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Lord Jim: A Tale (Penguin Classics)
by: Joseph Conrad

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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9780141441610
ISBN: 0141441615
Label: Penguin Classics
Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 400
Publication Date: November 27, 2007
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Reading Level: Young Adult
Sales Rank: 75788
Studio: Penguin Classics

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Editorial Review:

Product Description:
Penguin inaugurates a series of revised editions of Conrad’s finest works, with new introductions

Conrad’s great novel of guilt and redemption follows the first mate on board the Patna, a raw youth with dreams of heroism who, in an act of cowardice, abandons his ship. His unbearable guilt and its consequences are shaped by Conrad into a narrative of immeasurable richness.

Amazon.com Review:
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):

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.

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

Customer Reviews

Average Rating: out of 5 stars

Rating:

- Master of the metaphor
I actually started listening to this as an audio book on a road trip with my family. My wife and son couldn't make it through the first hour since they felt like it took forever to describe the key incident in the story. I continued with the book and found that I eventually got used to this style of writing. From a literary point of view, it is a beautiful and impressive style. Conrad paints a very graphic picture with his metaphors that is almost never used in modern writing. Reading this book was an experience I'm glad that I had, though I'm still not sure this is my favorite style. The narrative format also took some getting used to; the jumping back and forth was effective, but took some concentration.

As far as the story goes, it explored the effects of guilt in a man. Great novels help us understand key points of human thought and relationships and this book clearly falls in this category. ... Read More

Rating:

- A Grand Ungodly Godlike Narrator
That title is a knock-off of Ishmael's description of Captain Ahab in Melville's Moby Dick. My guess is that Joseph Conrad never read Moby Dick. His writing career unfolded during the decades before the rediscovery of Melville. I have no doubt that Conrad would have burst with appreciation if he'd encountered the other "greatest" writer of sea tales in English or any language. Lord Jim begins to remind me of Moby Dick in chapter four, when the straightforward 3rd person narrative suddenly shifts to Conrad's typically indirect narration in the first person voice of Captain Marlow. Thereafter, Jim's whole adventure is embedded in Marlow's rambling discourse, to the utter despair of high school sophomores and middle-age armchair travelers who "just want the story, ma'm."

So who is Marlow? Is he just a convenient mask for Conrad? Why is so much text devoted to Marlow's musing about his own "peripheral" role ... Read More

Rating:

- One of my favorites books
This book is what books were made for. Conrad's gift to build a scene that comes alive in the mind is unsurpassed as far as I am concerned. His characters are imperfect and all too human. Their inner struggles are the same as those we have today. For the novice, this book may seem a little tedious but once you get into the flow of his imagery you are in for a treat.

Rating:

- beware - romanticism
Joseph Conrad's tale of Lord Jim is a warning against taking yourself too seriously, expecting too much of yourself, failing to forgive yourself.

Jim is such a noble character but is he just another manifestation of Dostoevsky's 'The Idiot' - too honourable to be a survivor. Of course Conrad conspires greatly against Jim. With Jim's first great mistake - the one that, in his eyes, blighted him forever, it is as if God himself pardoned Jim, absolved him of any blame because there were no victims. And yet Jim cannot put the unfortunate aside push on with an effective life. But that's not quite true - eventually he does find a place for himself and the rest was up to Conrad's masterful plotting.

I also enjoy immensely the method Conrad uses of telling a tale through the eyes of an observer - Marlowe. While we are all participants in life, we are also very much more observers - if we care to observe. ... Read More

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