This took me rather a long time to read because I seem to have less time to read than I used to. Many people see it as Conrad's magnum opus. I think I lean towards Lord Jim or the Secret Agent. This is a deep and wide ranging novel with several themes. I don't quite understand why it is called Nostromo, because the character of Nostromo doesn't dominate the novel in the way that the central character in an eponymous novel usually does. Nostromo in fact focusses on a number of core characters over a period of several years. We open in Sulaco, a port town in the occidental province of an imaginary South American country called Costaguana, which is said to be based partly on Columbia, Venezuela and Panama. It is a sleepy port in a largely undeveloped country riven by corruption, poverty and civil war, somewhat protected from the disorder of the rest of the country by a massive mountain range. The Gould's, an English family who have been settled there for generations own a mining concession which has caused nothing but trouble up until now because of the rampant corruption of the ruling class. Charles Gould decides to take on the mine with a reforming zeal, fighting his way through the corruption and bureaucracy to make it into a functioning operation, transforming the economy of the region and the country at large. One of the major themes of the novel is of the mixed benefits and losses functioning capitalism brings. Costaguana has been a society operating upon the social and cultural model left to them by the Spanish conquests of the 16th Century. Capitalism has not taken root because it is a country in which an tiny elite plunder the rest of the country and live on the sweat and toil of a peasant class. Anyone with the energy, creativity and work ethic to try to launch a business will see their profits stripped by the governing elite. This has left Costaguana stuck centuries behind Europe and North America. Gould finally manages to kick start development in Costaguana but we see the costs and well as the rewards of this development. Class conflict becomes more acute. The living standards of the average person is going up, but the rewards are disproportionately taken by the elite. This mirrors history, as the French revolution began during a period of time when the lower orders of society were actually gradually improving their lot. When you are totally dominated by a ruling class the possibility of improving your lot seems impossible. It is only when gradual reforms begin that you can start to look around and wonder why the people at the top should have so much when you have so little. Nostromo is a heroic man, worshipped by the poor and seen as indispensable by the governing class. He lives for glory and splendour, and isn't focussed upon money at all. However, as the years go by and the mine starts paying off he begins to wonder why he should have nothing whilst the rich have everything, when they depend upon him for so much. It is the progression from a courtly, knightly ethos and society to a bourgeois, capitalist ethos embodied in one man. He is of the people, not of the elite, and he has enjoyed his position as an indispensable, incorruptible man of action. But he starts to wonder why he allows himself to be used as a tool by the Conservative ruling class, fighting against the reformers and revolutionists who say they are fighting for the people. He has never actually examined his own political beliefs before. Charles Gould marries an English woman named Emilia and brings her to Sulaco, where she becomes the darling of local society. She loves and admires her husband, especially in his forceful determination to succeed where his Father failed and create a successful mine, but she ends up having to accept that she is less important to him than the mine in his crusading zeal. This is another pretty clear description of the capitalist ethos. The monomaniacal businessman for whom nothing, including his wife or family, are as important as his business. Martin Decoud is a princeling from Costaguanan society living a louche, decadent lifestyle in Paris and looking back with amused contempt upon the country he comes from, seeing himself as a civilised European. However, he returns to Costaguana, intending it to be a pitstop on route to the USA, but finds himself caught up in the possibility of reforming Costaguana into a functioning, progressive, democratic country. One of the themes of the book is the way that powerful American and European politicians, businessmen and financiers see distant, underdeveloped countries like Costaguana as opportunities to make money and extract wealth, and see them as petty, unserious places filled with petty, unserious people. The investments they make both help and hurt the countries involved. Decoud's character development from sneering toff to committed reformer puts me in mind of Kierkegaard's Either/Or, and Existentialism in general. His commitment ennobles him as he ceases to waste his life, though he remains plagued with doubts throughout. The chaos, corruption, violence and political extremism and exploitation depicted in this book have been seen as typical of South America, and unfortunately the same patterns repeated themselves in the decades following publication, as has the behind the scenes maneuvering of Europe, and especially the USA.
Nostromo is considered by many to be Conrad’s greatest novel. The ambiguous nature of good and evil, the importance of duty, common themes in all of Conrad’s novels, get an epic treatment in Nostromo (my Modern Library edition is 630 pages long). But for all of its length, the novel, after the first dense, foundation building 50 pages or so, reads quickly. Published in 1904, the book has the feel of a modern novel. It’s a book about revolutions money, and character, told through different voices, different eyes.The main character is of course Nostromo, though the reader may at first be a bit puzzled by this, since for well over half the book Nostromo, a sailor and dock foreman, exists on the periphery of the story, but always as the “indispensible man.” If anything, the main character is, initially, the San Tome silver mine, a storehouse of wealth in the imaginary South American country of “Costaguana.” Charles Gould is the owner of the mine. He has inherited it from his father, but the mine is both a political football and silver goose due to the country’s never ending revolutions. (So much so that Gould’s uncle was executed by the previous junta.) Gould has no intention of ever letting that happen again, so he takes a different approach, inviting outside investors (American, and others) to get the mine running again, with a backup plan that involves a lot of dynamite. With a new, liberal government in place, it looks like everyone is making money.Not so, as one resentful general feels he isn’t getting his fair share. Yet another revolution occurs, and the province of Sulaco (the richest in the country) falls under siege. Fortunately Sulaco is protected by its geography, and what follows is a race against time, with several factions vying for control of the country – and the silver. The cast of characters Conrad uses to tell his story seems vast, but the individual treatment is never shallow. Oh, some (most?) of the characters are shallow, depressingly so. Generals, sailors, crazy priests, revolutionaries, nihilists, bandits, women of various natures, are all revealed in their damaged glory. Gould himself, not really good or evil, is a mechanical man, a total materialist, who, oddly, is married to a secular saint of sorts, Emilia. There were times I wondered about this odd match, but in the end I figured Charles represented the ultimate project for Emilia. The result is a sterile standoff.And then there’s Nostromo, a confident guy who on surface would seem the perfect Conradian hero. He gets the job done, whatever it is, always. However, the problem in Nostromo’s case is that it is always linked to how he feels he is viewed by others – especially his employers. His reputation is paramount. When the social order collapses, he feels “betrayed” by it (or “them”). But much of this is self-serving. When, through an accident, fate pushes the silver into his lap, he makes the wrong choice, and that choice eats at him throughout the rest of the novel, compounding itself into multiple bad choices, with the final, fatal choice linked to love. Some have complained about the late love story in the novel. For me it fittingly closed the circle, and is as heartbreaking an ending as I’ve read in literature. It’s a sad story told by a master.
What do You think about Nostromo (2002)?
A masterpiece...The funny thing is that for about a third of the novel, I had this strange feeling that there is something that was alluding me, something that I was not quite getting, like the story was for ever reason hard to follow and yet at the same time I felt immersed in the story and wanted to read more and more... The characters seemed as real and as vivid as they possibly could had and still I felt a sense of distance, a fairy tale feeling. As I made my way towards to end, I had a feeling of sudden clearness...the same that a person coming out of the dark has once his eyes get accustomed to the light, a feeling of seeing what you had hoped to see, that is usually joyous in its essence. Not that I wouldn't mind having a second look at it. A novel like this one should be read twice. I still have a feeling that I have missed something.I was and (usually am) immensely attracted to Conrad's prose, to his words, to his rhythm... However, this time there was something in his writing that had reminded me of South American writers who favor magic realism (but for the life of me I wouldn't be able to define what). It is not exactly the usual definition of it, there are no ghosts and no event that is impossible or hard to believe...but in want of a better word "magic" will have to do.Nostromo, our men...his name brings recollection of "he was one of us" (Lord Jim)...but who are "we" and who are "they"? The ones to whom we are "the other"? In some ways everything (and everyone) in this story resolves about "our men". He is the personification of the people..and yet such a cast of powerful and credible characters is created.What a novel! Such a tale of pride, sadness and madness I'm not sure that I will ever read again. It felt as tragic as ancient plays, as beautifully sad to the core as the best of them. The only difference is that this novel hasn't dated...not even a day. Sadly, the tale of exploration, of lords and servants, of desperate fight in the name of "material interest" hasn't aged a day. Sadly, one has to say, for it would be so lovely to be able to say "this sort of thing doesn't happens anymore.", while on the contrary one is forced to say "it happens every day" if not "it happens more and more often..."For me, the words "material interest" will forever haunt every memory of this novel. However, I guess that to fully understand the implications, you really have to read the novel. Or perhaps I'm just saying that to get you to read the novel...just in case my (pretty obvious) praise had failed.
—Ivana
NOSTROMO. (1904). Joseph Conrad. ***.I remember having to read this in college. Other than that, I don’t remember much more. I had already read “Lord Jim,” and “Heart of Darkness,” so I felt I had a grasp of Conrad’s writings. I was wrong. Since then, I’ve read many reviews of the book, and many of them stated that you had to get by the first fifty pages before the story began to open up. In my case, I found that it was more like seventy-five pages. The simple solution, of course, would have been to start reading the novel at page seventy-six; nothing much happens before that anyway. This was a big novel for Conrad, and has been acclaimed as his best. I don’t agree. “Lord Jim” is much more accessible and has a coherent plot line. This work includes a civil war, thievery on a large scale, and a variety of other action-packed devices. Unfortunately, there is really no action. Conrad is too busy describing his surroundings in infinite detail. Remember – English was his second language. He probably liked to demonstrate that he had command of it. What I think really happened was that he came across a copy of Roget’s Thesaurus and went wild. If you can put up with his interminable description of things (which add nothing to the forward motion of the story), and start on page seventy-six, you might get through it. Don’t be disappointed, however, when someone asks you about the character Nostromo after you have finished and you can’t describe him or what his role is in the novel.
—Tony
First impressions after just having finished the book. I think it's a very good book. What stood out most for me was the quality of the writing. I was impressed by this in a way I haven't been impressed in a while. It is extremely dense. There is always the conciousness of the multi-layered whole and a constant tension held between expectations and the actual narrative flow. I can see myself coming back to this book as a model of prose style. On the other hand the story did drag a little at times. I think the way he chooses to tell the story gives him a much broader scope but at times it felt as if the flow is too far removed from the central action, particularly in the first half of the book. That being said, I think the story itself is itself is also great.Tale of Two Cities-->Nostromo-->1000 years of Solitude
—globulon
