Joseph Conrad on war

Joseph Conrad has pulled me back from the brink of crime again, this time with his thoughts on the Russo-Japanese War:

"(T)he war in the Far East has been made known to us, so far, in a grey reflection of its terrible and monotonous phases of pain, death, sickness; a reflection seen in the perspective of thousands of miles, in the dim atmosphere of official reticence, through the veil of inadequate words. Inadequate, I say, because what had to be reproduced is beyond the common experience of war, and our imagination, luckily for our peace of mind, has remained a slumbering faculty, notwithstanding the din of humanitarian talk and the real progress of humanitarian ideas. Direct vision of the fact, or the stimulus of a great art, can alone make it turn and open its eyes heavy with blessed sleep; and even there, as against the testimony of the senses and the stirring up of emotion, that saving callousness which reconciles us to the conditions of our existence, will assert itself under the guise of assent to fatal necessity, or in the enthusiasm of a purely æsthetic admiration of the rendering. In this age of knowledge our sympathetic imagination, to which alone we can look for the ultimate triumph of concord and justice, remains strangely impervious to information, however correctly and even picturesquely conveyed."

— Joseph Conrad, “Autocracy and War” (1905)

The highlighted portion, especially, made me think of a tendency toward especially graphic violence in some crime writing in recent years, and of the justification of some boosters that "that sort of thing really happens."

What does Conrad have to say to Stieg Larsson lovers (and haters)? To we readers of crime fiction, almost all of which concerns an event (death) that can never be adequately comprehended? About the limits of the aesthetic imagination?

Conrad talks about "the stimulus of a great art." What's the difference between great art and voyeuristic exploitation? And do we want fiction to awaken our "slumbering" imagination?

(Read "Autocracy and War" online. )

© Peter Rozovsky 2012

Joseph Conrad on the Titanic

I found this purely by accident while browsing last night. Conrad thought a fair amount about the sea, and his thoughts on it and other interesting subjects may be more pertinent this year than ever:

“It is with a certain bitterness that one must admit to oneself that the late S. S. Titanic had a `good press.' It is perhaps because I have no great practice of daily newspapers (I have never seen so many of them together lying about my room) that the white spaces and the big lettering of the headlines have an incongruous festive air to my eyes, a disagreeable effect of a feverish exploitation of a sensational God-send. And if ever a loss at sea fell under the definition in the terms of a bill of lading, of Act of God, this one does, in its magnitude, suddenness and severity; and in the chastening influence it should have on the self-confidence of mankind.”

— Joseph Conrad, “Some Reflections on the Loss of the Titanic” (1912)

Much in the 100-year-old essay may induce shivers or smiles of recognition today, Conrad's reflections on the fatuous ignorance of senators, for example, or on naive fascination with and faith in bigness. But perhaps none cuts more deeply than this:

“In reading the reports, the first reflection which occurs to one is that, if that luckless ship had been a couple of hundred feet shorter, she would have probably gone clear of the danger. But then, perhaps, she could not have had a swimming bath and a French café.”

© Peter Rozovsky 2012

Crime fiction that sticks up for the little guy

This bit from Lord Jim:

"I pointed out to him that the skipper of the Patna was known to have feathered his nest pretty well, and could procure almost anywhere the means of getting away. With Jim it was otherwise: the Government was keeping him in the Sailors' Home for the time being, and probably he hadn't a penny in his pocket to bless himself with. It costs some money to run away."

reminded me of this from The Big Sleep:

"Carol Lundgren, the boy killer with the limited vocabulary, was out of circulation for a long, long time, even if they didn't strap him in a chair over a bucket of acid. They wouldn't, because he would take a plea and save the county money. They all do when they don't have the price of a big lawyer."

Both are matter-of-fact recognitions of money's power to buy or evade justice. What's your favorite example of crime writing that sticks up for the little guy or at least recognizes his plight?

***

A search preparatory to this post turned up this oddity: a bilingual edition of The Big Sleep with facing text in English and Russian. Here's
how to say

"`What’s your name?'

"`Reilly,' I said. `Doghouse Reilly.'"

in Russian:

- Как вас зовут?

- Рейли, - ответил я. - Догхауз Рейли.

© Peter Rozovsky 2011

Conrad and Chandler, Marlow and Marlowe

First I noticed that Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim opens with a passage whose form, substance and rhythm would be right at home in classic American hard-boiled writing:

"He was an inch, perhaps two, under six feet, powerfully built, and he advanced straight at you with a slight stoop of the shoulders, head forward, and a fixed from-under stare which made you think of a charging bull."

Then I realized that the book's narrator is named Marlow (also the narrator of other Conrad works, including Heart of Darkness). Then it transpired that Marlow finds the guilty, bereft Jim work with a ship's chandler.

Coincidence? Maybe. But Raymond Chandler (and Dashiell Hammett) did not spring like Athena from Zeus' head, fully grown, armed, and ready for the fight. In some of Hammett's early stories especially, traces remain of the genteel English detective stories of which the hard-boiled school is the reputed antithesis.

Did Chandler read Conrad? If so, what he take from the experience? It's probably easy to find discussions of Marlow as the moral center of Conrad's work and hence an apt choice for the name (with an e added) of Chandler's protagonist. But maybe Chandler liked Conrad's prose style, too.

© Peter Rozovsky 2010