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Title: Nostromo a Tale of the Seaboard by Joseph Conrad, Martin S. Smith ISBN: 0-14-018371-X Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: November, 1990 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $10.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.62 (24 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Another one of Conrad's "un-reconcilable" masterpiece
Comment: Revolution is a fertile ground for nascent ideologies, and neology is perhaps the richest algar on which emerging heroes feed upon. Costaguena is a territory existing only in the unparalleled imagination of Conrad, whose mind was perpetually stimulated by an abstract, unknown, and merely projected world. Nostromo is his instrument of oscillation; ultimately a pendulum caught in the momentum of change, he falls into the precipice that separates the glory of selfhood and the danger of vanity.
From the beginning, Conrad sheds equally heavy recognition on a string of characters. Charles Gould an European capitalist trapped in his father's tragic political enmeshment, Decoud an uprooted native who dies proving his credential, and Antonio Avellanos an audacious aristocrat who carries the torch of her generation are have the protagonist make-up. But following the Greek formula, Nostromo is the true hero who fumbles into falsity because of his one défaut: hubris. The enormous vanity develops into his temptress, and in a way, Nostromo makes the conscious choice to let his incorruptible pride corrupts his morale.
The fatality of Nostromo, very much like many of Conrad's protagonists, marks the inability of men, in the utmost bleakness of mental solitude, to reconcile to the goodness of nature.
Rating: 5
Summary: A story of the silver coast
Comment: Joseph Conrad is one of the most effortlessly cosmopolitan writers in the English language, and "Nostromo" finds him in a fictitious South American country called Costaguana whose mountains are a bountiful resource of silver. And Conrad is probably the only writer who can transform his novel's hero from an all-around tough guy to a heroic savior to a sneaky thief to a tragic victim of mistaken identity through plausible twists of fate without ever letting the story fall into disarray.
The main action of the novel takes place towards the end of the nineteenth century in a town called Sulaco, which is the base of operations for the San Tome silver mine up in the nearby mountains. The administrator of the mine is an Englishman named Charles Gould, whose primary challenge is to find American and European speculators to invest money to keep the mine in business. The other problem he faces is a civil war between the present government and a faction of rebels led by a general named Montero. Gould's wife Emilia is a prominent figure in town, an elegant matron with a philanthropic attitude towards the downtrodden native mine workers and townspeople.
The hero, Nostromo, is an Italian sailor who settled in Costaguana for more lucrative work and is now in charge of keeping the dockworkers -- the "cargadores" -- in line. When Montero's troops invade Sulaco, Nostromo and Martin Decoud, an aristocratic Frenchman who runs Sulaco's newspaper, escape on a boat with the town's silver treasury to protect it from the marauders. Their boat is sideswiped and damaged by a ship commanded by a rebel colonel named Sotillo, and they are forced to moor on a nearby island and bury the treasure there. This island is the future site of a lighthouse to be maintained by the Violas, an Italian family whose patriarch, Giorgio, once supported Garibaldi and still reveres the man like a deity. There is obviously much more to the plot, too much to reveal in this review, and there are many additional important characters, but these are best left for the potential reader to discover.
Narratively, Conrad keeps the story moving with plenty of action and suspense combined with the typical excellence of his prose. Structurally, though, is how Conrad's novel intrigues its reader: He frequently shifts viewpoints, in both place and time, to give the effect of different perspectives of both the immediate events and the long-term history of Sulaco. Contemporary reviewers of the novel apparently saw this technique as an artistic flaw; in retrospect, it seems well ahead of its time.
Thematically, the novel presents a debate about the benefits and problems of imperialism and colonization, using Costaguano as a model colony and the Gould Concession as model imperialists. When Sotillo accuses foreigners of robbing his country of its wealth, Gould suggests to him that a country's resources (i.e., Costaguana's silver) can be used as an asset only from the cooperation of the native workers and the capital and technical knowledge of the colonists. Such a concept seems relevant to global economic development throughout the twentieth century.
Rating: 4
Summary: nostromo, joseph conrad
Comment: The book is said to be "pessimistic". Why? For one the subject matter indicts capitalism, imperialism, materialism, merchantalism, any and all "isms" possible. But on the other hand, the author misses the opportunity to set straight the issues raised by Europeans in a foreign south american country operating a silver mine, employing local indians, and profiting greatly. The key character, Nostromo, is in all ways compromised by silver and its promise of wealth for the rest of his life. Leaving human nature aside and its frailities, Europeans made possible the development of the mine. Wealth was created in the employment of locals paid in local wages. The exploitation issues arguably causing a revolution misses the point. The revolution occured because of the lack of democracy and political will. The most basic point however is this. Wealth and its accumulation as argued by the Enlightenment philosphers of the 18th is not a bad thing. It is to be applauded as the engine and reward for creativity. It is curious how so many authors of the 29th century convolute the benefits of freedom and capitalism. Everyone should prepare for this novel by reading Adam Smith.
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Title: The Secret Agent: A Simple Tale (Oxford World's Classics) by Joseph Conrad, Roger Tennant ISBN: 0192834770 Publisher: Oxford Press Pub. Date: June, 1998 List Price(USD): $9.95 |
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Title: Lord Jim (Penguin Classics) by Joseph Conrad, Robert Hampson, Cedric P. Watts ISBN: 0140180923 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: October, 1989 List Price(USD): $5.95 |
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Title: Under Western Eyes by Jeffrey Meyers, Joseph Conrad ISBN: 037575735X Publisher: Modern Library Pub. Date: 10 July, 2001 List Price(USD): $9.95 |
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Title: Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad ISBN: 0486264645 Publisher: Dover Pubns Pub. Date: 01 July, 1990 List Price(USD): $1.50 |
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Title: Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov ISBN: 0679723420 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 23 April, 1989 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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