Wednesday, February 22, 2006
Book Review: Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad
Writing Style-5.9
Originality-6.8
Plot-5.4
Merit(whatever that means)-6.9
Overall-6.0
I loved Heart of Darkness and the story that came with it in my edition, The Secret Sharer. And Lord Jim could have been as good or better than Heart of Darkness, if it had been Heart of Darkness sized. At over 300 pages this was far too long. Way too wordy.
I had trouble following the story because it was so needlessly wordy that my mind would drift. Most of the paragraphs are over a page long. And there’s not really enough plot to merit this length of novel. I mean, why choose to make Heart of Darkness short and Lord Jim so much longer?
The kernel of the story, I really, really dug. Basically, you have this dude Jim who is first mate (I think) on a ship and during some sort of disaster at sea he jumps ship. At heart he’s a really good, kind, sensitive guy and it really bugs him that he jumped ship. So, he feels pretty worthless and this causes him to accept a job that takes him to this remote and very wild location called Patusan. At Patusan he reinvents himself and creates a new life where he is well-respected with the local natives and marries a half-caste girl named Jewel. Everything is going good again, but his past and the outside world haunts him and the action builds to a climactic conclusion.
The ending is great. Very reminiscent of Heart of Darkness. The segment concerning the disaster aboard the ship is great too, but in between it gets pretty boring.
In my own little perfect world, this book would be roughly the same length as Heart of Darkness, say, about 150 pages and they would be published together and it would be one of the most awesome books in literature. I guess they are considered two of the most awesome books in literature, but that would be in the real world, not my own personal fantasy world. So screw that world.
This is one of those books where reading it makes you feel like you’ve got ADD because your mind keeps wandering. So, I don’t recommend it if you have a less than average attention span. But if you are someone who loves great literature and loved Heart of Darkness and can fight through a tedious novel for the sake of looking back on it in it’s entirety and appreciating it for the story buried deep beneath so many unnecessary words, then give Lord Jim a try because now that I’ve finished it I really am very fond of it.
There’s another novel like this that I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. It’s Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy. I recently saw Woody Allen’s Match Point (which is phenomenal, btw) and it reminded me a lot of that book. It’s almost an exact modern retelling with a slightly different twist at the end. But at any rate, that book was unwieldy at seven or eight hundred pages and got really boring in places. But looking back on it, it’s a really great story and I grow fonder of it over time. It kind of sticks with you.
Originality-6.8
Plot-5.4
Merit(whatever that means)-6.9
Overall-6.0
I loved Heart of Darkness and the story that came with it in my edition, The Secret Sharer. And Lord Jim could have been as good or better than Heart of Darkness, if it had been Heart of Darkness sized. At over 300 pages this was far too long. Way too wordy.
I had trouble following the story because it was so needlessly wordy that my mind would drift. Most of the paragraphs are over a page long. And there’s not really enough plot to merit this length of novel. I mean, why choose to make Heart of Darkness short and Lord Jim so much longer?
The kernel of the story, I really, really dug. Basically, you have this dude Jim who is first mate (I think) on a ship and during some sort of disaster at sea he jumps ship. At heart he’s a really good, kind, sensitive guy and it really bugs him that he jumped ship. So, he feels pretty worthless and this causes him to accept a job that takes him to this remote and very wild location called Patusan. At Patusan he reinvents himself and creates a new life where he is well-respected with the local natives and marries a half-caste girl named Jewel. Everything is going good again, but his past and the outside world haunts him and the action builds to a climactic conclusion.
The ending is great. Very reminiscent of Heart of Darkness. The segment concerning the disaster aboard the ship is great too, but in between it gets pretty boring.
In my own little perfect world, this book would be roughly the same length as Heart of Darkness, say, about 150 pages and they would be published together and it would be one of the most awesome books in literature. I guess they are considered two of the most awesome books in literature, but that would be in the real world, not my own personal fantasy world. So screw that world.
This is one of those books where reading it makes you feel like you’ve got ADD because your mind keeps wandering. So, I don’t recommend it if you have a less than average attention span. But if you are someone who loves great literature and loved Heart of Darkness and can fight through a tedious novel for the sake of looking back on it in it’s entirety and appreciating it for the story buried deep beneath so many unnecessary words, then give Lord Jim a try because now that I’ve finished it I really am very fond of it.
There’s another novel like this that I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. It’s Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy. I recently saw Woody Allen’s Match Point (which is phenomenal, btw) and it reminded me a lot of that book. It’s almost an exact modern retelling with a slightly different twist at the end. But at any rate, that book was unwieldy at seven or eight hundred pages and got really boring in places. But looking back on it, it’s a really great story and I grow fonder of it over time. It kind of sticks with you.
