Confused over Conrad

Stewart

Conrad: The The Critical Heritage edited bv Norman Sherry (Routledge £5.95).

In May 1963 Mr Sherry, then a lecturer in the University of Singapore, printed in the Review of English Studies a paper called 'Conrad and the Vidor.' The owner of the Vidar was one Syed Mohsin Bin Saleh Al Jooffree, but there was nothingelse impressive about her. She was a steamship of 206 tons, pottering among the islands of the South-East Archipelago, and Conrad, who had joined her as mate in August 1887, found the berth so unbearably dull that he threw it up after four and a half months.

It might well have been supposed that Mr Sherry's piece heralded labours for which the more austerely learned journals would be just the place. The event proved far otherwise. During those boring months Conrad had been visiting ports, meeting people, hearing stories, and undergoing experiences which went to the making of ' the Shadow-Line,' 'The End of the Tether;' Almayer's Folly, An Outcast of the Islands, and Lord Jim. In Singapore Mr Sherry, modestly fossicking in local newspapers and the Master Attendant's office, had struck a rich vein which he was later abundantly to mine. Behind all fiction lie facts, and a knowledge of the facts opens the way to a species of genetic criticism which can be as fascinating as it is dodgy. Professor Sherry's Conrad's Eastern World (1966) and Conrad's Western World (1971) are perhaps the most exciting books of the source-hunting kind (commonly so dreary) to have appeared since John Livingston Lowes published The Road to Xanadu in 1937.

Professor Sherry's present wor offers less

absorbing reading. It is a collec on of 157 short discussions of Conrad's bo ks, in the main anonymous reviews or ex rpts from anonymous reviews, which app red, with two exceptions, between 1895, the ear of Almayer's Folly, and 1925, the yeas following ed; there is a sprinkling of opinio

politan and provincial journals ard representConrad's death. The net is cast widkly; metro from the

US; some of the pieces are so undi inguished that we must suppose them inclu ed only in their representative character as sun-of-themill literary journalism during the thirty years under review. The aim is to it able us to estimate how Conrad was recekéd by the press throughout his active life as 4.writer.

It is Professor Sherry's opinion (advanced

in an introduction so substantial Is to make the succeeding chapter-and-verse appear almost otiose) that, "On the wh , Conrad fared extremely well at the hands f contemporary reviewers." There is a limited sense in which this is obviously true. Rig from the start, much was said about Conra 's writing in terms of high regard; towardh, the end, when his art was clearly in a decl e, the reviews became more admiring still. But uncritical praise is of little use to a novelist, whose

main desire is for an analytical a rigorous discussion of his work which may 1elp him to do better next time, and who is al decently grateful for reviews that may prmpt more people to buy, or at least read, the current book than bought, or read, the last ne.

Against this latter interest a wei nigh fatal

note sounds from the first. The Aduderny declares An Outcast of the Islands toII "little, if at all, short of being a master iece " but that for adds at for the ' ordinary ' reade it "is not to be recommended " since it w uld strike him as merely boring and dull. Th Spectator hails its successor, The Nigger of t ' Narcissus,' as the work of "a writer of ge ius "(two out of the first three descriptions ,tof Conrad as a genius are scored by this jolirnal) but pronounces that "his choice of t1Vmes, and the uncompromising nature of hi 4 methods, debar him from attaining a wide pfpularity." Lord Jim, which came next, was liRely, in the view of the Manchester Guardian, o "Rank as a memorable event " but migl well remain "neglected or unknown "by , the great public which multiplies editions."1" Let not the tired reader, the reader only *1 want of amusement or distraction, appr ch Lord Jim," says the Bookman threaten gly. The Manchester Guardian hails 'Y th ' and 'Heart of Darkness' (enthusiast ally if a shade mysteriously) as among "the finest expositions of the modern spirit," hut not before confessing that "it would betuseless to pretend that they can be very widel read."

There is a great deal of this war ing-off of

what the Glasgow Evening News taIls "the average fiction reader." It is as f the re viewers regularly feel themselves be writing for adepti such as themselve but that inferior persons may have strayed ithin the circle, whom it is only humane to snub and dismiss at once. The tone is at ti s that of the Rev. Mr Eager, discoursing in e Peruzzi Chapel to Miss Lavish and othe Initiates, and with a freezing eye for the mersons. Conrad is somewhese on record a outraged by an American magazine-editor' demand that he run up "another of his rat ng yarns

of the sea; he must at least ve been frequently irritated by all this insis nce that the art of the Ancient Mariner w s beyond him, and that his only hope lay wit wedding guests who happened to be fello s of the Royal Society of Literature.

But readers are not merely warn against the 'difficulty ' of Conrad; they a steadily

apprised that he is a writer ose distinguished and striking work is s replete with faults as beauties. He favours perverse exotism. (" Borneo is a fine field for the'study of monkeys, not men," the Americ n Nation says smartly when confronted with' Imayers Folly). He is variously unedifying rath

like Mr Thomas Hardy.

One can understand Conrad's state of wilderment. No sooner is everybodysaying, is a great writer than in tumbles a Kim"; adverse school report. "Lack of \artistic stinct ... always mars his work as a whole In Nostromo "he has made a novel of a sh°` story ... the Publication of this. book Os, stands is an artistic mistake." this iS TLS.) "Mr Joseph Conrad is visibly iMPre„,' ing " but "has not realised as yet, the intr tance of what is called the 'human intertst ... We look with some confidence to seellsi strengthen himself in this weak point." f, still contuses the.., preterite with the per,' and often uses the wrong sign of the fu,tuel,', It is perhaps too easy to represent Dr ShOPT compilation as a veritable Caveat for 11; viewers. The absurdities and inadequaciei, the hurried craft stick out — and most .0°' turbingly, perhaps, its frequent sheepishht the mere repeating by rote 'of the thingi".; flock has decided to. say about Conrad. 105 do not so clearly stick .out, since much v.; their substance has since been absorbed .; the critical tradition, are those reviewS h; which a fresh 'and. accurate perceptioo,; some facet of the novelist's -work is arriveO — as, for example, in C. E. 1Viontague's ph on Chance in 'the Manchester Guardian' January 15, 1914. Conrad as he read the what rare clarifying and constructive;reviet of this order most have felt, one imaSt that his lifetime's labour, although popularwt had indeed so long eluded it, was assured.° eventual acceptance within the -canon of tIP adoptive country's literature.

J. I. M. Stewart is a Student of Christ thur-k, Oxford, and author of the latest volume of Oxford History of English Literature.