John Stape
Author of The Several Lives of Joseph Conrad
About the Author
John Stape is Research Fellow at St. Mary's University College, London.
Disambiguation Notice:
Full name: John Henry Stape
Image credit: St Mary's University College
Works by John Stape
Associated Works
The Nigger of the 'Narcissus' and Other Stories (Penguin Classics) (1963) — Editor, some editions — 423 copies
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The unlikeliness of Conrad: Polish kid who goes to sea on a French ship, learns (eventually) English, becomes a master mariner, and then one day--what? --writes a wonderful book, a most literary book, which at the same time is fresh and concrete, intimate and frank . . .
this bio is a bit pedestrian, bit of a slog, but that is maybe its virtue--the unlikeliness of Conrad can maybe only be understood as a constellation of thousands of particulate fact, a succession of days, a life lived, more than most maybe, in real time. In Conrad ordinary temporality is always charged. So a bio, like this one, that trails you along through real time may be a bit punishing but it is revealing.
No biographer-falling-in-love-with-subject here. Stape treats Conrad a bit like a famous younger sibling who he's memorializing for the last time. Testy at constantly being upstaged by the subject, trying to be fair, recording a life for history, and seeming a bit relieved to be rid of it.… (more)