Conrad the Doodler

Although doodling is a break from putting words on the page, it is not necessarily a pause from writing, a process that includes reflection. This essay explores the ways doodling and writing may have intertwined for Conrad, who — like his characters Blunt, Razumov and Stevie — doodled; in The Shadow-Line holograph there are 109 doodles. By moving his doodles from the margins of the manuscript to the centre of discussion, a visual portrait emerges of an artist for whom ‘procrastination’