Victory (Wordsworth Collection)

by Joseph Conrad

book data

371 ratings, 3.84 average rating, 43 reviews (more data...)

rating	frequency	%
5		25%
4		42%
3		25%
2		5%
1		1%

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published

April 1st 1998 by NTC/Contemporary Publishing Company (first published 1915)

details

Paperback, 432 pages

isbn

1853262560 (isbn13: 9781853262562)

description

Heyst was not conscious of either friends or of enemies. It was the very essence of his life to be a solitary achievement, accomplished not by hermit-…more

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Oct 28, 2007

Zinta rated it:

(review of isbn 0140189785)

Read in July, 2004

Now and then, we must leave the literature of our day and delve deeper--in time and in literary style. Joseph Conrad has survived time as a classic, because his work is of classic quality. I submerged into Victory as into cool, deep water, to emerge refreshed and moved by the literary experience.
Woe, yes, to the man whose heart has not learned to hope or love (and is love without hope possible?) or trust in life. Without hope, without love, without trust, life is but a living death. Axel ...more Now and then, we must leave the literature of our day and delve deeper--in time and in literary style. Joseph Conrad has survived time as a classic, because his work is of classic quality. I submerged into Victory as into cool, deep water, to emerge refreshed and moved by the literary experience.
Woe, yes, to the man whose heart has not learned to hope or love (and is love without hope possible?) or trust in life. Without hope, without love, without trust, life is but a living death. Axel Heyst, Conrad's hero of Victory, is a complex man we are deeply drawn to--for he has the heart and he has the high ideals, if not the hope or trust. In his vulnerable youth, Heyst's father stripped him of these tools without which living a meaningful life is a barren if not futile prospect. Yet a man's heart is a stubborn thing in its will to beat with red blood. Even in his willful isolation, a woman's love finds the hermit. Conrad indulges in a little formula damsel-in-distress rescue, and Heyst brings Lena to his solitary island of Samburan, where they slowly develop a kind of haven.

Life has a way of being messy and intrusive, Conrad knows, and so he brings the conflict of the story to the island, undeservedly bad reputation following Heyst there in the often comic and villanous figures of Ricardo and Jones. This showcases the figures of Heyst and Lena. If Heyst's heart does indeed love, and passionately so, then Lena's heart has within it the unconditional devotion perhaps only a woman can fully express. And so woman gives life. The tragedy of Heyst is that he so rarely knows how to express his love. Perhaps the story ends, then, in the only way it can, in sacrifice.

The true victory of this novel is the gift of Conrad's writing. Characters have depth and motion; plot is not overwhelming, but enough to hold suspense; dialogue is real and revealing. Conrad does plenty of tell, not show, which writers are today admonished not to do, but I loved every moment of the skillful telling. He is a master, taking on themes and characters that have lasting value. I plan to read and reread his other works.

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Aug 07, 2009

Globulon rated it:

(review of isbn 0375759085)

bookshelves: books-i-own, fiction

Read in August, 2009

Like Nostromo, the pacing of this is slowish in the first half and picks up in the second half. Unlike Nostromo there is much less back-story in this novel. While the father of the main character is discussed and is important although dead, most of the rest of the characters have a history only within the scope of the story.

One thing that came to me strongly was an echoing of "The Tempest". Particularly the characters Pedro and Wang seemed to be sort of inverted images o...more Like Nostromo, the pacing of this is slowish in the first half and picks up in the second half. Unlike Nostromo there is much less back-story in this novel. While the father of the main character is discussed and is important although dead, most of the rest of the characters have a history only within the scope of the story.

One thing that came to me strongly was an echoing of "The Tempest". Particularly the characters Pedro and Wang seemed to be sort of inverted images of Calaban and Ariel.

This story is another one fraught with racial images. I have a difficult time making sense of what is to be said on this score, but I think it must be admitted that Conrad means to confront the issue. The parallel with "The Tempest" seems relevant given the reading of that play (reasonable to my mind) that it at least in one dimension concerned with racial relationships or more particularly colonialism. Furthermore, at one point Jones (a villian) says to Heyst (main character) "Do you believe in racial superiority, Mr. Heyst? I do, firmly." Furthermore, the main character is referred to constantly as "that Swede" by his nemesis Schomberg. It is emphasized by Conrad that this word is used in a pejorative sense. (I admit that on the surface this can be read as a merely national rather than racial difference but I'm not sure how much rides on that). Much is made of the irony of the whites who hold themselves in superiority to natives or hold them of no account. Both Schomberg and Ricardo make much of their own whiteness, and both are ironically so.

On the other hand, it also seems true that the characters of any race other than white are portrayed as less civilized. Morrison's clients are objects of charity, Pedro is a half-man savage, the Portuguese are corrupt, Wang abandons Heyst and takes it as a point of pride to deny taking the revolver despite the fact that he obviously has. The people on the other side of the island are savages of a sort who block out society.

But even here these are not so obvious. Heyst laughs at the naivete of Lena when she asks if all Chinese have this mysterious ability to materialize silently. There is also a certain logic to Wang's abandonment of Heyst, in that Wang is married to a local girl and his relationship with Heyst was never portrayed as much other than a matter of practicality. It must be noted however that Wang's theft of the revolver pretty squarely sets him at a lower moral level, as well as his reliance on violence. The question is whether this is meant to reflect a sort of hierarchy of the races or whether it is just that Wang represents a certain sort of moral attitude that could for Conrad have been represented by a white man but that the social context of the story makes the character more convenient to represent by a Chinese.

Furthermore, I think Jones being an inverted Heyst, both being highlighted as of upper class, or gentlemen, is a related question. It seems clear that Jones is a gentleman by birth who is not so in truth. Whereas it seems that Heyst isn't really a gentleman by birth, although he is said to be one, but is very much one by his nature.

I think as far as I can take it right now, it has to be said that Conrad clearly means to confront the question of race, and that his reply to this question is not a simple one. On the other hand, I can also see that it might be possible to see him as presenting a sort of hierarchy of the races and a kind of "white man's" burden take on the moral relationships between them. I am not arguing that this is in fact the case, only that in so far as I can see it at this point this is consistent with what I have seen of his writing. On the other hand I must admit that as it stands now this seems to be the most likely, and that this does diminish to some degree my enjoyment of his work, although I still have a lot of respect for him as an author and still intend to read more of his books.

Notes on this edition: There's a cool map at the beginning showing the locations of many of Conrad's stories and novels. There are many annoying footnotes. Notes seem a little silly to me in the first place and often they are inflated and absurd, but actually indicating the notes with little numbers in the text of a novel is just ugly and annoying.(less)

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Mar 12, 2009

Rebecca rated it:

(review of isbn 0375759085)

bookshelves: 2009, british-classics

Read in March, 2009

In the end, I liked this novel. Conrad can be so difficult to penetrate that joy is lost in the strain of comprehension, but this novel is far less dense than many of his earlier works. I can see why this was a commercial success as well as a critical one. I am using Victory for the second chapter of my dissertation so I am sure that I will come to know it fairly extensively over the next few months. If you are already a fan of Conrad, give this lesser known work a try. If you are not alrea...more

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Aug 30, 2009

chris Gusta rated it:

(review of isbn 0385093144)

Read in November, 2009

This book has, as usual for Conrad, a very interesting plot, with fairly interesting characters, with a good deal of strange racist dialect involved in describing them. The Chinese cook, through a large part of the novel, gets described as "the chink" and repeatedly has his "slanted eyes" referred to as a defining point of his personality, despite the fact that he is central to the plot and one of the most interesting of the people we come across in the story. Also, Pedro, ...more

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Nov 30, 2008

Mark Verbitsky rated it:

(review of isbn 0140189785)

bookshelves: literature

Set in the pacific, a tale of the son of a philosopher (Schopenhauer-ish) who has absorbed enough of his father's views that he is no longer attached to the world, and so lives alone on an island. There are some great passages in this book, including recollections of the father, and also the parts including the villains - 3 quite odd characters who seem to each represent one facet of Plato's tripartite soul. The book is overly long, though, and apart from select passages, I prefer other Conrad b...more

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Jul 17, 2008

Tahseen rated it:

(review of isbn 0140189785)

Read in January, 2006

He had listened. Then, after a silence, he had asked--for he was really young then:

"Is there no guidance?"

His father was in an unexpectedly soft mood on that night, when the moon swam in a cloudless sky over the begrimed shadows of the town.

"You still believe in something, then?" he said in a clear voice, which had been growing feeble of late. "You believe in flesh and blood, perhaps? A full and equable contempt would soon do away with...more

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Jul 13, 2009

Justin Evans rated it:

(review of isbn 0192801759)

bookshelves: fiction

Read in July, 2009

As far as Conrad novels go, this was... well, pretty standard. The big difference is that it's not narrated by 'Marlowe,' so the prose is a little more readable. It's pretty pessimistic, of course. If you're into memorable characters, Lena/Alma's right up there. And I suppose Heyst is meant to be up there, but it's just difficult for me to take seriously a character with such a prominent mustache.

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May 20, 2009

Jack rated it:

(review of isbn 0140189785)

Set in a time when you could disappear from the world by hanging out on the right Pacific island, Conrad's novel is most interesting as a record of European/AMerican sensibilities of the time and, for writers, a style of effaced third person narrative which is unusually present and involving. (Most writers fall into the third person to keep their emotional distance from the story.)

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Jul 19, 2009

Daniel Villines rated it:

(review of isbn 0140189785)

Read in August, 2009

This book is not really worth the time. While it is written by a well-known author, the story is nowhere near to being his best work. The positives are limited to a tropical island setting and a story that’s suspenseful at least up to the end. The negatives include an ending scene is rushed, a main character that is never developed but somehow is suppose to carry the central theme of “victory,” and an ending that would have any 60-minute suspense series on TV jealous of how quickly ever...more

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Oct 31, 2009

Jason rated it:

(review of isbn 0140189785)

One of the later Conrad and likely the best. There was an HBO movie made of it with Willem Defoe as Heyst, but it was only o.k.. The first place I went in Warsaw was to Conrad's former residence (as a child) on Novy Swiat.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NowySw...

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Sep 10, 2007

Michael rated it:

(review of isbn 0140189785)

Read in October, 2007

I could not find an image of the copy of this book that I am reading, which has the grooviest minimalist 1920's cover illustration (by Edward Gorey). I love the covers of those early paperbacks,and honestly, can not separate the literary contents of the book from the musty brilliance(and aroma)of those old editions.
This book has great characters, exotic atmosphere and a fantastic plot. Woven into this are philosophical themes expressed with great restraint. It reminds me a bit o...more

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Jan 19, 2010

John Guild rated it:

(review of isbn 0375759085)

Absolutely stunning. If you've never read any of Conrad's novels, or if you didn't enjoy Heart of Darkness, give Victory a try. It's much more accessible than his earlier work, yet it still retains all the elements that make Conrad great.

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Jan 06, 2009

Max rated it:

(review of isbn 0140189785)

Read in January, 2007

If you send me to a desert island (read to get "joke") with a few books, this would be one of them. I learned that JC's heart is not all dark.

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May 01, 2007

علی rated it:

(review of isbn 0140189785)

bookshelves: novels

I share deeply the hiden fear of Conrad where he was always in doubt if he could express himself in a proper way through another langauge than his motherland’s. That’s terrible.

پیروزی هم برای کنراد موفقیت آورد اما پس از دل تاریکی کنراد دیگر شاهکاری نیافرید.

این کتاب با ترجمه ی هرمز داورپناه در سال 1374 چاپ و منتشر شده است

یکی از آخری...more

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Jul 14, 2009

Ken Ficara added it (review of isbn 0192817086)

http://books.kenficara.com/2008/12/victo...

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Sep 14, 2009

Albie added it

Victory (Wordsworth Collection) by Joseph Conrad (1998)

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Mar 30, 2009

Keith Miller rated it:

(review of isbn 0742626687)

bookshelves: favorites

Victory: An Island Tale (Collected Works of Joseph Conrad) by Joseph Conrad (2000)

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Mar 06, 2010

Jeremy rated it:

(review of isbn 0140189785)

Read in January, 2010

Excellent book. I suggest you read it soon.

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Jul 01, 2009

Susi rated it:

(review of isbn 0140189785)

Read in July, 2009

Not for people who like "happily ever after" endings, but very good!!!

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Dec 26, 2008

Mark rated it:

(review of isbn 0375759085)

Read in January, 2009

An entertaining book that is clearly not among Conrad's best. While he cannot help showing his talent in many different passages and sections of the book, the story simply does not build to anything more than the chain of events being retold. It is a good story but not one that stays with you like so many of Conrad's books.

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