Romance

“And on this ghostly sigh, on this breath, with the feeble click of beads in the nun’s hands, a silence fell upon the room, vast as the stillness of a world of unknown faiths, loves, beliefs, of silent illusions, of unexpressed passions and secret motives that live in our unfathomable hearts.”

The second of three collaborations (!) between two titans of British literature. It seemed prosaic at first, gained steam through some pretty bloody action sequences, and had me gripped in the last third of the book. It’s a bit difficult to tell who exactly wrote what, but it does read like Conrad in its grapple with humanity’s darkness, its steady gaze at gruesome demise, its championing of nobility of virtue over nobility of breeding; show more it reads like Ford in its fluctuating drama of character and its intermittent slips into utter despondency. Somehow it gels and makes for a compelling read, despite the different tones of each author.

I’ve never even heard of this novel before. However, as I plan on reading everything published by Conrad (thanks to the Delphi Classics collected edition on Kindle) before I die (can you still read when you’re dead?) I couldn’t bypass this completely unknown work. When I say unknown, I mean that even in its own time it was barely given any consideration. A pity, really, since there are some truly startling, invigorating, and morally conflicting scenes. The episode in the cave, with the ghost play and plummet and animation of what should have been a completely extinguished body, is a stark reminder of just how powerful a voice Conrad possessed (that scene just had to have been written by him). The heroism of the lead at the climax had shades of 𝘓𝘰𝘳𝘥 𝘑𝘪𝘮 and even the courtroom finale of Dickens’ 𝘈 𝘛𝘢𝘭𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘛𝘸𝘰 𝘊𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘦𝘴. Swashbuckling flourishes of Sabatini pervade. I can’t help and get glimpses of 𝘏𝘢𝘮𝘭𝘦𝘵 and 𝘖𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘭𝘭𝘰. Maybe I was just seeing what I wanted to see, but it all had a familiarity that wasn’t exactly Conrad or Ford, but of some fabulist from the era whose name we’ve never stumbled upon until now. That lack of certainty would help explain why it’s largely forgotten.

I mean, that scene in the cave, with the cruel taunting by the lugareños above, the guitar strumming and privation and sport at a dying man’s blistering need for water, and the subsequent crawl down that mountain, could’ve been written nearly a century later for McCarthy’s 𝘉𝘭𝘰𝘰𝘥 𝘔𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘥𝘪𝘢𝘯. Even the brutal jailhouse stabbing would’ve been comfortable in that lugubrious luminary’s oeuvre.

It doesn’t deserve to be swept under the ignoble rug of literary history. It deserves far more than curious inclusion to an omnibus. Sometimes the minor works of major artists are the ones most worthy of wide-eyed worship, since the flaws are so much more apparent, granting rare glimpses into a coming greatness that we’d relished in the masterful, fully-formed, and greater known creations.

Besides, the title sucks. Thankfully, at over three hundred pages, the book doesn’t.

“And looking back, we see Romance—that subtle thing that is mirage—that is life. It is the goodness of the years we have lived through, of the old time when we did this or that, when we dwelt here or there. Looking back, it seems a wonderful enough thing that I who am this, and she who is that, commencing so far away a life that, after such sufferings borne together and apart, ended so tranquilly there in a world so stable—that she and I should have passed through so much, good chance and evil chance, sad hours and joyful, all lived down and swept away into the little heap of dust that is life. That, too, is Romance!” show less

“Romance�€? (1903) is an action and adventure story by Joseph Conrad and Ford Madox Ford. It is narrated in the first person by the hero John Kemp, who is looking back on glory days of youth. We get gentle irony, a mild send-up of romance, when Kemp reflects on his past illusions about romance. Kemp leaves England, bound for Jamaica, hoping to find real-life adventure. Instead, he finds himself having to deal with pirates who are not Johnny Depp’s post-modern ironic buccaneers, but vicious stupid thugs who kill out of impatience.

The strength of the novel is the description. The part where Kemp, Seraphina (the love interest), and Castro (the faithful retainer) are shrouded by fog as they attempt to reach Captain William's show more ship while chased by pirates takes the reader right into the boat with the protagonists. The description of Seraphina’s digs in Rio Medio is a masterful evocation of faded riches. The description of our heroes hiding in the cave is persuasively claustrophobic (full disclosure: I start breathing shallowly just at the idea of spelunking). Conrad says “My task is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel--it is, before all, to make you see.â€? He and Ford fulfill this task admirably in many passages in the novel.

Other strong points in the novel are the suspenseful narration punctuated with passages of reflection on the action. The quick sketches of the historical background of Jamaica and Cuba were interesting, bringing to mind the time of the Aubrey-Maturin novels (coincidentally, the villain in Romance is a mad Saxon-hater named O’Brien).

Although this novel was a collaboration between my two favorite writers, I can’t recommend it over, say, The Good Soldier (Ford) or Typhoon (Conrad) to those of you who don’t have the time or inclination for obscure novels by great writers. The language is too flowery even for me, a guy prone to excitability over high-flown language. Pages go by and nothing happens. Also the strain between being a serious novel, which needs breathing characters, and being an adventure yarn, which doesn’t, is obvious in the lack of characterization for the female lead. Seraphina is just a whiz to John Kemp and we have to take his word that she is, she is, she really is. Her actions tell us she is brave and generous and loyal, but beyond that, she’s a blank. show less

Hard to imagine this was written in the same era as Nostromo. Conrad's second collaboration with Ford, after the underrated Inheritors, is a straightforward...er...romance about pirates. In its style and texture Romance's uncomplicated narrative and lack of psychological depth are more akin to Conrad's last published novels (The Rescue, The Arrow of Gold, The Rover and the unfinished Suspense) than the weighty tomes that surround it in the first decade of the 20th century. Positives: strong plot, excellent sea descriptions, the cave scene and O'Brien is a broodingly malevolent villain. Downsides: the majority of the characters are one-dimensional and the issue of slavery is worryingly glossed over (this from the author who brought us An show more Outpost of Progress and Heart of Darkness). On balance it is probably better than watching a Pirates of the Caribbean movie but should only be read by Conrad/Ford fanatics. show less