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When Lord Jim first appeared in 1900, many took Joseph Conrad to task for couching an entire novel in the form of an extended conversation--a ripping good yarn, if you like. (One critic in The Academy complained that the narrator "was telling that after-dinner story to his companions for eleven solid hours.") Conrad defended his method, insisting that people really do talk for that long, and listen as well. In fact his chatty masterwork requires no defense--it offers up not only linguistic pleasures but a timeless exploration of morality.

The eponymous Jim is a young, good-looking, genial, and naive water-clerk on the Patna, a cargo ship plying Asian waters. He is, we are told, "the kind of fellow you would, on the strength of his looks, leave in charge of the deck." He also harbors romantic fantasies of adventure and heroism--which are promptly scuttled one night when the ship collides with an obstacle and begins to sink. Acting on impulse, Jim jumps overboard and lands in a lifeboat, which happens to be bearing the unscrupulous captain and his cohorts away from the disaster. The Patna, however, manages to stay afloat. The foundering vessel is towed into port--and since the officers have strategically vanished, Jim is left to stand trial for abandoning the ship and its 800 passengers.

Stripped of his seaman's license, convinced of his own cowardice, Jim sets out on a tragic and transcendent search for redemption. This may sound like the bleakest of narratives. But Lord Jim is also touching, elevating, and often funny. Here, for example, the narrator describes the ship's captain (proving that clothes do indeed make the man):

He made me think of a trained baby elephant walking on hind-legs. He was extravagantly gorgeous too--got up in a soiled sleeping suit, bright green and deep orange vertical stripes, with a pair of ragged straw slippers on his bare feet, and somebody's cast-off pith hat, very dirty and two sizes too small for him, tied up with a manilla rope-yarn on the top of his big head.You understand a man like that hasn't a ghost of a chance when it comes to borrowing clothes.

Customer Reviews (72)

The best book on the nature of courage I've ever read
The best book on the nature of courage I've ever read. Unfortunately, to appreciate it (and many other Conrad novels), you need to have a fair bit of experience in life. I tried to read Conrad at 13, then at 20. It seemed boring and I could not quite relate to his heroes, but now, when I am a bit older, I found his books and this one in particular, really interesting. This is not a page turner. I found myself reading pieces of 10-20 pages, then putting the book aside and taking some time to think. All in all, this is a really good book.

a master of the English language
When I read Lord Jim for the first time as a teenager I found it boring. Many years later I now find it an amazing book.Conrad himself spent sixteen years at sea in the late 1800s, so this book is to some degree autobiographical.The version of this book that I have even quotes Conrad: "Every novel contains an element of autobiography."In this book, the protagonist, Jim, travels to a remote region of the world, far from Victorian England.In this sense, the plot is similar to that in one of Conrad's other famous works, Heart of Darkness.Other than that book, I'm not familiar with Conrad's other works, nor am I an expert in Victorian literature, so I can't place this in its proper historical context.However, it seems like an amazingly well written story in and of itself.Author of Adjust Your Brain: A Practical Theory for Maximizing Mental Health.

Moodily romantic
I did not expect to enjoy this book, and it took a little while to get into it, but I found myself enthralled--and by the conclusion, moved--almost against my will.

Conrad's style here is a bit moody for my personal taste, but beautiful nonetheless.He makes brilliant use of the English language and is a master of the judicious metaphor.He draws you in as he slowly unravels his tale of an "overly romantic" man and his "exquisite egoism."

While Conrad doesn't quite compare with the great romanticists like Hugo and Dostoevsky, Lord Jim is one of the last great romantic novels, certainly far superior to almost any fiction being written today.

Moodily romantic
I did not expect to enjoy this book, and it took a little while to get into it, but I found myself enthralled--and by the conclusion, moved--almost against my will.

Conrad's style here is a bit moody for my personal taste, but beautiful nonetheless.He makes brilliant use of the English language and is a master of the judicious metaphor.He draws you in as he slowly unravels his tale of an "overly romantic" man and his "exquisite egoism."

While Conrad doesn't quite compare with the great romanticists like Hugo and Dostoevsky, Lord Jim is one of the last great romantic novels, certainly far superior to almost any fiction being written today.

Leaving the Literary Criticism Behind
If you haven't read this since high school or college, you might want to give it another try. I loved this book back then, but picked it up just recently, maybe wanting to connect with an old friend. Well, what a ride. I somehow wasn't tuned in back in my teens and 20s to how funny many of "Marlowe's" insights, narratives and commentaries are. Those and others more serious and poetic will have you saying "so true" to yourself about Conrad's perceptions of certainly the male half of this world....what a global village he describes, too, back then. And Marlowe's concern for Jim takes on more emotional weight now that I'm reading it some decades on, and have a son of my own. Anyway, might be time to put all the professorial interpretations aside and just enjoy this tale.
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