Salakuulaja (XX sajandi romaan, #24)

I have only run across a few writers who can adeptly and accurately plumb the depths of the human soul Joseph Conrad is one of those authors and he is on a short list of talented creators who seem to have two fingers on the pulse of primordial man as he still lives and breathes beneath the surface composure of his civilized evolution For Conrad, the ability to strip off the etiquette, culture, and social s of western thought is as eventful as watching sun bathers lose their clothing on the beach [...]

In the aftermath of a tragedy people often look towards artists, towards novelists, musicians and poets also, for comfort, the kind of comfort one finds when someone is able to capture an event, or feelings, that you yourself find incomprehensible or unfathomable or inexpressible For example, after 9 11 there was a rush to proclaim certain kinds of art as speaking for the time s , and it was then that Joseph Conrad s The Secret Agent received a lot of attention, it being a novel concerned with a [...]

London muddy, rain and soot, mist and fog In a one eyed street in Soho, Mr Verloc runs his small business, a very discreet shop for male customers, confidentially selling a heterogeneous set of newspapers with revolutionary tendencies and discreetly sealed shady merchandise, which are conducive to satisfying and flattering instincts of his gentlemen The worthy trader took charge of his wife s family, wife of erased, family composed of a simple minded and influential brother in law as well as an [...]

I can appreciate this novel is pretty wonderful And as I read and I was fascinated, but I did find it hard going at the start I think the plot is horrific, and it made me want to research the Greenwich Bomb in detail I think it was a pretty daring book for Conrad to release at such a time with such detailed observations on spying and terrorism It s still an incredibly relevant work even now in the current climate.

My ratings are very moody and just generally not to be trusted Having gotten that fact out in the open for the umpteenth time, I will say that I thought this was a very good book Love, no Like very much, yes I especially hearted the last ish part with the wife and the train and ole dude s stop, drop, and roll in mid air move because ACTION SUSPENSE HEARTBREAK PLOTSY TWIRLS In fact, most of my favorite scenes involved Winnie V, while some other sections, particularly some of the beat you over th [...]

Grand opera.Tosca stabs Scarpia Victorian London, amid a nest of spiesand terrorists Classic stuff fr a non stylist who is, nonetheless, a great writer Conrad s first language was Polish, his 2d French, he wrote in English A strong influence on Graham Greene, Conrad rips open a marital horror bet a scuzzy anarchist and his simple wife after her teen brud is killed x his bomb.Their marriage was legalized prostitution and, in her outrage, the shattered sister becomes a murderer She did not know wh [...]

My best friend Joel has a friend Bob who teaches at Rutgers Nearly a decade ago, before becoming a scholarly expert on Borat, he stated that in terms of literature he wasn t going to bother with anything written later than 1920 what was the point, he d quip I admired his pluck While I m not sure he still ascribes to such Well, for a couple of weeks in 2004 I adhered to the goal There have been many goals with a similar history and such a sad conclusion sigh This was my first effort towards that [...]

A first time read of the author and perhaps this might not have been the novel to start with Found the first half of the novel confusing and convoluted although the story did gain some momentum in the second half and become engrossing A novel of spies, espionage and terrorism in the late 1800 s.One of those novels that you have an inkling early on that won t end well for the characters involved.

First published in 1907, this spy fiction might be a literary adventure to those unfamiliar with Joseph Conrad s writing style enriched by apt, scholarly words and idioms admirable for his writing as his third language From its 13 chapters, I found reading its first three fourths confusing due to its plot however, I kept reading and gradually saw the light around Chapters 9 10 onwards Then I enjoyed reading Chapter 11 in which I christened by noting as a tragic chapter since all episodes horribl [...]

Londres ,1886.Mr Verloc propriet rio de uma pequena loja no centro de Londres, que na verdade apenas uma fachada,pois Mr Verloc um anarquista ,um agente secreto e membro de uma c lula terrorista e usa sua loja para produzir panfletos bem como realizar reuni es com seus contatos e amigos anarquistas A fam lia de Verloc composta por Winnie sua esposa e o irm o de Winnie , Steven que tem problemas mentais Apesar de Verloc fazer parte dessa c lula terrorista , desse grupo de anarquistas a rela o fam [...]

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I thought thatThe Secret Agentwas a genuinely fascinating profile of modern by which I mean 1905 London society, and I found Conrad s picture of society being driven by personal interest and the lust for political power to be incredibly modern by which I mean 2008 in its deep pessimism and sceptical view of human nature Conrad presents us with a wide spectrum of characters, from loyal wives and impoverished cabdrivers to police officers and activist anarchists, each of whom is motivated to play [...]

I think this is one of the finest novels of the 20th Century for the following reasons 1 The language is magnificent For a reader such as myself, who likes to get lost in tangential thoughts mid sentence, Conrad offers a warm bath we can soak in I often just let the sentences flow over me in waves of color and music I usually read Faulkner this way too , but if I want to stop and extract all the meaning from one of his dense little beauties I just pull the golden ribbon and what appears to be a [...]

THE SECRET AGENT AND TERRORISMI wanted to read this novel for a while When I saw it referenced in a book I was reading, I decided that it was going to be the next novel I was going to read Really any excuse to read of Conrad s works will do it for me, but this time I was particularly drawn by the theme the exploration of political terrorism Unless I m mistaken, this is not a common theme with Conrad Well, it is not a common theme in literature period How many really good novels were written abo [...]

The Secret Agent 1907 by Joseph ConradWhat a novel Magnificent Incredibly convoluted, dense, sporadically boring, but also extraordinary prescient, dark, beautifully written, occasionally amusing, sometimes laugh out loud funny, but, above all, always strangely compelling This London novel takes place during the 1880s and involves a small group of mostly ineffectual anarchists Conrad writes compelling portraits of these disaffected participants One of them, Adolf Verloc, is a shopkeeper with a f [...]

My first Joseph Conrad Like Clarice Lispector, he was born in Ukraine but was raised elsewhere Poland, in Conrad s case The impression this book left me is that Conrad wasn t only a gifted storyteller with deep psychological insights, but he was also the type who can erupt with melodious and poetic language even in such trifles as a cabman looking at some pieces of silver given to him by a passenger as payment for a ride The cabman looked at the pieces of silver, which, appearing very minute in [...]

Bu kitap ncelikle roman g r n ml bir iir kitab B yle olunca nefret ediyorum i te Bir s r kitaba 5 y ld z verdim, pki ben imdi bu kitaba ka y ld z verece im Bu kitap hepsinden daha g zel Hi bu kadar dolu bir kitap okumam t m Yani Dosto Baba kusura bakmas nda bu kitap bir acaip Bir kere dedim ya iir gibi O kadar g zel okunuyor ki Yani buram buram edebiyat kokuyor slup bir harika Sanki kalemle yaz lmam , adeta eline ekici, murcu alm koca bir kayay heykelt ra gibi k ra dove yazm bu kitab Joseph Conr [...]

Trying to decide if you liked a book can become a complicated process Oh, not for some books Some books catch you quickly and slyly sink in and mingle with your reality and whisper to you during the day when you are supposed to be working or driving or running But there are some just plain stubborn books books that almost seem to be daring you to put them down and move on to something else Conrad s The Secret Agent affected me that way I read the Introduction, the select Bibliography, the Chrono [...]

Second book in a row that appears on American high school curriculum and this time I have to wonder what educators are trying to achieve by teaching it The text is very dense and I can t imagine many teens getting anything out of this when having it forced upon them Without a doubt Conrad can tell stories and knows the words to tell them with but Jesus he has inspired the least impressive review I have ever felt the need to write Page after page of political ranting, no thank you I m sorry Danie [...]

I actually thought the first chapter was perfection So how could the creator of that chapter have produced the second chapter, allowing everything he d built up to be ravaged by adverbs Did Conrad use up his Spidey juice Or was he saving his talent for later efforts, believing one solid chapter would be enough to lull the reader into head bobbing idolatry I don t get it.

this is a re read chosen because it was a small hardback copy and fitted in my inside pocket so s I could read on the train replacement bus on a trip to the folks About time I re read anyway, the last time was for A level in 1973 The copy I have is a school copy too from 1960 , and has double lines next to paragraphs saying IRONY and others DESCRIPTION I m glad they told me, I wouldn t have known Read c100 pages on the trip there and back and it s as good as I remember, although I thought the ex [...]

I started this book during a speed dating project and decided to try to finish all those books I dated and decided to keep and finish before the end of 2015 Conrad himself had to defend this book to critics it isn t his usual style, they didn t understand the context, etc There is a brief intro in my edition by Conrad that attempts to justify it, but to me it was a justification it didn t need.Published in 1907, the central story of this short but incredibly dense novel is a bombing scheme gone [...]

Terrorists stalk London and, guess what They re a pretty pathetic lot Yet somehow their patheticness makes them frightening because it makes them human These aren t omniscient supercriminals but sad and mostly ordinary men whose roles as self appointed agents of violent social change make them feel important and superior to the oblivious peons around them and thus able to ignore or dismiss the damage they do to them Conrad s story about a terrorist plot to blow up the Greenwich Observatory at [...]

Like his fellow genius scribes, E Bronte and Dostoevsky, Joseph Conrad plunges us into the dark Nietzschean swamps of the human soul He dares to look into the abyss and unflinchingly reaches in, grasping the monsters within us With his adept hands, in the blazing light of his vision and words, Conrad holds us up to ourselves Winne Verloc, like Kurtz, is vividly cast She is a white, hot flash of brilliance Conrad depicts her in crystal clear pitch She seems to be drawn from Ophelia, innocent, yet [...]

really tedious i know many regard it as a classic, but i found any story there is in there is swamped by odd details, confusing political ramblings and side musings that appear unrelated perhaps i am just not clever enough to get it

This book of madness and despair.

The inner workings of a terrorist cell are examined in this tale of ideology and betrayal Should be required reading for military law enforcement personnel.

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First, I tend to dislike Conrad as a matter of principle, maybe because I was force fed Heart of Darkness in schoolThe Secret Agent, however, is unique among Conrad s work First of all, the cynicism is directed not just at one or two groups but the entire culture of the western world and the many flawed sub cultures springing from it Each group has an anti hero that you find yourself rooting for one moment and rooting for another character to catch him the nextThere is a tragic death early on in [...]

Conrad can be remarkably prescient there are so many lines in here that made me think of 9 11, Al Qaeda, and our contemporary conflict in Afghanistan Madness alone is truly terrifying, he writes, inasmuch as you cannot placate it either by threats, persuasion, or bribes Later he writes, There were no rules for dealing with anarchists.