Category: Joseph Conrad

There is a notion that judgments of living artists are impossible. They are bound to be corrupted, we are told, by prejudice, false perspective, mob emotion, error. The question whether this or that man is great or small is one … Read the rest

Conrad’s first novel, “Almayer’s Folly,” was printed in 1895. He tells us in “A Personal Record” that it took him seven years to write it—seven years of pertinacious effort, of trial and error, of learning how to write. He was, … Read the rest

Conrad’s predilection for barbarous scenes and the more bald and shocking sort of drama has an obviously autobiographical basis. His own road ran into strange places in the days of his youth. He moved among men who were menaced by … Read the rest

As for Conrad the literary craftsman, opposing him for the moment to Conrad the showman of the human comedy, the quality that all who write about him seem chiefly to mark in him is his scorn of conventional form, his … Read the rest

My business, however, is not with the culture of Anglo-Saxondom, but only with Conrad’s place therein. That place is isolated and remote; he is neither of it nor quite in it. In the midst of a futile meliorism which deceives … Read the rest