue eyes. I'm pretty sure I would have heard of Heart of Darkness around the same time. That title is one of the great titles of World Literature (along with Long Day's Journey into Night, and The Heart is a Lonely Hunter.) I carried the same paperback copy of Heart of Darkness around for years, and tried reading it a number of times, but didn't get through it until 2016, and since have read it over again - and after The Dawn Watch plan on a third read. I read Lord Jim in 2015, but don't plan on a re-read. All in all, 51 years of carrying the ghost of Joseph Conrad around with me without having read his books. Sidebar: (as if this whole paragraph weren't a sidebar ((sorry,)) being of Polish extraction I was proud of the fact that Conrad was a Pole who taught himself English, and went onto greatness with the written word. Even though that didn't get me to read the books any sooner.
To The Dawn Watch. Maya Jasanoff has written an affectionate biography, masterfully using Conrad's greatest hits, Lord Jim, Heart of Darkness, and Nostromo, as guides to his interior life. She also used a huge number of sources, including 9 volumes of letters, to build her understanding of his life and times. I find two things fascinating. One, his adoption of English. Though I understand he spoke with an accent, his facility as a writer could lead you to believe English was his first language. Two: his life before his literary successes. Writers write, and there's not much opportunity for biography in that, but Conrad had a full career as a seaman, working his way up through the ranks to a captaincy on sailing ships, and not leaving the career until shortly after the advent of steam engines. He also travelled to the exotic places he uses as locales, except for Costaguana, in his Latin American fiction, Nostromo, modeled on his reading and his friend's reminiscences of Columbia and Panama (before the Canal.)
Just like Moby Dick is more than the story of a whale hunt, Conrad's work is about much more than the stories he tells. Conrad was as adept a student of the human condition as any world class novelist, and an anti-imperialist. His work can be read as a critique of colonialism, thus the "Global World," of the subtitle.
Another piece of the book that is fascinating, and necessary considering the subject matter of Heart of Darkness, is King Leopold's absolutely outrageous, and obscene colonization of the Congo - for so many years known as the Belgian Congo, even while I was a kid, and up until independence in 1960. Colonization is all about the extraction of wealth, and in the case of the Congo it was ivory, and rubber. Slaves who didn't fulfill their quota of latex had their left hands cut off. The hands were smoked and collected so they could be counted against quotas. Just for the record, an estimated 10,000,000 Congolese were murdered during Belgian rule.
There are unfortunate, and obvious strains of white supremacy and racism that infect Conrad's work. It's the old, old story of what to do about genius that is marred by antique, and horrid social values. We've heard it, but it's easy enough to sift the good from the bad. Maya Jasanoff finds enough of worth in Conrad's whole life, and deals with his contradictions.
Certainly a book to read if you're interested in Joseph Conrad. It has me re-enthused, and I've put Nostromo onto my reading list. I would have skipped it if not for Ms. Jasanoff's evaluation.
PS: If you haven't read Heart of Darkness, its mere 97 pages are packed with enough worth to have kept it in the canon all these years, and I think it's a must.
To The Dawn Watch. Maya Jasanoff has written an affectionate biography, masterfully using Conrad's greatest hits, Lord Jim, Heart of Darkness, and Nostromo, as guides to his interior life. She also used a huge number of sources, including 9 volumes of letters, to build her understanding of his life and times. I find two things fascinating. One, his adoption of English. Though I understand he spoke with an accent, his facility as a writer could lead you to believe English was his first language. Two: his life before his literary successes. Writers write, and there's not much opportunity for biography in that, but Conrad had a full career as a seaman, working his way up through the ranks to a captaincy on sailing ships, and not leaving the career until shortly after the advent of steam engines. He also travelled to the exotic places he uses as locales, except for Costaguana, in his Latin American fiction, Nostromo, modeled on his reading and his friend's reminiscences of Columbia and Panama (before the Canal.)
Just like Moby Dick is more than the story of a whale hunt, Conrad's work is about much more than the stories he tells. Conrad was as adept a student of the human condition as any world class novelist, and an anti-imperialist. His work can be read as a critique of colonialism, thus the "Global World," of the subtitle.
Another piece of the book that is fascinating, and necessary considering the subject matter of Heart of Darkness, is King Leopold's absolutely outrageous, and obscene colonization of the Congo - for so many years known as the Belgian Congo, even while I was a kid, and up until independence in 1960. Colonization is all about the extraction of wealth, and in the case of the Congo it was ivory, and rubber. Slaves who didn't fulfill their quota of latex had their left hands cut off. The hands were smoked and collected so they could be counted against quotas. Just for the record, an estimated 10,000,000 Congolese were murdered during Belgian rule.
There are unfortunate, and obvious strains of white supremacy and racism that infect Conrad's work. It's the old, old story of what to do about genius that is marred by antique, and horrid social values. We've heard it, but it's easy enough to sift the good from the bad. Maya Jasanoff finds enough of worth in Conrad's whole life, and deals with his contradictions.
Certainly a book to read if you're interested in Joseph Conrad. It has me re-enthused, and I've put Nostromo onto my reading list. I would have skipped it if not for Ms. Jasanoff's evaluation.
PS: If you haven't read Heart of Darkness, its mere 97 pages are packed with enough worth to have kept it in the canon all these years, and I think it's a must.
There’s no shortage of drama in Conrad’s life. The Heart of Darkness author sailed the world, endured Russian oppression in his native Poland & witnessed an age of revolution & colonialism. But a straight bio isn’t up Jasanoff’s academic sleeve. She places Conrad in the context of globalization—from the ivory trade to severed limbs along the Congo riverbanks. His legacy is complicated. Chinua Achebe called him a “bloody racist.” (Conrad didn’t particularly like Europeans either.) Writers like Hemingway, Marquez & Naipaul adored him. (Virginia Woolf didn’t.) Jasanoff only lightly sketches the man himself. But good book-by-book deep dives.
An outstanding and immensely enjoyable read. Jasanoff takes four novels - The Secret Agent, Lord Jim, Heart of Darkness and Nostromo and uses them as a focus for the story not only of Conrad's life, but also of the history of European imperialism and conflict during the late 19th and early 20th century, and the rise of the USA. There are brilliant passages pulling the three elements - Conrad's life, his writings, and geopolitics- together, for example an atmospheric description of Conrad's merchant passage up the Congo, and an outstanding and fascinating description of the Belgian king's determination to enter the imperial race by creating the Congo Free State; all of this leading to Heart of Darkness.
Jasanoff has the credentials and the research of a serious academic, but she writes with the flair of a fine novelist. It's a winning combination.
Jasanoff has the credentials and the research of a serious academic, but she writes with the flair of a fine novelist. It's a winning combination.