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BOOK REVIEWS derivable from earlier biographers and Conrad himself. In 1985 he wrote: "At the fag-end of literary criticism, when all major authors have been exhaustively analyzed ... a thoroughly researched biography which is firmly based on extensive archival evidence and presents a massive quantity of material as the basis for original interpretations, is perhaps the most valuable contribution to modern scholarship" (The Craft of Literary Biography, 131). Whatever may be the case with his previous biographies (of Mansfield , Wyndham Lewis, Hemingway, D. H. Lawrence), Joseph Conrad does not substantiate this claim. It seems that in this instance Meyers's subject failed to catch light within him, that he was unable to find in Conrad's life a shape that he could grasp or in Conrad's work a theme that would hold him to a clear purpose; consequently Joseph Conrad is a tired and unfruitful book. gimon ^^ ______________________ University of Georgia Condrad's Oedipal Dilemma Catharine Rising. Darkness at Heart: Fathers and Sons in Conrad. New York: Greenwood Press, 1990. 208 pp. $39.95 JOSEPH CONRAD'S problematical relationship with his father, Apollo Korzeniowski, provides an illuminating perspective on the novels and tales that have made Conrad one of the monarchs of modernism. Taking up the subject of father-son antagonisms as dramatized in the paternal authority figures of Conrad's fiction, Catharine Rising argues that Conrad exhibited an obsessive preoccupation with the surrogate fathers of his protagonists. Rising undertakes a Freudian analysis of Conrad's ambivalence over paternity as demonstrated in the interactions of Marlow and Jim, Lingard and Almayer, Verloc and Stevie, and Heyst and the elder Heyst, among many others. She links this Oedipal conflict to the Conradian protagonist's efforts to determine and/ or maintain his position in the modern world. Although Rising acknowledges Conrad's uncle Tadeusz Bobrowski as his "substitute parent," she never really explores the implications of Conrad's dichotomous father figures in his fiction. Instead, she focuses on the frequent use of Oedipal triangles in Conrad's fiction: "the characteristic aim of the Conradian older man is to kill a younger rival for the affection of wife, daughter, or desired mistress." Rising also identifies the ambiguous Captain Tom Lingard (in Almayer's Folly and An Outcast of the IsL·nds) as the prototype of the father figure in Conrad's 107 ELT: VOLUME35:1 1992 fiction. Although Lingard may have professed a beneficent attitude toward both Almayer and Willems, Rising notes that Lingard's authority could only induce feelings of hostility in the younger protagonists. She sees this mixture of love and hatred as pervading the relationships of surrogate fathers and sons throughout Conrad's works. Rising contends that Conrad grants his seafaring protagonists virtual immunity from Oedipal anxieties because they lack a feminine object of desire, and thus there are no grounds for competition with a father figure. In contrast, she further maintains, Conrad's youthful protagonists find themselves in jeopardy when on land because of their tendency to become involved in Oedipal triangles involving a parental authority and a female character. At the close of her fourth chapter she bluntly states that "the formula for the son's survival has been found in a world without women." But surely this oversimplifies the case, as one must realize when considering the relationship of Axel Heyst with his dead father in Victory or Marlow's relationship with Jim in Lord Jim. Although Rising's topic and approach certainly have considerable merit, she sometimes goes overboard in finding father-and-son representations in Conrad's fiction. In addition to Stein and Marlow, Rising lists a number of other "paternal images" in Lord Jim, including Doramin, Brierly, and the captain of the Patna. More disturbing, however , is her attempt to discover at least one father or son figure in nearly every significant novel and story that Conrad ever wrote, regardless of whether that character has a corresponding paternal or filial figure identified in the text. Thus, she sees Kurtz as playing the role of Marlow's surrogate father in Heart of Darkness and considers the usually-absent director of the company in "An Outpost of Progress" as the symbolic father of Carlier and...

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