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A review by franklekens
Victory: An Island Tale by Joseph Conrad
4.0
This is okay, esp. the first two parts. When Heyst starts smooching & having stilted dialogues with his gal, things sag a little. But the villains are an interesting threesome, the evil genius Schomberg is a creation of genius, Heyst in himself is an interesting enough character, a kind of Humphrey Bogart avant la lettre, and the narration starts interestingly.
That's what struck me most, in the first part: that the narration has some of the same wry humour that I remember from hard-boiled novels. Guess it really is no coincidence that Chandler's main hero was called Marlowe, after Conrad's main narrator (although not in this novel) Marlow.
I think I sometimes forget how big a name Conrad must have been in the first half of the 20th Century. Nowadays he's "just" one of the classic authors, more read about than read, probably -- and read mainly within the confines of academia. But his narratives must have helped shape popular culture in a big way. Reading this, it certainly seemed to me this must have been a major source for hard-boiled detective fiction and films. The typical film noir hero is a lot like Heyst. Hemingway may often have been a direct source, but Conrad was behind it. Besides, those early script writers probably knew their Conrad.
In fact, I'm pretty sure they did. Conrad's work plays a major role, for instance, in a mainstream comedy like the Jean Harlow flick Platinum Blonde: the main character in that film is a journalist who wants nothing so much as to be like Conrad. (That, plus he wants to smooch Harlow, and you wonder why, since she's pretty horrible to look at and he has the much cuter Loretta Young right at hand all the way through. Oh well.)
That's what struck me most, in the first part: that the narration has some of the same wry humour that I remember from hard-boiled novels. Guess it really is no coincidence that Chandler's main hero was called Marlowe, after Conrad's main narrator (although not in this novel) Marlow.
I think I sometimes forget how big a name Conrad must have been in the first half of the 20th Century. Nowadays he's "just" one of the classic authors, more read about than read, probably -- and read mainly within the confines of academia. But his narratives must have helped shape popular culture in a big way. Reading this, it certainly seemed to me this must have been a major source for hard-boiled detective fiction and films. The typical film noir hero is a lot like Heyst. Hemingway may often have been a direct source, but Conrad was behind it. Besides, those early script writers probably knew their Conrad.
In fact, I'm pretty sure they did. Conrad's work plays a major role, for instance, in a mainstream comedy like the Jean Harlow flick Platinum Blonde: the main character in that film is a journalist who wants nothing so much as to be like Conrad. (That, plus he wants to smooch Harlow, and you wonder why, since she's pretty horrible to look at and he has the much cuter Loretta Young right at hand all the way through. Oh well.)