![]() ![]() The story of young Jim losing his honour, his integrity-his youthful dreams of himself as a noble being-through a cowardly act committed at sea, and the attempt to recover it, eventually by asserting himself as the ruler of a primitive people. On the "old" side is, first of all, the theme. ![]() Lord Jim is almost the perfect example of an in-between book. ![]() He brings us partway from the leisurely, gloriously elaborate writing of Dickens and other nineteenth century lights to the generally more understated, psychologically subtle style of popular twentieth century masters. Part of this ambivalence I put down to Conrad's position-along with a few other British and American writers like Thomas Hardy, Samuel Butler and Henry James-in what I think of as a transitional phase of literary history. Lord Jim is one of the Joseph Conrad novels that has me thinking at places "This may be the best writing I've ever read" and at other places "Come on, get on with it, would you!" ![]()
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