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Title: The Secret Agent: A Simple Tale (Oxford World's Classics) by Joseph Conrad, Roger Tennant ISBN: 0-19-283477-0 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: 01 June, 1998 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $9.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.81 (57 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: riveting
Comment: The secret agent of the title is not a character you can root for but merely pity, as his rather bland vanity sets in motion not only a shocking tragedy but his own downfall as well. The disharmony right below the surface of his fragile, awkward family life finally explodes right about the time he sends his frail mother off to live by herself; the even bigger plot explosion to follow becomes a catalyst for the rest of the story's major events. Conrad's narrative style is often so dense you may lose track of what's going on, but you never lose track of the finely etched characters, whose motives here all cross paths over the same sad (and ultimately pointless) episode. Patient readers will be lulled into a heartbreaking tale whose story elements eerily parallel the terrorist schemes of today. But then again, terrorism isn't exactly a modern day nightmare. (It's been going on throughout history.) Overall, the heavy, thick writing magicially gives way to some very memorable and forlorn people, who never do get to realize their dreams. The clash of law and lawlessness, morality and indifference, and love and family loyalty, feature strongly on practically every page.
Rating: 5
Summary: A dark and nihilistic tale; grim realism at its best
Comment: As I read through the "critical" comments of high school and college students who are assigned to read the works of Joseph Conrad then fuss and fume at the very idea of it, I find myself deeply disappointed by their lack of appreciation for the subtleties of great literature. They have little time or patience to devote to an author who provides his readers with so much vivid description, building toward a stunning and inevitable climax. In the "Secret Agent," Conrad points to the frailties of the human condition, the large forces of nature at work that conspire against the simple and downtrodden man trapped by his own cunning devices. Mr. Verloc is a simple, plodding peasant; and just why he embraces the anarchistic cause is never made clear to the reader, but no matter. He is trapped in a sterile nightmarish world where the idealists and the self-proclaimed revolutionaries are as morally bankrupt and empty of human emotion as the system they purport to overthrow. Conrad's characterizations are brilliant. His use of dialog and description, a hallmark of the early twentieth century realists, and the grim ending to this novel is a masterpiece of understatement. It is too bad that fine old classics of literature like this one and the more famous Conrad novella "The Heart of Darkness" must be subjected to the vapidity and sophomoric opinions of a generation of students weaned on MTV, the Simpsons, and thirty-second TV soundbytes.
Rating: 5
Summary: Dark humor and a bleak prescience
Comment: For all the talk of the supposed "difficulty" of this novel, I found it to be one of the best construed and told that I have read lately. It goes well beyond a simple thriller or spy novel; it is an intense human drama in which the characters have real personalities. Verloc is a loser. He has been living, for the last eleven or so years, off the payments of a foreign embassy which employs him to spy and report on the activities of a terrorist cell, also composed of frustrated, useless, all-talk-no-action losers. Other reviewers have aptly described these characters.
Verloc lives also off the meager profits of a news store, which serves as cover up for his clandestine activities, ignored even by his family. This consists of his younger wife, Winny, her mother and her retarded brother Stevie, a sympathetic but hopeless young man.
As the novel opens, Verloc is in deep trouble. The new officers at the embassy are displeased at the results Verloc's work has achieved, and so one of them brutally warns him that the pay will stop if he doesn't produce at least one major act of terrorism, say, blow up the Greenwich observatory, an icon of modern faith in science. Verloc gets obviously dismayed at this order, for he is no terrorist at all, just a scumbag of an idler. I won't spoil the rest of the story up to the attack, but the resulting situation will show how coward these terrorists are (we hope none of them were as bold as other terrorists we know are) and how fragile Verloc's family relations are, especially in view of the terribly stupid action he commits.
This is a very dark tale. None of the characters are attractive, but they are exteremely well developed, and that's what counts. The humor used by Conrad is without concessions: for all its cruelty, I found the bombing scene a very funny one. Conrad makes hard fun of all these types who talk and talk about anarchy, the "Revolution", ideology and their supposed love for humanity, a love conspicuously absent from their daily lives.
How pertinent, in these times, to have a great and darkly funny novel to taka a look at, now that the types have, sadly, passed into action.
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Title: Nostromo a Tale of the Seaboard (Penguin Great Books of the 20th Century) by Joseph Conrad ISBN: 014018371X Publisher: Penguin Books Pub. Date: 01 June, 1990 List Price(USD): $10.00 |
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Title: Under Western Eyes (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics X) by Joseph Conrad, Paul Kirschner ISBN: 0140188495 Publisher: Penguin Books Pub. Date: 01 March, 1997 List Price(USD): $11.00 |
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Title: The Good Soldier: A Tale of Passion (Oxford World's Classics) by Ford Madox Ford, Thomas C. Moser ISBN: 019283620X Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: 01 May, 1999 List Price(USD): $8.95 |
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Title: Lord Jim (Penguin Classics) by Joseph Conrad, Cedric Watts, Robert Hampson ISBN: 0140180923 Publisher: Penguin Books Pub. Date: 01 November, 1988 List Price(USD): $5.95 |
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Title: Heart of Darkness (Dover Thrift Editions) by Joseph Conrad ISBN: 0486264645 Publisher: Dover Publications Pub. Date: 01 August, 1990 List Price(USD): $1.50 |
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