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The Rescue
(Lingard Trilogy #3)
by
Civil war rages between the native tribes of the Malay straits. Captain Tim Wingard sides with the Rajah Hassim. But as is the case with so much in the Far East, nothing is quite straightforward and events unfold by indirection.
An English yacht blunders into this confusion and runs aground. When Wingard goes aboard to offer assistance, the crew gives him insolence, not gra
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Paperback
Published
January 1st 1996
by Penguin Classics
(first published 1920)
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Al Maki
He sailed away on his yacht with his wife, presumably to continue their lives in England unhappily married.
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Review coming tomorrow. I have to think more about this one.
Jan 21 ~~ The Rescue is unusual because it is technically an early effort by Conrad, but he stopped working on it in 1898 and never went back to complete it until 1918, finally publishing in 1920. In his introduction he explains that he had put this novel aside to finish another project that had captured his imagination, and it simply became easier to then finish the next project and the next until 20 years had passed and he began to fe ...more
Jan 21 ~~ The Rescue is unusual because it is technically an early effort by Conrad, but he stopped working on it in 1898 and never went back to complete it until 1918, finally publishing in 1920. In his introduction he explains that he had put this novel aside to finish another project that had captured his imagination, and it simply became easier to then finish the next project and the next until 20 years had passed and he began to fe ...more

This novel was a revelation for me; who am well-familiar with most of Conrad's other titles. I'm just knocking off the last few I have left ('The Rover', 'An Outcast of the Islands') and discovering in Conrad a writing style I didn't believe he had any inclination or facility for.
'Rescue' is a slow, dense, read; but its immediately noticeable that Conrad here has not skimped or made things convenient for himself --as he can often be fairly accused of doing--by writing only the content which he i ...more
'Rescue' is a slow, dense, read; but its immediately noticeable that Conrad here has not skimped or made things convenient for himself --as he can often be fairly accused of doing--by writing only the content which he i ...more

Joseph Conrad is one of my favourite authors, so I was delighted to find a second-hand copy of this in the Penguin Classics paperback edition. I’ve read pretty much everything else he wrote but for some reason I had overlooked this one. While it isn’t especially rare, it is one of the more neglected novels in the author’s later works; it also has the interesting position of being a book that was originally started at the very beginning of his career, then set aside and only finished near the end
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' "Am I a fat white man?" snapped the serang. "I was a man of the sea before you were born, O Sali! The order is to keep silence and mind the rudder, lest evil befall the ship." '
Enjoyed this read. Conrad knows how to describe a sea calm better than anyone else. ...more
Enjoyed this read. Conrad knows how to describe a sea calm better than anyone else. ...more

Feb 14, 2020
Paul Cornelius
rated it
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review of another edition
Shelves:
literature-british-20th-century
Simply put, Conrad fails with this novel. It's not that it doesn't have its moments. And the cumulative impact of events on the ending brings off a tremendous effect, a blow that leaves an image of its protagonist, Lingard, forever changed--and damaged. As with many of Conrad's novels and stories, it illustrates the failure of people to connect. In this case, it is with the once heroic and respected Captain Lingard with a married woman, Mrs. Travers.
Alas, Lingard actually has few truly heroic d ...more
Alas, Lingard actually has few truly heroic d ...more

Except for Heart of Darkness, which any instructor in Intro to Lit gets to know a lot better than one ever wanted to, I'd not read any Conrad in decades. Lucienne in Nicholas Freeling's Gun before Butter drew me to this under-appreciated novel - Conrad's hero Captain Lingard was her masculine ideal & I wanted to find out if he was worthy & indeed he is. Tho' the sleaze & the homme moyen sensual represent most of the male species, one can aspire to being a decent man or even better, a real man. A
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For good and often for bad, Joseph Conrad’s late novels saw a resurgence in his romanticism. Conrad’s novels were always romantic, but the nature of that romanticism changed over time. In his early novels, the romance lay more in the description and the plotting than in the often sordid and seedy characters who dominated the stories.
By Conrad’s middle period, the romanticism was more submerged, as he examined political systems with a cynical and pessimistic eye. Pessimism is of course itself a s ...more
By Conrad’s middle period, the romanticism was more submerged, as he examined political systems with a cynical and pessimistic eye. Pessimism is of course itself a s ...more

I remember liking Conrad a lot in high school, and I still enjoy the intense dialogues that elaborate the themes of a thoroughly gripping adventure story. But everything is melodramatic and absolute--from the opening description of the sea down to the smallest twitch of a character's arm--and that can get a little tiring to read.
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one of the most long-winded works i have ever read. some great passages, sure, but mostly this was "slower than whale shit", even for conrad.
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When you close the covers of this book, you have been somewhere.
And not merely to its setting by Joseph Conrad in the Malay Archipelago, where the shallow waters of the Karimata Strait separate Sumatra to the west from Borneo to the east. Exotic to western readers, the locale renders even more special the romance between a freelance sea captain of a small boat and a British woman traveling with her husband on a yacht that has gone aground on a sandbar off one of the many islands. The locale enab ...more
And not merely to its setting by Joseph Conrad in the Malay Archipelago, where the shallow waters of the Karimata Strait separate Sumatra to the west from Borneo to the east. Exotic to western readers, the locale renders even more special the romance between a freelance sea captain of a small boat and a British woman traveling with her husband on a yacht that has gone aground on a sandbar off one of the many islands. The locale enab ...more

Excellent, but not quite the sublime Conrad. "The Rescue" ends the so-called Lingard trilogy, and oddly it is the novel that has more Lingard than any other. But I still can't place him. Essentially, he falls in love with Mrs. Travers. And here you realize love, and more especially soul mates of the opposite sex meeting, is a subject foreign to most Conrad. There is some in "Victory," Nostromo loves in "Nostromo," but the relationship itself is never the thing Conrad describes most deeply. As in
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I finished it; I'm rescued. I can't include certain thoughts on the book without risking being thrown off Goodreads. Let's say that I couldn't put it down; it was an obsession captured as I was by the soaring prose that bordered on pure poetry. Conrad does that for me. For example, at the sight of his obsession on deck, Captain Linguard, observed,
..."Mrs. Travers rose nervously and going aft began to gaze at the coast. Behind her the sun, sunk already, seemed to force through the mass of waters ...more
..."Mrs. Travers rose nervously and going aft began to gaze at the coast. Behind her the sun, sunk already, seemed to force through the mass of waters ...more

Kurzer Auszug a.d. längeren Rezension m. Links u. Hintergründen i. m. Blog:
Fazit:
Der Ton ist teils märchenonkelhaft und voll überflüssiger Adjektive und Verallgemeinerungen. Teils konnte ich der Geschichte nicht folgen – weder den Gefühlen und Entscheidungen der Protagonisten noch den Inter-Island-Streithändeln – und musste in der englischen Zumbuchwiki die Handlung nachlesen; selbst dort verstand ich nicht alles.
Die Figuren erscheinen zu diffus, zu holzschnittartig lieb oder böse; die Hauptfi ...more
Fazit:
Der Ton ist teils märchenonkelhaft und voll überflüssiger Adjektive und Verallgemeinerungen. Teils konnte ich der Geschichte nicht folgen – weder den Gefühlen und Entscheidungen der Protagonisten noch den Inter-Island-Streithändeln – und musste in der englischen Zumbuchwiki die Handlung nachlesen; selbst dort verstand ich nicht alles.
Die Figuren erscheinen zu diffus, zu holzschnittartig lieb oder böse; die Hauptfi ...more

This had a strong naval feel to it as most of Conrad's novels do, but I had a brighter, more enjoyable time while reading this, too. It was not as dark as his other texts, and it was nice to be in the shoes of a sea captain. Still, as part of a trilogy, it carries the same undertones as its predecessors, and a must read for those interested in colonialist works.
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This one is difficult to judge as the last third, written 20 years after Conrad started writing the book, is so much better than the first two thirds.
https://piningforthewest.co.uk/2020/0... ...more
https://piningforthewest.co.uk/2020/0... ...more

I had a hard time with this one, my second book on estuary hijinks before the First World War (The Riddle of the Sands). Some of it had some of the best writing by Conrad I've run across - and some it I was in the same doldrums Lingard's boat starts the novel in.
In the introduction Conrad relates that he started "The Rescue" before all of his masterpieces (The Nigger of the Narcissus, Heart of Darkness, and Lord Jim and it was sitting there in an unfinished state while he wrote those books that ...more
In the introduction Conrad relates that he started "The Rescue" before all of his masterpieces (The Nigger of the Narcissus, Heart of Darkness, and Lord Jim and it was sitting there in an unfinished state while he wrote those books that ...more

my favorite of Conrad - I relate to Lindgard somehow, the independent captain of a lovely brig and admirer of a young heroic deposed chief in the jungles of Borneo. his life work of replacing this man back on his throne is abruptly interrupted by the appearance of an English 'yacht' grounded at the mouth of the river where he is mounting his native force to retake the throne/power for his friend. he relates to the woman on the yacht as a fellow European and is unable to seperate himself from her
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As is usual with Conrad (this is my penultimate novel of his) the beginning is confusing, you start to wonder if you are going to get into this one, and suddenly about a third of the way through you are totally hooked. It is tremendously detailed in both descriptions of what happens and of what the characters are thinking. The 'minor' characters are drawn with as much care as the major, with the truly appalling Travers and the faithful Jaffir. Being Conrad, it doesn't end well - that shouldn't b
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This story is written as a narration. It’s a sea story adventure interlaced with phycological romance.
It’s told through a sequence of shifts backward and forward, and is slow reading, fortunately as you progress along it becomes more suspenseful, making it more compelling to read.
It is about Tom Lingard, a character the author writes about in several other books. Tom is on his way to help a native friend reconquer Wajo. Along the way he encounters a stranded yacht and meets a woman. The story i ...more

I mean... it's Conrad. If you like Conrad, you'll like this. I don't like Conrad, but wanted to give him another shot. Ultimately, though, this is "Heart of Darkness" with Asians instead of Africans, from the disturbing racial slurs to the jungle setting to the pervading "darkness" to the "noble savages."
I will give Conrad credit for being a masterful writer, however. If you disregard the plot, the writing itself is gorgeous. Conrad was clearly a master craftsman when it came to writing in Engl ...more
I will give Conrad credit for being a masterful writer, however. If you disregard the plot, the writing itself is gorgeous. Conrad was clearly a master craftsman when it came to writing in Engl ...more

Not too much to add beyond what others have said. Portions of the first part of the book are very fine. The second half is tough going. My favorite quotes is "the world is too prudent to be sincere."
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Joseph Conrad (born
Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski
) was a Polish-born English novelist who today is most famous for Heart of Darkness, his fictionalized account of Colonial Africa.
Conrad left his native Poland in his middle teens to avoid conscription into the Russian Army. He joined the French Merchant Marine and briefly employed himself as a wartime gunrunner. He then began to work aboard ...more
Conrad left his native Poland in his middle teens to avoid conscription into the Russian Army. He joined the French Merchant Marine and briefly employed himself as a wartime gunrunner. He then began to work aboard ...more
Other books in the series
Lingard Trilogy
(3 books)
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—
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