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Nostromo (Barnes & Noble Classics)
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Product Description
One of the greatest novels of the twentieth century, Joseph Conrad’s Nostromo is an immensely exciting tale of love, revolution, and politics set in the mythical South American country of Costaguana during the 1890s.
Ten years after his father is murdered by a brutal dictator, Englishman Charles Gould arrives in Costaguana to reopen the family silver mine. But instead of ushering in a shining era of prosperity and progress, the return of the silver engenders a new cycle of violence as Costaguana erupts in civil war, initiated by rival warlords determined to seize the mine and its riches. In desperation, Gould turns to the only man who can save the mine’s treasure—Nostromo, the incorruptible head of the local dockworkers, who protects the silver from rebel forces by taking it out to sea. But disaster strikes, burdening Nostromo with a terrible secret that forever alters the fate of everyone involved with the mine.
A stunning monument to futility, Nostromo reveals how honor, idealism, and loyalty are inadequate defenses against the inexorable assault of corruption and evil.
Brent Edwards is an Associate Professor in the English Department at Rutgers University. He is author of The Practice of Diaspora (Harvard University Press, 2003) and co-editor of Uptown Conservation: The New Jazz Studies (Columbia University Press, 2004).
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #804396 in Books
- Published on: 2004-10-25
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Binding: Paperback
- 496 pages
Editorial Reviews
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Joseph Conrad called Nostromo his "largest canvas," and since its publication in 1904, it has rightfully been considered one of the first great modernist novels in the English language. He also called it an "achievement in mosaic," and in some ways this is the more precise description: for Nostromo is not just a single novel, but a stunning orchestration of many novels at once. It is an adventure story, narrating the extraordinary exploits of the courageous Italian sailor of the title; it is a comedy of errors, offering scene after scene of the entire spectrum of human failings, from unmerited arrogance to the self-destruction of the grandest plans; it is a masterful symbolic architecture, as the silver of the San Tomé mine comes to take on a diabolic significance for every character who comes near it; it is a story of hidden treasure; it is a novel of political intrigue, the double-crossing and scheming behind the scenes of monumental historical events; it is the tale of a particular place and people, recounting the violent origins of the Republic of Sulaco; it is a love story, drawing the reader into the courtship between the strong-willed daughter of the aristocracy, Antonia Avellanos, and the skeptic Martin Decoud, the "idle boulevardier" and disillusioned journalist who is driven to action by his passion; it is a novel of imperialism, a many-layered portrait of the effects of European and U.S. intervention in the affairs of a small country in South America. In his "Author’s Note" to the 1917 edition (included here), Conrad explains that for him, Nostromo marked "a subtle change in the nature of the inspiration [for his writing]," and the novel is important in his oeuvre not only because it is his most ambitious work, but also because it signals the transition between his two most fruitful periods: from his works dealing with European colonialism in Asia and Africa, especially Lord Jim (1900) and Heart of Darkness (1899), to what are sometimes termed his political novels, stories of revolutionary unrest set mainly in Europe, including The Secret Agent (1907) and Under Western Eyes (1911). For the first time, Conrad attempted in Nostromo a novel more of the land than of the sea ("A Tale of the Seaboard," as the subtitle puts it almost wistfully), and a novel only tangentially based on his personal experience as a sailor.
The novel began as a short story, and expanded in length and scope as Conrad worked on it assiduously from December 1902 until August 1904. From the beginning, it was a traumatic enterprise. Conrad had traveled to South America only once in his life, when in 1876, working as a nineteen-year-old steward on the French ship the Saint-Antoine, he sailed to the Caribbean, stopping in St.-Pierre in Martinique, Cartagena in Colombia, Puerto Cabello and La Guaira in Venezuela, St. Thomas, and Haiti. He was ashore only briefly in South America: twelve hours in Puerto Cabello, three days in La Guaira. Not surprisingly, when he attempted to draw on his memories of this experience for Nostromo, he was not able to dredge up much. As he began working on the book, Conrad wrote to his lifelong friend R. B. Cunninghame Graham, the famous Scottish aristocrat, radical socialist, and accomplished writer who had lived many years in South America, almost shamefacedly asking for help: "I want to talk to you of the work I am engaged on now. I hardly dare avow my audacity—but I am placing it in Sth America in a Republic I call Costaguana" (May 9, 1903, in Collected Letters, vol. 3, p. 34; see "For Further Reading"). Cunninghame Graham provided invaluable information to Conrad, but in July 1903, the latter was still writing to say that he was "dying over that cursed Nostromo thing. All my memories of Central America seem to slip away. I just had a glimpse 25 years ago—a short glance. That is not enough pour bâtir un roman dessus [to build a novel upon]" (July 8, 1903, in Collected Letters, vol. 3, p. 45).
Conrad’s correspondence of the period is filled with elaborate descriptions of what he termed the "atrocious misery of writing": In one letter to the novelist H. G. Wells, he wrote that he was "absolutely out of my mind with worry and apprehension of my work. I go on as one would cycle over a precipice along a 14 inch plank. If I falter I am lost" (November–December 1903, in Collected Letters, vol. 3, p. 80). In his autobiographical A Personal Record (1912), describing the composition of Nostromo, Conrad would again figuratively describe the writing process as a kind of extreme nautical distress:
Neglecting the common joys of life that fall to the lot of the humblest on this earth, I had, like the prophet of old [Jacob in the Old Testament], "wrestled with the Lord" for my creation, for the headlands of the coast, for the darkness of the Placid Gulf, the light on the snows, the clouds on the sky, and for the breath of life that had to be blown into the shapes of men and woman, of Latin and Saxon, of Jew and Gentile. These are, perhaps, strong words, but it is difficult to characterise otherwise the intimacy and the strain of a creative effort in which mind and will and conscience are engaged to the full, hour after hour, day after day, away from the world, and to the exclusion of all that makes life really lovable and gentle—something for which a material parallel can only be found in the everlasting sombre stress of the westward winter passage round Cape Horn (pp. 98–99).
By December he was calling it a "disastrous year," and moaning, "if I had written each page with my blood I could not feel more exhausted at the end of this twelvemonth" (Conrad to David Meldrum, December 26, 1903, in Collected Letters, vol. 3, p. 100). Conrad had reason to worry, because he had agreed to publish the novel in serial form starting in a few weeks. Nostromo appeared in TP’s Weekly from January 29 until October 7, 1904, and Conrad found the regular demands of this pace nearly impossible to meet. The Conrad family was renting lodgings from the novelist Ford Madox Ford during the spring of 1904, and—having already established a close friendship and an (unsuccessful) series of collaborations (including the novels The Inheritors in 1901 and Romance in 1903) with the younger writer—Conrad was forced to ask Ford to help him keep up with the installments. Ford composed a small section of Nostromo: about sixteen manuscript pages of chapter 5 in the second part of the novel. (Ford would also be integral to the composition of Conrad’s The Mirror of the Sea [1906], and scholars have suggested that he may have written part of Heart of Darkness as well.)
Customer Reviews
"Costaguana will always be run by butchers and tyrants."
Often regarded as Conrad's masterwork, Nostromo is also Conrad's darkest novel, filled with betrayals at all levels and offering little hope for man's redemption. A novel of huge scope and political intrigue, it is also a novel in which no character actually wins. All must accept the ironies which fate has dealt them. Setting the novel in the imaginary South American country of Costaguana, the story centers around a silver mine in the mountains outside of the capital, Sulaco, vividly depicting its allure and the price each character pays for its success.
When Charles Gould, returns from England to claim and reopen the rich silver mine he has inherited from his father, he has good intentions-- to provide jobs for the peasants and contribute to the economy of the town at the same time that he also profits. Soon, however, he becomes obsessed with wealth and power, and as the political climate gets hotter, he must pay off government officials, bandits, the church, and various armed revolutionaries to be able to work. Each of these groups is vividly depicted as working for its own ends and not for the good of the people, and with their goals focused on the real world, these characters have no self-awareness, nor do they develop it during the novel.
In contrast to these "unrealized" humans, Conrad presents several characters who develop some self-awareness through their experiences. Nostromo, a local legend, is a man of principle who has always kept his word. Martin Decoud, a newspaper man, is a nihilist who has editorialized against the revolution, though he has yet to test himself. Dr. Monygham, captured during a past revolution, broke under torture, and is now seeking absolution by fighting against this revolution. And the good and long-suffering wife of Charles Gould, Dona Emilia, spends her time helping others.
When Nostromo agrees to protect a load of silver from revolutionaries by taking it out to sea, Conrad provides a bleak commentary on idealism and human nature. The conclusion, which includes a love story that feels tacked on, reveals Conrad's darkest self and offers little hope of change and even less hope for man's redemption. Rich in atmosphere, vibrant in description, filled with characters representing all walks of life and philosophy, and set in a country where revolution is a way of life, the novel is full of dark portents and bleak political outcomes. Mary Whipple
Overwrought and tedious
I wish I had a better review for this book, but I really can't say I enjoyed it. It's clear that Conrad put a lot of work into writing the book. At least, he put a lot of work into the writing of the book. Every single sentence of this book is a work of art. Conrad writes each sentence as if his life depended on it. Pure, unabashed, overwrought tedium.
The story is about political change in the fictitious South American country of Costaguana and its crown jewel Sulaco. It's also about the rich silver mine on the island. And it's about the foreigners who come to take so much from the country for their own gain. It never really brings these themes together coherently.
The first half of the book (up to the second section, 6th chapter) sets up the scene. Characters are introduced and thrown away, locations are presented and detailed from the tips of the mountains to the smoldering candles of the inns. This part of the book reads very slowly. It's like slogging through mud in a dense fog. The reader is tempted to skim this section, but I found myself more confused if I didn't read a sentence carefully than if I spent a minute on each one.
The second half of the book, starting at the second section, 6th chapter, is where the book starts moving. The political revolution occuring in Costaguana threatens the safety and tranquility of Sulaco, so a plan is hatched to resist the marching armies of Montero and to make Sulaco an independent country. This story is interesting compared to the rest of the book, but it is by no means a captivating story.
For all the work that the book requires of the reader, the payoff is slight. Compare the difficult poetry of Nostromo to All the King's Men. Nostromo suffers greatly because of its lack of cohesion and minimal plot. It relies on the strength of the prose to carry the book, but the text is uninviting and difficult. All the King's Men, on the other hand, is wordy and terribly over-written, but the story is never subordinated to the prose.
I can't in good conscience recommend this book. It may be worth it if you are dying to read Joseph Conrad, but otherwise the book is hopelessly long and unfulfilling. The writing gets 2 stars and the story gets 1, so 3 stars total, but these are a hesitant 3 stars.
A Thought Mine Novel About a Silver Mine
Nostromo is one of Joseph Conrad's longer novels, and one in which he doesn't make use of his typical "undependable narrator." Instead, the tale is told by an omniscient narrator. That is, I think, a source of weakness. The narrator wants to tell too much, wants to analyze too much, describes too much. In other words, the book is too long and too diffuse. It has too many themes: notions of human behavior and motivation, insights into the nature of political brutality and corruption, counter-insights into the virtues of simple working people and their loyalties, a flaming love story, a burned-out love story, and a tale of the temptation and 'fall' of the everyman Nostromo. Conrad expounds the ideals of the "blancos" - the upper-class globalizing developers - who are the central characters of the novel with complete sympathy, and yet he also tosses in the rhetoric of the rebels, called 'liberals' although in normal economic terms the blancos are the liberals. The n-word is thrown at these peasants and poor folk rather freely, but underneath Conrad's commitment to the interests of his 'blanco' hero, one can detect a strong taint of revolutionary sympathy for the underdogs. I wish it were clear that Conrad was deliberately undercutting the 'victory' of the progressive classes by revealing the injustices and exploitations they commit to the working classes, but it's not so clear. One has to suspect Conrad of wanting to have it both ways, to "have his cake and eat it too."
Nonetheless, I can't imagine NOT enjoying such a vivid, picturesque, risk-taking novel. It's full of lusty humor and sardonic wit. It has glorious descriptions of the tropical sights and sounds of the imaginary Latin American country where the story happens. It has a cast of powerful and believable characters. I can't conceive of giving any Conrad novels less than five stars when police thrillers and Avon romances get rave reviews. Nostromo is not close to Conrad's best novel, but even Conrad's weakest novels are rich concoctions of ideas and action. If you've read "Under Western Eyes" - Conrad's finest social/political novel - you might well want to read Nostromo in particular, in that it expands and complicates Conrad's perceptions of the abuse of authority.
