Just returned from a trip to the south western Atlantic coast of France for a few days, staying in a hotel with a view of the surf pounding on the shore line. Capbreton is perhaps the surfing capital of France and walking on the broad endless beaches backed by sand-dunes is an intoxicating experience. I envied the people, young and fit enough to get up on their surf boards in those great Atlantic rollers. I had consciously chosen a book that would have some flavour of a sea-going experience hence Josephs Conrads Lord Jim, but it felt in essence a million miles away from the carefree lifestyle that seems to encompass the world of surfing. I looked up from my book and thought about the Beach Boys. I only got halfway through the book on vacation and only connected with the book when I got back home and finished the read.

Lord Jim is really a book of two stories, but without a dividing line. They are told by the narrator Marlow who tells a tragic personal story of love and loss to a group of his cronies. In the first Jim is a young adventurous seaman who faces an extreme moral dilemma when the Patna; a rusty old tub of a boat, overcrowded with pilgrims starts to sink after a collision with an obstacle in the ocean. Jim is the Mate; second in command in a crew of four disparate Europeans. The Patna becomes a "cause celebre" especially after the public inquiry, which will decide whether the crew should lose their licences to practice as seaman. Marlow then tells how he tried to help Jim get over the trauma of the inquiry by finding work for him along the seaboard and the second story takes place on a remote island that Conrad calls Patusan probably part of Indonesia. Jim earns the title Lord Jim (Tuan Jim) as the representative of a Dutch trading enterprise working alone in a hostile environment and becomes the de facto head man of the island and takes a native wife, however when a pirate ship visits, the underlying tensions on the island come to a head.

Jim is a powerfully built, attractive man and a parson's son. He never loses his thirst for adventure, he is a romantic who wants desperately to do the right thing, he has a boyish air about him, which he never quite loses. An injury suffered while training to be a seaman and then the incident on the Patna causes him deep trauma, which he is unable to get over, they colour all his subsequent actions, he feels a need to atone for deficiencies of character which take him outside the company of normal men. The soul searching, the desire to make a better fist of things lead him to take solace at times with Marlow. His relationship with other men is certainly homosocial and maybe homosexual, but Conrad is careful never to make this explicit.

Lord Jim was published in 1900 a year after Heart of Darkness and has a similar viewpoint on colonialism which of course leaves it open to accusations of racism. Marlow expresses views on colonialism in a letter which would have probably been a la mode at the time:

You said also - I call to mind - that giving your life up to them (them meaning all of mankind with skins brown, yellow or black in colour) "was like selling your soul to a brute." You contended that: "that kind of thing" was only endurable and enduring when based on a firm conviction in the truth of ideas racially our own in whose name are established the order, the morality of an ethical progress. "We want its strength at our backs" you had said. "we want a belief in its necessity and its justice, to make a worthy and conscious sacrifice of our lives......

It is by no means an easy to read adventure story. The narrative is told to us mostly by Marlowe, but also by letters and so there are some different interpretations of character. Conrad conceals from the reader the fate of the Patna for some time, by jumping backwards and forwards in time. The reader is constantly invited to read between the lines especially in the conversations between Marlow and Jim and it is by not always clear where we are in the timeline of the story or who is actually doing the talking. It is a psychological portrait of a character who finds it difficult to express his thoughts and emotions. It took me some time to get to grips with Conrad's style, but he has a way of describing events and the natural world that put this reader right in touch with the late 19th century.

Jim is never given a formal name and when we are told Jim's story on Patusan I could not help thinking of captain James T Kirk of the starship Enterprise. In reflection Jim has a similar modus operandi when dealing with alien species (in this case natives) in trying to impose his culture onto theirs.
A 4 star literary read ( )

Una novela en la que se percibe la pasión del autor por la navegación. Muy buena, aunque lenta a veces. ( )

I did not finish this book. I think I definitely gave it a fair shot ... I was at 63% on a kindle version before I realized that, not only was I not enjoying it anymore, the words were no longer even registering as coherent thoughts. I thought the earlier part of the book, watching Jim unravel as he internalizes the very essence of courage and cowardice was simply brilliant. To me, the book could have stopped after the trial with maybe one or two chapters dealing with the aftermath. The latter half of the book just didn't do it for me. I wanted Jim's thoughts and perspectives, not the ever-changing point of view that resulted in a messy, unfocused narrative. Life is too short to read books that don't speak to you. And the latter part of this one lost me. ( )

Very uneven, almost as if Conrad patched together two or three unalike books. Rather imbalanced ratio of plot to exposition, and I'm one who likes plenty of exposition. ( )

"Lordy lord," what to say about Lord Jim? In an era of short Tik Tok videos, Instagram feeds, and limited character Tweets, this novel, published on the cusp of the 20th Century, is a bit of a slog, at least at first as the reader slowly gets acclimatized to the denser sentences, weightier themes, slower pace, and stylistic narrative convention. It was choppy waters for me, and I put the book down on page 30 or so, only to give it another try after reading that it is considered one of the best 100 novels of its time. I'm glad I did because the book has its rewards if you put in the time, patience, and concentration. The story of Jim is told by Marlow, an older English seaman himself who encounters Jim at his trial, befriends him, and then helps him get on his feet again after facing official censure. Marlow's perspective and feelings towards Jim are ambivalent and Marlow's long tale, told to an audience of fellow seamen, is supplemented by other characters who at some point cross paths with Jim: his shipmates, the judges, employers, and ultimately the denizens of Patusan, including Jewel his wife, and Captain Brown and his men who intrude upon his rule in the book's final chapters. Critics praise Conrad for innovating the narrative voice of the novel beyond the first-person "I" perspective or the all-knowing, God-like, author's voice. But in Lord Jim this choice, perhaps intentional, distances Jim from the reader. He is and remains something of a mysterious cipher, and his inarticulate stammers do not help you get to know him better. But perhaps that is the point. He doesn't quite know himself. The novel grapples with existential and moral questions about man's highest aspirations and Platonic ideals, embodied by English "codes of conduct" and the crass realities of Darwinistic survival instincts personified by human emotions such as fear and panic. Conrad does not provide many answers to Marlow's obsession with the tale of Lord Jim and the existential questions it raises. Jim, ever a little elusive and mysterious, even to Jewel, is finally told by Marlow the secret reason why she should believe Jim when he says he will not leave, as other Westerners have, to return to his home. "He is not good enough." Then Marlow follows that with an even greater truth. "None of us is good enough." And I believe, that is the crux of this tale and perhaps one of the few concrete conclusions proffered. ( )