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| Type: | Audio Book, computer-generated |
| Description: | Not available |
| Table of Contents: | Not available |
Product Description
The shallow sea that foams and murmurs on the shores of the thousand islands, big and little, which make up the Malay Archipelago has been for centuries the scene of adventurous undertakings.
Customer Review: Vague and Confused
The full title of this work is "The Rescue, A Romance of the Shallows". My chief observation is that Joseph Conrad's success as a writer of "great romance" is clearly not evidenced by this book.
I own an old copy of this work, the 1929 hardcover "Maylay Edition," published by Doubleday, with "decorations" (liner illustrations) by William Kemp Starrett, 469 pages in length. The book was originally published in 1920, not all that long prior to Conrad's death. He lived from December 3, 1857 to August 3, 1924. We see this sometimes with great authors, a last gasp work that ends up being a small blight on an otherwise superb career.
Here's the story: A certain venerable Captain Lingard who sails the dangerous waters around the Indonesian Islands gets strapped with trying to save the naive occupants of a beached yacht. He immediately knows that they're in grave danger because they've beached right at the geographical epicenter of a power struggle between the indigenous peoples of the islands, any of whom would gladly kill any number of caucasians for the valuable booty on the yacht. In his efforts to save the passengers and crew, Lingard brings on a half-crazed and grizzled retired ship's captain, Jorgenson by name, to navigate his ship around the islands while he parleys with the natives over the yacht. During this process, the stoic Captain Lingard falls in love (sort of) with wife of the yacht owner -- her name is Mrs. Travers. Before it's all over, the yacht people and even Captain Lingard himself get taken hostage by one of the two warring factions. We're now three-fourths of the way through the book so I'll stop there to avoid a spoiler.
I had to read the book very slowly, going back from time to time, in order to discern what was going on. It's as if Conrad intentionally wanted to confuse his readers -- he succeeded brilliantly in my case. I think, in truth, he was trying to write a great piece of literature in a unique style and he simply over-wrote the manuscript and lost control of it. Honestly, it's a real mess.
It's also a grammatical mess. Often, within the same paragraph, one encounters two or three different people speaking dialogue. To further train wreck things, these folks almost never finish a sentence and they utilize the manner of speech best known as "indirect speaking" -- in other words, everything is implied in a very nebulous way. Finally, the LAST classification I would ever have appended to this book is "romance". Captain Lingard is about as romantic as a panther in a suitcase and Mrs. Travers never once encourages his attentions in any overt way.
This is an incredibly difficult book to read but I toughed it out. It's my personal policy to always finish a book once I start it, regardless of how bad it is. I do this because it encourages me to research my book picks well before I settle on one. Rarely do I ever accept a book when someone enthusiastically says to me, "Hey, you gotta read this -- it's great!" I have endured too many grueling disappointments as a result of responding to such claims so I stick to my reading list and, somehow, "The Rescue" unfortunately had ended up on it.
So, in summary, if you must read a Joseph Conrad book, I'd stick with either "Lord Jim" (his Magnum opus), or, "The Secret Agent," the latter being one of the most spectacular and compelling books I've ever read in my lifetime.
Book Categories:
Books / Subjects / Literature & Fiction / World Literature / British / Classics / Conrad, Joseph
Books / Subjects / Literature & Fiction / General
Books / Subjects / Literature & Fiction / Contemporary
Books / Subjects / Literature & Fiction / Authors, A-Z / ( C ) / Conrad, Joseph
Books / Refinements / Binding (binding) / Paperback
Books / Refinements / Format (feature_browse-bin) / Printed Books
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