JOSEF CONRAD

Read and have in your library.

Rarely does a novel present its subject, anarchy, and impress itself in my thoughts and memory. The Secret Agent has that effect both in language and in the telling.

Most novels begin with character and advance though events – beginning, middle and end – through the eyes on one character or another. However, the subject matter, anarchy, does not lend itself to follow a character and narration. Instead, parts of anarchy are told by introducing characters unrelated to one another but necessarily involved or not involved with anarchy: Revolutionaries, the anarchist, wife, human relations, police and by-standers. The reader follows the subject matter through a series of events – a senseless act, a humorous description of anarchy (chapter 2), killing of a character in the bombing is identified half way through, police investigations, police politics, domestic relations, and on to the end: No one emerges happy, satisfied or comfortable. 

It must be noted that Josef Conrad interjected reality about himself (and every aging man in the world) by giving it to a character: “He had grown older, fatter, heavier, in the belief that he lacked no fascination for being loved for his own sake.” (Chapter 11) 

Unusual language describes anyone, anything or a state of mind reflecting observations detached from humanity, much like an Anarchist ruminations: “Uncommonly useless.” “A man supremely confident in the privileges of his righteousness.” “He had lost the habit of consecutive thinking in prison…” “Inimical sentiment against social distinction.” About emigration to get away from the police: “It was not very clear whether he had in his mind France or California.”

Indeed, for more than a century California has been a place of second chances. Failures elsewhere arrived in the state and made good. And for true fugitives, Whitey Bolger of Boston fame, lived quietly for a decade. But to be real, those militia clowns in Michigan claim to be anarchists. They are ignorant. They should read Conrad’s novel.

Conrad wrote the female protagonist as carefully as any other player. Yet, reflecting the times of its writing, the novel avoids making the woman thoughtfully conniving and successful, as might happen today.