Hello everyone!
I've read 4 books by Conrad, and Victory is my favourite. The other 3 I read are: Selected Short Stories, Heart of Darkness, and Lord Jim.
Have you read Victory? How do you like it?
Hello everyone!
I've read 4 books by Conrad, and Victory is my favourite. The other 3 I read are: Selected Short Stories, Heart of Darkness, and Lord Jim.
Have you read Victory? How do you like it?
Originally Posted by Carmilla
I read Victory and enjoyed it despite some flaws. Conrad is an interesting case. While his works continue to be critically well regarded, I know many 21st century readers who disdain them. His works do contain crude racial caricatures with a general belief in European superiority and racial solidarity. They are relentlessly pessimistic and seem to preclude even the possibility of redemption--secular or otherwise--from what people naturally are. None of these things seem to sit well with "Millennial" readers and some of course should not.
Conrad is also disturbing. He understands how bullying works. He believes that beneath the veneer most human intercourse is a dominance and submission game. Those who try to cut a separate peace though intellectual or spiritual detachment, he believes, have lost "the readiness of mind and the turn of the hand that come without reflection." In such a world, "Thinking is the great enemy of perfection. The habit of profound reflection...is the most pernicious of all the habits formed by the civilized man." It also leaves one vulnerable to destruction (almost inevitable) by the less reflective. Why look into the blinding sun of such pessimism when it is easier (and more fun) simply to dismiss Conrad for his racism and jingoism?
I like Victory (which, in a Conrad novel, means I find Victory especially disturbing) because it deals with the supposed futility of building personal enclaves against Unreflective Readiness--red of beak and claw. I hasten to add that I do not agree with Conrad; but I like to hear what he has to say. In my view it is best to understand a dangerous position, especially if one opposes it. (And many, of course, don't oppose it).
Note: There are no big spoilers in what follows, but if you don't want to know the plot of Victory--without giving away the ending--you should stop reading now.
Much of Victory is set on a (psychologically allegorical) island near Indonesia, where a European former merchant named Axel now lives in relative isolation. He had first gone there on a business scheme with an oil company; when that failed, he preferred to stay on amidst the industrial junk piles rather than rejoin the community of his fellow merchants. Most of them find him a bit odd, but visit him occasionally, and do not especially judge him for his isolation. Axel's decision to remain apart from them is largely informed by his personal philosophy that human beings are fundamentally evil and that watchful separatism is a moral imperative.
On a brief trip from his island, however, Axel falls foul of one of the less savory members of the expatriate community, a violent lout called Schomberg (a minor but repeating character in some of Conrad's other stories). Schomberg has opened a cheap hotel and bar where he connives with the proprietors of a shady "female orchestra" to provide music for his guests. The band members--young women who were led overseas in the naive belief that they would be playing with a professional orchestra--are now being coerced under the threat of violence to mix among the clientele (and presumably arrange professional liaisons) during their breaks.
Axel, who is staying at Schomberg's hotel, comes to the defense of a woman named Lena, who refuses to play the whore, and is later sexually assaulted by Schomberg. Axel spirits Lena away to his island, where the two eventually become lovers. But Axel's involvement in the world he was supposed to have left has consequences: he becomes subject to a number of revenge schemes of the humiliated Schomberg. The worst of these involves a gang of three sadistic killers who reduce Schomberg's clip joint to a wholly owned subsidiary and make him their virtual slave. Desperate to rid himself of the predators--and hoping to kill two birds with one stone--Schomberg entices them to the island with the lie that Axel is hiding a fortune there. This sets the stage for a final confrontation between the unreflective readiness of the killers and the moral isolation of Axel, who has been unable to separate himself from the world without his love for Lena and the responsibilities it entails.
Thereafter Victory becomes something of an action thriller, exciting enough, though somewhat impaired by an oddly rushed ending--a little like an early movie in which the producers discover was they are about to run out of film.
As I said, I enjoyed Victory without agreeing with many of Conrad's ideas. His style reminded me a bit of Ford Madox Ford in some of its modernist elements. The final scene, for example, is told second hand, something that Ford, a one-time mentor of Conrad's (despite, oddly enough, being the younger man) would have appreciated. Victory reminded me even more of Graham Greene (who claimed to have been influenced by both Conrad and Ford), although in truth it lacked Greene's charm. If Axel had had even a fraction of a Greene anti-hero's flawed humanity, Victory would have been a much better book. In some ways, he seems too allegorical to be quite real.
But in the end Conrad is Conrad. There are many good reasons for not liking him, but for me, disagreeing with his ideas about the human potential for redemption is not one of them. I recommend Victory to any who dare to sail his seas.
Last edited by Pompey Bum; 10-21-2014 at 07:27 AM.
Hello Pompey Bum!
I really enjoyed your post. It' very interesting, indeed.
Thank you. It's not one of the works of Conrad you hear much about, but I got more out of it (speaking personally rather than critically) than I did, for example, from The Heart of Darkness.
I like your name, by the way. Are you a Sheridan Le Fanu fan?
Not a fan, but I really liked Carmilla.
Well said re Graham Green. I read Victory several years ago and made a similar comparison. I also liked Victory better than Heart of Darkness and Lord Jim. I read mostly for enjoyment and, judged solely as stories, I thought Victory was superior.
Thanks. Nobody ever did the anti-hero quite as well as Greene. My favorite is Wormold in Our Man in Havana, but there are so many more.
Last edited by Pompey Bum; 12-14-2014 at 10:29 AM.
Haha Wormold was an awesome character. Scobie for me though, even though he is more tragic than "anti" if you will. Heart of The Matter is one of my favorite books.
I agree that Wormold and Scobie are are major figures in the Greene iconography, but my own favourite is Pinkie Brown the psychopathic anti-hero of Brighton Rock.
"L'art de la statistique est de tirer des conclusions erronèes a partir de chiffres exacts." Napoléon Bonaparte.
"Je crois que beaucoup de gens sont dans cet état d’esprit: au fond, ils ne sentent pas concernés par l’Histoire. Mais pourtant, de temps à autre, l’Histoire pose sa main sur eux." Michel Houellebecq.
Pinkie is awesome! My theory is that he is the midway point on a literary continuum between the Artful Dodger and Alex from A Clockwork Orange.
I don't want to hijack this thread but if you haven't seen the original film version of Brighton Rock,
here's Richard Attenborough as Pinkie Brown. The most perfect screen match to a novel's character imaginable.
http://www.tcm.com/mediaroom/video/5...You-Close.html
"L'art de la statistique est de tirer des conclusions erronèes a partir de chiffres exacts." Napoléon Bonaparte.
"Je crois que beaucoup de gens sont dans cet état d’esprit: au fond, ils ne sentent pas concernés par l’Histoire. Mais pourtant, de temps à autre, l’Histoire pose sa main sur eux." Michel Houellebecq.
[QUOTE=Emil Miller;1277128]I don't want to hijack this thread but if you haven't seen the original film version of Brighton Rock,
here's Richard Attenborough as Pinkie Brown. The most perfect screen match to a novel's character imaginable.
Nice! I have never read the book or seen the movie. I'll have to move the book up my list to be read. Isn't it rare and fantastic when they get the casting perfect? He looks like an entertaining character.
Don't worry about it. Anyone who wants to talk about Victory can still do so.
And yes, that's Pinkie okay. The only problem is inevitable: the character was supposed to be a teenager, and there's only so much Attenborough can do about that. But as far as the acting goes--letter perfect. I've never seen the movie, unfortunately. Alec Guinness' Wormold is another dead-on characterization in a film that is infuriatingly neglected.
Last edited by Pompey Bum; 12-16-2014 at 01:19 PM.
[QUOTE=easy75;1277132]Over the years I have read most of Graham Greene's work but I think Brighton Rock is his best, although The End of the Affair runs it close, as does The Quiet American.
If you do , read Brighton Rock you will see just how good Attenborough is in the part.The 1930's atmosphere is also caught to perfection although the film was made in1947.
Attenborough went on to star in many films but to my mind he was never so good as in his portrayal of Pinkie Brown.
I think Attenborough was 21 when he played the part while in the book the character is 17 but it's a bravura performance and the supporting cast are also excellent.
I have seen Our Man in Havana several times and Alec Guinness makes a brilliant Wormold. The scene where the Foreign Office bigwigs are mulling over his drawings of the fake secret weapon that is supposed to be a threat to the West and one of them remarks that it looks like a kind of vacuum cleaner, is hilarious.
My favourite moment in the film is when Noel Coward, playing a Foreign Office secret agent, arrives in Havana to make contact with Wormold whom he finds in a bar. Wormold has no idea who Coward is and when the agent sidles up to him and whispers 'Come into the lavatory' Wormold refuses. Whereupon Coward says 'Why not, you're an Englishman aren't you?'
They really don't make 'em like that anymore.
"L'art de la statistique est de tirer des conclusions erronèes a partir de chiffres exacts." Napoléon Bonaparte.
"Je crois que beaucoup de gens sont dans cet état d’esprit: au fond, ils ne sentent pas concernés par l’Histoire. Mais pourtant, de temps à autre, l’Histoire pose sa main sur eux." Michel Houellebecq.
My favorite line is from the same scene, but it's Guinness's. I think Coward actually says something like, "We're going to the Gents." And Guinness responds (in that Obiwan Kenobi voice of his) "But I don't need the Gents!"
Oh no, oh no! Now you've done it, Emil! I feel a list coming on!
This is a really hard one, because you may as well list all of them in any order, but if pressed:
1. A little known short story called "Under the Garden." For me, it's the most brilliant thing he ever wrote, and that's saying a lot.
2. Our Man in Havana
3. Brighton Rock
4. The Quiet American
5. The Power and the Glory
6. The Third Man
7. The Ministry of Fear
8. A Burnt Out Case
9. The Heart of the Matter
10. Travels with my Aunt
Last edited by Pompey Bum; 12-16-2014 at 06:13 PM.
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