Conrad's Shorter Fiction and Novels

Book Reviews, Volume 32:1, 1988 promise to go well professionally (338); he expresses relief when a work is finished (163); and he views his environment aesthetically when he tries to convince the reluctant artist to visit Pent Farm for a working vacation: "There is a church quarry and barn right in your pocket as it were. There is within three miles a magnificent aspect of the . . . great Romney marsh; a miracle of colour at times. There are nooks in the folds of the Downs that wait for a "seeing" eye. . . . And within the house there is one well lighted room with a northern exposure. . ." (337). Rothenstein also has a prominent role in another aspect of III-equally important in previous volumes-that has received little critical notice. Karl's and Davies's carefully selected illustrations-not limited to ones that readers are used to seeing in books about Conrad-significantly enhance knowledge of Conrad and his circle of acquaintances, and help to interpret relationships in ways more meaningful than might otherwise be the case. Of the fourteen illustrations in III, Rothenstein is represented not only by his pastel of Conrad in 1903 but also by an earlier portrait of Sidney Colvin and a lithograph by John Singer Sargent of Rothenstein himself. In addition, Ted Sanderson, who appeared in an 1896 photograph with his oboe in II, is portrayed in III in an 1895 photo with his family; Henry James appears strolling the streets of London with a Charlie Chaplinesque-looking J. M. Barrie; Constance Collier, who performed in One Day More, recalls Conrad's experience as a dramatist; a reproduction of the letterhead of the stationery of the Riche Hotel & Continental in Montpellier shows where the Conrad family resided ('"Tisn't a luxury. It's a necessity of life. I particularly don't want to go to pieces just now" [315].); Roger Casement (an Irish patriot whom Conrad had met in the Congo and had corresponded with infrequently about the injustices of colonial rule, and who was to be hanged in 1916 because of his associations with Germany) suggests Conrad's increasing interest in politics and affairs of state; and finally, an illustration of "Anarchist rendevous, Windmill St, London" underscores Conrad's preoccupation with stories of political intrigue evident in the writing of Nostromo, The Secret Agent, and "Razumov." Ray Stevens _______________________________Western Maryland College___________ CONRAD'S SHORTER FICTION AND NOVELS Gail Fraser. Interweaving Patterns in the Works of Joseph Conrad. Ann Arbor and London: UMI Research Press, 1988. $34.95 101 Book Reviews, Volume 32:1, 1988 In Fraseras view-and this is a view quite as good as any other-we should turn to Conrad's works themselves for clarifying their issues rather than to his "often ambiguous and sometimes misleading statements " about his art (1). Her fairly unorthodox linkages of the stories and novels amply show that such an approach is not misdirected. In pursuing her central position that Conrad, the "homo duplex," established thematic connections between them comprising the dialectical exploration of a central idea, she has written a critique which penetratingly discusses Conrad's growth. In her analysis of the correspondences between "An Outpost of Progress" and The Secret Agent her unifying term is "stable irony," a detached ironic mode which she rightly considers to be absent from "Heart of Darkness," with which "An Outpost" is normally compared. Fraser (here and elsewhere) takes issue with the "nihilistic" view of Conrad, contending that in the novel "the narrator does not function as a lifeless mask or a detached historian" but reveals a moral engagement sometimes issuing in "savage indignation" (19). We find this judgment refreshing after the many attempts that have been made to depict the Conrad of The Secret Agent as a morbid pessimist bent on displaying unrelieved moral chaos. Considering Conrad's development from the story to the novel Fraser subtly analyzes his use of irony, the sudden shifts of perspective and grotesque elements, showing that in the novel Conrad's employment of narrative point of view and of ironic parallels and contrasts is more versatile and refined. The only statement to which one cannot readily assent is her conclusion that "Heart of Darkness...