The Secret Agent and Under Western Eyes Joseph Conrad Books
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The Secret Agent, published in 1907, is one of Joseph Conrad's greatest novels. The story is set in London in the late 19th century and centers around Adolph Verloc, a spy from an unnamed country. The book is one of the first to deal with anarchism, espionage, and terrorism. Under Western Eyes, published in 1911, is also one of Conrad's best novels. The action is set in St. Petersburg, Russia and Geneva, Switzerland and is considered by many to be Conrad's response to the novel Crime and Punishment. Under Western Eyes also contains many of the same themes seen in The Secret Agent. Joseph Conrad was a Polish-British writer who is considered to be one of the greatest authors in English literature. Conrad's books contain much of the elements seen in 19th-century realism but his modernistic writing also influenced many great authors that followed including Faulkner, Hemingway, and Orwell. Conrad wrote classics in many different genres and many of his works were based off his experiences at sea as a British merchant marine.
The Secret Agent and Under Western Eyes Joseph Conrad Books
To me, this is Conrad's masterpiece. I hate saying that as the man also wrote Nostromo, and that is a considerable masterpiece. But for me, there is something about the Secret Agent that I keep coming back to, and its hard for me to pin-point.Maybe its because, although the topic matter of the work is grim, I surprise myself by laughing uproariously each time I read this work. Conrad was never really known for his humor, at least from what I can tell, but I find there are places in the book that, whether meant to be intentionally funny or not, make me laugh my head off. I'll leave it at that-there is something strange indeed about this work, which is really quite different from Conrad's other works.
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The Secret Agent and Under Western Eyes Joseph Conrad Books Reviews
"The Secret Agent"begins with a biography of the author, "The life and times of Joseph Conrad" which is important in understanding this complicated, brilliant writer and his times. He was born in 1857 into a family of minor Polish gentility (his homeland under Russian rule at the time). Both of his parents died early in his life from TB, and he was sickly throughout his life. After a hit-and-miss family life and education, he became interested in going to sea to expand his world. This was a time when the British Empire and other powers held colonies overseas, so shipping out of Marseilles he joined the merchant marines at the age of 16. An advantage was that he already had a respectable command of French from a tutor.
For four years he found work on various boats involved in gunrunning, smuggling, gambling, love affairs; many of these experiences are fictionalized in his stories and novels. This was a rough life, but he made friends with two Englishmen, and in 1886 Conrad earned his master seaman's certificate and became a British citizen, He also wrote his first story at this time, amazingly in English, because he wanted to reach a broad audience. There is much more to his life and writing, culminating in his best known work, "The Heart of Darkness," based on his experiences in the Belgian Congo.
"The Secret Agent" is a a story set earlier (1886) telling an allegory of terrorists and anarchists based in Edwardian England. The agent is secretly employed by a foreign embassy, probably Russia, to blow up the Greenwich Observatory. The complicated plot is masterful, the prose sophisticated, and the characterizations full and engrossing. The death of an innocent is heartrending. Joseph Conrad is often considered the best writer of the 19th century.
Fascinating story that shows the writer's deep understanding of human motives, thought processes, etc. He creates a story where you understand the characters and their role in the world at that time. You do have sympathy for many but none are real hero's or true villains. The switching between the different characters and their perspectives keeps the story moving. The ending does feel very rushed and many characters do not get covered in depth or at all. It feels like the writer was trying to wrap up and get the story done versus the pace up to that point. All in all a good read and shows that many of the views, opinions, and troubles of society over 100 years ago are still present today.
The author has a great grasp of human psychology. He delves into the motivations and feelings each character has so that you learn more about the characters than in most fiction books. Although Conrad was not a native born English speaker his use of the language was impressive. In most fiction you get to like some characters and dislike others. I never found a character I liked in this book; I found I ranged from mild dislike to contempt of all the characters. I will not provide any spoilers so you will need to read this book to determine how you feel about the characters.
We live in uncertain and even dangerous times. Cruel beheadings are shown on the internet, stories of war and terror lead the nightly news and the daily paper is crammed with reports of violence and mayhem. It is easy to think that our age is perhaps especially cruel. And yet it isn’t. Not long ago it was the brutality of communist systems that appalled the West, of terror rampages of the Bader Meinhof Gang or the Munich Olympics, the mad mullahs of Iran and so on.
So it is interesting to find a superbly written book about terror in a time long ago. The Secret Agent is just such a book, and how marvelous it is. Its subject is the seamy, sordid world of anarchists in Edwardian England. The year is 1907 and the main characters are Adolf Verloc, a small-time pornographer and part-time secret agent and anarchist, and his long-suffering wife Winnie. The story could seem seriously dated and improbable, but only if you forget how really terrifying the anarchists of that time were. They were that era’s terrorists, and they struck with great violence and cruelty. Crude bomb-makers blew themselves up in crowded trains and cozy cafes in Paris, crackpots from obscure political sects took potshots at crowned heads and political figures. And more victims fell than just the Archduke and Archduchess of Austria at Sarajevo. William McKinley, the U.S. president, was assassinated, as was an Austrian empress, a French president, an Italian king and a Spanish prime minister. The crimes were vicious, shocking and deadly, just like today.
Conrad conjures up this time of paranoia, delusion, cruelty and stupidity with all his considerable powers. He takes the reader deep into the criminal mind at work, with great subtlety and art. It is all very chilling and macabre, but at the same time it is so fascinating that you cannot avert your eyes.
Much of the story concerns a plot to bomb the Greenwich Observatory outside London, designed to be a symbolic attack on knowledge itself. But the real meat of this story is what is going on inside the heads of these odious characters; Conrad takes the reader on an intimate interior tour of their thoughts and calculations. It is a psychologically horrifying tale, but it is told in an old-fashioned, Hithcockian way. Only three people die in this tale, but the level of suspense is kept at a crackling level and the narrative bowls along at a pressing pace. The story unfolds with a sly, almost lewd sense of humor and an unhealthy relish for the macabre. It is a great story, told with unfailing skill and a blood-curdling charm.
To me, this is Conrad's masterpiece. I hate saying that as the man also wrote Nostromo, and that is a considerable masterpiece. But for me, there is something about the Secret Agent that I keep coming back to, and its hard for me to pin-point.
Maybe its because, although the topic matter of the work is grim, I surprise myself by laughing uproariously each time I read this work. Conrad was never really known for his humor, at least from what I can tell, but I find there are places in the book that, whether meant to be intentionally funny or not, make me laugh my head off. I'll leave it at that-there is something strange indeed about this work, which is really quite different from Conrad's other works.
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