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Virtual Macedonia Bookstore - Lord Jim (Unwin Critical Library)
![Lord Jim (Unwin Critical Library)]()
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List Price: $59.95
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Manufacturer: Unwin Hyman
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.912
EAN: 9780048000804
ISBN: 0048000809
Label: Unwin Hyman
Manufacturer: Unwin Hyman
Number Of Pages: 288
Publication Date: 1988-08
Publisher: Unwin Hyman
Studio: Unwin Hyman
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Master of the metaphor
Comment: I actually started listening to this as an audio book on a road trip with my family. My wife and son couldn't make it through the first hour since they felt like it took forever to describe the key incident in the story. I continued with the book and found that I eventually got used to this style of writing. From a literary point of view, it is a beautiful and impressive style. Conrad paints a very graphic picture with his metaphors that is almost never used in modern writing. Reading this book was an experience I'm glad that I had, though I'm still not sure this is my favorite style. The narrative format also took some getting used to; the jumping back and forth was effective, but took some concentration.
As far as the story goes, it explored the effects of guilt in a man. Great novels help us understand key points of human thought and relationships and this book clearly falls in this category. You find yourself understanding the main failings and actions of the key character. I came away from this book with a reinforced understanding of the need of forgiveness, especially for oneself. Obviously it is easier to tell someone to forgive themselves than it is to actually forgive yourself.
Overall I recommend this book for those interested in literature; the use of metaphors is incredible. This book is not for everyone, but is worth it for those wanting to experience Conrad at his finest.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A Grand Ungodly Godlike Narrator
Comment: That title is a knock-off of Ishmael's description of Captain Ahab in Melville's Moby Dick. My guess is that Joseph Conrad never read Moby Dick. His writing career unfolded during the decades before the rediscovery of Melville. I have no doubt that Conrad would have burst with appreciation if he'd encountered the other "greatest" writer of sea tales in English or any language. Lord Jim begins to remind me of Moby Dick in chapter four, when the straightforward 3rd person narrative suddenly shifts to Conrad's typically indirect narration in the first person voice of Captain Marlow. Thereafter, Jim's whole adventure is embedded in Marlow's rambling discourse, to the utter despair of high school sophomores and middle-age armchair travelers who "just want the story, ma'm."
So who is Marlow? Is he just a convenient mask for Conrad? Why is so much text devoted to Marlow's musing about his own "peripheral" role in the story and his own unresolved understanding of Jim? Does "Jim" really exist, outside of Marlow's penchant for entertaining friends with bizarre anecdotes? (The last few chapters, cast as a letter from Marlow to a friend, would seem to be intended to 'document' the truth of the tale.) Dear reader, you've better notice that Jim is remarkably inarticulate in Marlow's account; when he speaks, he almost never finishes a sentence, never establishes a discourse on his own terms. The Jim we get to know is as much a projection of Marlow's ego as Jesus of Nazareth was of the Apostle Paul's. And then, of course, we still have to wonder about the invisible author behind the so-obtrusive narrator.
What I'm arguing here is that the novel Lord Jim is about as much about the title character as Moby Dick is about the whale. Ahab's quest for ineffable vengeance by death is almost exactly parallel to Jim's quest for redemption by death. Both are ripping good adventure tales that COULD be told in eighty-page novellas or made into films from which the narrative voices are stripped and scattered on the floor of the editing studio. But just as the main character in Moby Dick is Ishmael, Marlow is the heart of obscurity in Lord Jim. To really relish either book, the reader has to take the narrator's epiphanies seriously.
Are we on any kind of solid ground in saying that Melville's novel is about a socially orphaned Ishmael projecting his need for a father Ahab? Shall we then risk the notion that Conrad's novel is about a psychologically impotent Marlow projecting his need for a son on Tuan Jim? Hey, reader! If you steal my notion and write a grad seminar paper with it, don't forget to vote "helpful" on my review!
This is an absurdly great novel, a book to read thoughtfully with mounting involvement until you can't attend to anything else before finishing it, a book to read again and again as your life changes perspective on itself. If you have doubts about Conrad's mastery of the English language, listen to this description:
"... we watched the moon float away above the chasm between the hills like an ascending spirit out of a grave; its sheen descended, cold and pale, like the ghost of dead sunlight. There is something haunting in the light of the moon... It is to our sunshine, which -- say what you like -- is all we have to live by, what the echo is to the sound: misleading and confusing whether the note by mocking or sad." That extended metaphor, to my mind, sets up perfectly the mood and the narrative thrust of Marlow's first long 'confessional' conversation with the disgraced sailor Jim, in which self-mockery and sadness afflict both parties.
I'd forgotten, or never realized, how deep this novel is, since I first read it perhaps twenty years ago. I hope I can come upon it with the same freshness and astonishment when I read it again, perhaps twenty years from now.
Customer Rating:
Summary: One of my favorites books
Comment: This book is what books were made for. Conrad's gift to build a scene that comes alive in the mind is unsurpassed as far as I am concerned. His characters are imperfect and all too human. Their inner struggles are the same as those we have today. For the novice, this book may seem a little tedious but once you get into the flow of his imagery you are in for a treat.
Customer Rating:
Summary: beware - romanticism
Comment: Joseph Conrad's tale of Lord Jim is a warning against taking yourself too seriously, expecting too much of yourself, failing to forgive yourself.
Jim is such a noble character but is he just another manifestation of Dostoevsky's 'The Idiot' - too honourable to be a survivor. Of course Conrad conspires greatly against Jim. With Jim's first great mistake - the one that, in his eyes, blighted him forever, it is as if God himself pardoned Jim, absolved him of any blame because there were no victims. And yet Jim cannot put the unfortunate aside push on with an effective life. But that's not quite true - eventually he does find a place for himself and the rest was up to Conrad's masterful plotting.
I also enjoy immensely the method Conrad uses of telling a tale through the eyes of an observer - Marlowe. While we are all participants in life, we are also very much more observers - if we care to observe.
other recommendations:
'Victory', 'Chance' - Joseph Conrad
'Virgin Soil' - Turgenev
Customer Rating:
Summary: The best book on the nature of courage I've ever read
Comment: The best book on the nature of courage I've ever read. Unfortunately, to appreciate it (and many other Conrad novels), you need to have a fair bit of experience in life. I tried to read Conrad at 13, then at 20. It seemed boring and I could not quite relate to his heroes, but now, when I am a bit older, I found his books and this one in particular, really interesting. This is not a page turner. I found myself reading pieces of 10-20 pages, then putting the book aside and taking some time to think. All in all, this is a really good book.
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Editorial Reviews:
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HarperCollins UK Audio Classics presents abridged and unabridged readings of the world's favorite literary masterpieces. Among the distinguished readers are Christopher Lee, Derek Jacobi, Simon Callow, Linus Roache, Elizabeth McGovern, Terry Jones, Peter Firth, and Rufus Sewell. Each package of cassettes in the Audio Classics series is beautifully packaged and shrink-wrapped.
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