<![CDATA[Lord Jim]]>

false <![CDATA[Lord Jim]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166493721m/12194.jpg 12194 120 When Lord Jim first appeared in 1900, many took Joseph Conrad to task for couching an entire novel in the form of an extended conversation--a ripping good yarn, if you like. (One critic in The Academy complained that the narrator "was telling that after-dinner story to his companions for eleven solid hours.") Conrad defended his method, insisting that people really do talk for that long, and listen as well. In fact his chatty masterwork requires no defense--it offers up not only linguistic pleasures but a timeless exploration of morality. The eponymous Jim is a young, good-looking, genial, and naive water-clerk on the Patna, a cargo ship plying Asian waters. He is, we are told, "the kind of fellow you would, on the strength of his looks, leave in charge of the deck." He also harbors romantic fantasies of adventure and heroism--which are promptly scuttled one night when the ship collides with an obstacle and begins to sink. Acting on impulse, Jim jumps overboard and lands in a lifeboat, which happens to be bearing the unscrupulous captain and his cohorts away from the disaster. The Patna, however, manages to stay afloat. The foundering vessel is towed into port--and since the officers have strategically vanished, Jim is left to stand trial for abandoning the ship and its 800 passengers. Stripped of his seaman's license, convinced of his own cowardice, Jim sets out on a tragic and transcendent search for redemption. This may sound like the bleakest of narratives. But Lord Jim is also touching, elevating, and often funny. Here, for example, the narrator describes the ship's captain (proving that clothes do indeed make the man): <blockquote> He made me think of a trained baby elephant walking on hind-legs. He was extravagantly gorgeous too--got up in a soiled sleeping suit, bright green and deep orange vertical stripes, with a pair of ragged straw slippers on his bare feet, and somebody's cast-off pith hat, very dirty and two sizes too small for him, tied up with a manilla rope-yarn on the top of his big head. You understand a man like that hasn't a ghost of a chance when it comes to borrowing clothes. </blockquote> This is formidable prose by any standard. But when you consider that Conrad was working in his third language, the sublime after-dinner story that is Lord Jim seems even more astonishing an accomplishment. --Teri Kieffer 2578988 book 1900 Lord Jim total:2402|5:528|4:755|3:707|2:278|1:134| 2402 8471 3592 196 5 5 false false Wed Aug 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Wed Jun 13 16:57:01 -0700 2007 Thu Sep 06 15:54:17 -0700 2007
The prose is beautiful and the characters fascin...more...]]> 4 2 false false Mon Dec 29 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Sat Dec 20 22:34:03 -0800 2008 Mon Dec 29 22:31:32 -0800 2008 once more...]]> 3 1 false false Tue Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Wed Jan 16 07:04:30 -0800 2008 Sun Apr 20 09:45:35 -0700 2008 librivox.org - if you haven't heard of it, but like audio books, I recommend the site - free versions of public domain books).

...more...]]> 2 1 false false Tue Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Fri Dec 21 11:48:30 -0800 2007 Fri Jan 25 18:28:15 -0800 2008 more...]]> 1 1 false true Fri Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 1999 Tue Jul 10 07:34:18 -0700 2007 Thu Oct 30 05:59:58 -0700 2008
Why did I loathe this book so much... I was an English major in college. I have a master's degree in English lite...more...]]> 4 1 false false Mon Sep 11 00:00:00 -0700 2006 Mon Aug 17 23:57:29 -0700 2009 Wed Nov 11 21:31:25 -0800 2009 He presented Jim as a man dictated by the unknown fate so he needs to live in the East through moral, ...more...]]> 4 2 false false Sat Sep 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Mon Jun 25 14:44:04 -0700 2007 Thu Sep 27 16:33:43 -0700 2007 more...]]> 4 0 false false Wed Nov 11 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Tue Nov 10 03:51:28 -0800 2009 Wed Nov 11 12:51:50 -0800 2009
...more...]]> 4 1 false false Wed Mar 28 06:32:30 -0700 2007 Wed Mar 28 06:55:24 -0700 2007 more...]]> 1 0 false false Tue Sep 15 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Tue Sep 15 14:08:47 -0700 2009 Tue Sep 15 14:09:13 -0700 2009
"All around everything was still as far as the ear could reach. The mist of his feelings shifted between us, as if disturbed by...more...]]> 4 0 false false Sun Feb 15 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Mon Mar 02 10:14:54 -0800 2009 Mon Mar 02 10:23:13 -0800 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Wed Jul 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Mon Jun 15 15:27:06 -0700 2009 Mon Jul 13 13:19:39 -0700 2009 more...]]> 2 1 false false Sun Sep 14 15:00:24 -0700 2008 Sun Sep 14 15:00:24 -0700 2008 1 3 0 false false Sun Mar 08 11:00:12 -0700 2009 Mon Oct 12 12:59:26 -0700 2009 Lord Jim is an incredibly frustrating book. It's part imperial adventure, part psychological study, in the vein of Joseph Conrad's most famous work, Heart of Darkness. However, whereas Heart was brief and elegant, Lord Jim is a repetitive slog. I spent as much time trying to figure out who was telli...more...]]> 5 2 false false Fri Aug 01 00:00:00 -0700 1997 Tue Oct 14 15:42:34 -0700 2008 Tue Oct 14 16:35:23 -0700 2008 Lord Jim and Heart of Darkness are superior; I give them both five stars for being absolute bulwarks of English literature (written by a Pole!) shoring up the flatulent Romanticist period (ugh, agrarianism! double ugh, pre-raphaelites!), and setting the stage (along wit...more...]]> 4 0 false false Sun Sep 07 16:25:39 -0700 2008 Tue Mar 03 13:38:04 -0800 2009
Lord Jim had me from the f...more...]]> 4 0 false false Thu Mar 01 00:00:00 -0800 2007 Tue Jul 08 20:40:37 -0700 2008 Tue Jul 08 21:02:45 -0700 2008 more...]]> 4 0 false false Sat May 17 08:14:55 -0700 2008 Sat May 17 08:35:01 -0700 2008 more...]]> 4 0 false false Sat Jan 26 11:00:42 -0800 2008 Wed Oct 01 21:10:38 -0700 2008 The Heart of Darkness, most of this book is narrated by Conrad's character Marlow. In Lord Jim, however, this device serves a more complex purpose. In the first place, Marlow isn't a particularly important character in this novel the way he is in Heart of Darkness. He's a witness to a few ke...more...]]> 4 0 false false Sat Feb 17 01:03:21 -0800 2007 Sat May 05 08:50:50 -0700 2007
جیم دریانوردی خبره، شجاع و صادق است. اما او هم مثل همه ی دیگران یک انسا...more...]]> http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=12194