Tough to get into, but great novel once you sort out the people. Compelling story, sad but prophetic vision of Latin America. ( )

Difficult to read but probably worth it. Can see why it sustains critical and academic attention. Lots of unannounced and even nested anachrony makes the flow hard to follow. Lots of heavy symbolism. Very fully imagined place, town, scenario, etc. Pretty bleak picture of people---hardly any character emerges looking good. Would take a lot of analysis to work out the politics, e.g. whether reading it postcolonially is with or against the grain of the text. Introduction to my edition says that the ending is a failure; not quite sure why, seems OK to me. ( )

Reason read: Reading 1001, tbr takedown, TIOLI #2, Sept 2023.
The book was written in the early part of the 20th century and is probably Conrad's greatest achievement, a bridge to the modernistic novel and a fictional depiction of post-colonial global capitalism.

The setting is a fictionalized country on the eastern coast of South America like Columbia. The time period of over throwing dictators, puppet governments set up by European and US countries. It is also a time period of transition to steam powered ships.

The story is told by use of backstory, flashbacks, anachrony, metadiegetic narrative. Conrad relates a historical time period in just a few weeks of time. The long development of the backstory makes it hard to engage with the story and I did not fully engage in it until well past the midpoint. I listened to the audio and wonder if I could have made it through actually reading it. It may be soporific. Social and cultural issues include a cast of characters from all walks of life; business men, dictators, aristocrats, politicols, protestant, catholic, servants, employees. Capitalism is depicted as power and control and the reason for revolt and the birth of Marxism.

Characters; There are many characters. Nostromo is an Italian dockworker. Nostromo implies his work. His name is Giovanni Battista Fidanza. Charles Gould inherits the decrepit silver mine and becomes obsessed with it to the point of neglecting his wife. Martin Decoud is a man who has spent time in Paris and considers himself European even though he was born in S. America. He is a propagandist journalist. Ribera is the puppet governor set up have the overthrow of the dictotor. General Montero overthrows Ribiera. Nostromo and Dcoud are tasked with getting the lighter of silver out of the country. A task that they fail to complete but do to an incident at sea, it is believed that the silver was lost at sea. The silver is the pivot for the morals and politics of the book.

I finished the story but it was not easy, mostly because of the lengthy backstory and the stylistic writing. The story itself is not complicated. I am glad to be done with it and it is a book that should be reread, probably right away. But I will not be doing so at this time. It has achieved the test of time. It is listed as 47 of 100 best fiction of the 20th Century by Modern Library.

The silver corrupts everyone in their own special way in accordance with the particular flaws in their character. The result is a progressive descent into the hopeless futility of the human condition against the machinations of what is labeled 'material interest'. It is really something to behold.

( )

Nostromo had it all. A hero loved and admired by all. That is, until he succumbs to the temptations of two things that have led many other men to their downfall ; money and women. ( )