Nostromo

Joseph Conrad, 1904 Date Read: 4/12/22

This is, by far and away, the single most racist piece of media I have ever encountered. Conrad was under the delusion that Anglo-Saxons were basically perfect, and every other "race" (which for him included Mediterranean and etc) were corrupt and useless. As someone who is approximately 92 percent Anglo-Saxon, I can say without a shadow of a doubt that this is not correct lol

Oh, he hated everybody. The whole idea of the novel is to protect a town, Sulaco, from a revolutionary party made up of "Negro liberals and paralytics". Excuse me? As a "paralytic" I'm quite confused as to why we are dangerous. If the overt racism wasn't clear enough, the "good guys" are called the Blancos.

This novel, besides the racism, is similar to the Count of Monte Cristo. Unlike in that novel, however, Conrad thought he was very clever in the naming of things. The novel takes place in a fictional South American country called Costaguano (Poop Coast). There is "Bad Port", "Dry River", etc...

Tangent: It annoys the ever-living hell out of me when there are foreign languages used in novels and no translation is provided. Thankfully, I speak Spanish, so I was able to understand most of this one without having to pull out Google translate every few seconds, but I did have to look up German, Italian, and French. If you're going to have a novel in English and a character speaks French, tell us what he's saying!!! I shouldn't be required to have proficiency in every major European language to read your novel. It annoys the hell out of me and takes me out of the story if I have to get Google to tell me what your character just said. Stop showing off your linguistic skills and tell the damn story. End Tangent

So, the novel itself isn't bad, but damn the racism is hard to read. I started out taking notes at all the racist bits but there were so many I gave up. The funniest part of that obsession with Anglo-Saxons is that Conrad himself was Polish. In the view of ethnicities, Conrad was very similar to Kipling: white people (defined primarily as English) are the epitome of humanness and development and exist as exemplars to drag the other races/ethnicities into the light. He's very overt with this, particularly when talking about the Indios who work for the San Tome mine. It is ridiculous and ridiculously offensive.

The story was predictable, and Conrad used about 300 more pages than necessary to tell it (he gave the background and history of basically every major character and many minor ones). That was the style of the time, I know, but that doesn't mean I have to like it.

Length: 630 pages

Rereadability: none

Classic: only in the sense that it is old and outdated