Joseph Conrad

[pat grimshaw]

Has anyone read 'The Secret Sharer'.

It is a short story from 1909 by Joseph Conrad.

I have twice tried and failed to read Conrad but it seems this story is gay-ish. I'm wondering if I should try.

 

[pat grimshaw]

I'm sorry to say I have nothing interesting to say about this.

A captain picks up a sailor floating in the sea somewhere off Malaya. For some unknown reason he decides to secrete him in his cabin and bathroom for a few days.

Conrad takes 12 pages to say what the wondrous Muriel Spark would say in 3.

The only frisson is that the sailor —for some inexplicable reason— is first found nude.

 

[PATMAN]

Conrad wrote the ONLY book that I actually ENJOYED in all of high school. (and we read DOZENS of them). And that was Heart of Darkness. AMAZING book.

That is all.

 

[handyman76]

My favorite novel is Lord Jim. Nothing gay, but the relationship between Marlow and Jim is really moving. And the het love interest tacked on to the last third of the book feels really perfunctory.

 

[pat grimshaw]

Like I say, I can't cope with Conrad's prolix prose. I have attempted and failed both of these novels~

…Heart of Darkness…

Did you recognise the 'Heart of Darkness' plot within the film 'Apocolypse now'?

…Lord Jim…

I haven't been able to see the Peter O' Toole movie version of this book but I've heard rumours that Lord Jim has some kind of sexual/masochistic scene in it.

Philip Hensher (who's one of my two favourite living gay authors) says Conrad's lengthy books are 'a challenge' for the casual modern reader.
He's the one who recommended 'The Secret Sharer' for what he calls 'a fevered erotic below-decks fantasy' which he says contrasts with the perfunctory avuncular hetero scenes in 'Victory' and 'Chance'.

 

[pat grimshaw]

that rumour is OTT


Peter O'Toole raped by the Turkish Bey in 'Lawrence of Arabia' in 1962


Peter O'Toole raped (??) in 'Lord Jim' in 1964


Peter O'Toole raped by the Sodomites in 'The Bible' in 1966

 

[handyman76]

The poetry of the language is part of its beauty for me. Opening the book at random, here's a description of a ship steaming across the Arabian Sea:

"Such were the days, still, hot, heavy, disappearing one by one into the past, as if falling into an abyss for ever open in the wake of the ship; and the ship, lonely under a wisp of smoke, held on her steadfast way black and smouldering in a luminous immensity, as if scorched by a flame flicked at her from a heaven without pity."

This is not even a particularly important image, but so vivid! (I understand if it is not to everybody's taste, though.)

It's been some time since I saw the Peter O'Toole movie, but I remember it as being disappointing. It is not very true to the book; it is more a South Seas adventure story (there's no rape scene in the book!) and not as psychologically penetrating.

 

[syntax]

The poetry of the language is part of its beauty for me.

The precision of Conrad's prose is matched only by Nabokov.

 

[pat grimshaw]

The precision of Conrad's prose is matched only by Nabokov.

Maybe. I say Nabokov has a joyful playfulness to his precise prose.
And Conrad has a monotone-sound to his precise prose.

 

[syntax]

Re: To Each Saint His Candle

´´




... ...Graham Greene, Knut Hamsun, Honoré de Balzac, Nikolai Gogol, Anton Tschechow, Gustave Flaubert, Franz
....... Grillparzer, Jean Paul, Wilhelm Raabe, Joseph Roth, Franz Kafka, Herbert Rosendorfer & Italo Svevo... .
´

3, 8, 11, 7, 32, 112, 66 & 21 ...

Blue, Green, Purple, Brown, Amber, Pink & Silver...

Manet, Klee, Rauschenberg, O'Keefe, Haring, Bacon, Sargent & Whistler ...

 

[pat grimshaw]

Indeed!