Books we like ... and books we're not too fussed about
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Joseph Conrad
Penguin 1992
This novel is undoubtedly hard work. Conrad’s sentences are often dense, and at times in these more hurried (superficial?) times he can seem longwinded. However, in telling the story of Verloc, the professional pornographer and treacherous agent provocateur whose bomb plot brings death closer to home than he wishes, he gives a profound insight into the nature of terrorism which is just as relevant now as it was 100 years ago when the novel was first published. One of the plotters talks of how he “depends on death, which knows no restraint and cannot be attacked”, words which found a chilling echo in pronouncements by Bin Laden; the ambassador who urges Verloc to commit the bombing is looking for a totalitarian backlash which will bring about revolution, just as the Baader Meinhof gang hoped to provoke the German state; most tellingly, the terrorists themselves seem to have lost sight of whatever ideal originally motivated them (this is left deliberately unclear) and see terror as an end in itself (“He walked frail, insignificant, shabby, miserable – and terrible in the simplicity of his idea calling madness and despair to the regeneration of the world”). Conrad is adept at portraying the nihilism of the revolutionaries, the cynicism of the authorities, and, most importantly, the dreadful tragic consequnces of the actions of both: the remains of the bomb victim being shovelled up with the gravel. Despite the novel’s dark humour, there is no comfort anywhere here.
3rd September 2009
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