It sometimes happens that you meet a perfectly decent, intelligent person with whom you cannot conduct a satisfactory conversation. He doesn't know when you're serious or when you're being ironic, doesn't get your jokes, misses your allusions and references, challenges your assumptions, and repeatedly asks, "What exactly do you mean?" You and he are just not on the same wavelength. There's no empathy, no meeting of minds.
Joseph Conrad and I have been locked into such an unprofitable relationship for these last fifty years (although, to be fair, the novelist himself is less engaged in the standoff than I). In the 1960s, I embarked on a Conrad tour and, as is my custom, began at the beginning, reading the first six or so novels, from Almayer's Folly through Typhoon. It was hard labor, not love. The much-celebrated romantic ornamented prose style settled like thick mist over my hebetudinous faculties, so much so that I frequently lost track of the plot, failed to differentiate the characters, felt myself strangled by the metaphors and boggled by the syntax. Befogged, miasmafied. Even the stories that I dutifully re-read, such as Heart of Darkness, required effort and discipline.
Hungry for books, last summer, I was browsing the second-hand book shelves. There aren't many respectable options at the bodice-ripper-rich Bookshelf in Bradford, Vermont. Conrad's The Secret Agent seemed like a good choice, especially since I could dimly recall that in the 1950s, the great mid-century Khan of English Literature, F. R. Leavis, had placed this particular novel way up high in the literary firmament. For $3.50, I decided, what the heck, I'll try Conrad again.
I felt my way through the Conradian fog for a few chapters, set the book aside for a couple of weeks, then started once again. On the second or third try I finally succeeded and, for the first time in my life, connected to Conrad with ease and full comprehension. Here's the key: The Secret Agent is written in that familiar grave portentous style, but it's a funny, satirical leg-puller. A bunch of incompetents, playing at being anarchists and communists, screw up their lives and the lives of everyone around them. The Secret Agent is a spy novel, a police procedural, a political novel, and a comedy all rolled into one. While was stuck thinking, late Dostoevsky, I made no progress, but when I came to the realization, not Dostoevsky but Coen brothers, the elements immediately fell into place. Moreover, The Secret Agent is a novel not just for the pre-World War I moment, but for this present decade. It's extraordinarily keen and insightful about the banality of terrorism.
Now I feel that I can tackle those other Conrad novels that have lain in wait for me all these years. Stay tuned, fit audience but few, for further reports. Joe C. and I may yet become great friends.
Good for people to know.
Posted by: Aya | October 21, 2008 at 08:36 PM
Ditto for me & Conrad. I remember stumbling through the Secret Swimmer (or Secret Sharer?) thirty years ago. Also read Heart of Darkness at least twice. Now I'll try The Secret Agent again from your viewpoint & see it it works.
Posted by: Jon Brazelton | November 04, 2007 at 09:56 AM