Slightly surprised myself by finishing Victory today. Found it unputdownable for the last two days. Not sure, though, that this is because I ascended to the seriousness that Conrad demands of his readers. In fact, I didn't really get what exactly was going on between Heyst and Lena, which is really the core of the novel, so that in some ways the ending escaped me. I grasped the desolation of it all, especially in the deaths of the trio of villains, but not what was specifically motivating the central couple at key moments. I suppose I missed the ways in which they failed to understand each other, rather taking it for granted that their relationship was a good thing, which may well have not have been so clear to the characters themselves.
What I didn't miss was how wonderfully nasty the antagonists in the novel are. It seems there's a school of thought that sees them as overly melodramatic and lacking in basic realism, and I think that's a reasonable point of view. But if you allow yourself to suspend disbelief and enter into enjoying the horror of it all they make for great reading. Also they are strangely plausible as comically trivial yet dangerous predators. I can see why Victory was another popular success for Conrad following Chance given the hypnotic power of the chapters dealing with the bad guys' invasion of the delicate paradise of the lovers' hideaway.
By the by, the sheer range of Conrad's work is astonishing, isn't it? What a pity he seems to have been reduced to just being the writer of Heart of Darkness for so many.
No comments:
Post a Comment