And many an ardent lover of
Conrad would rather be whipped than go from New York to Liverpool
on a square-rigged ship.
In any case, these answers, which make up the sum of most writing
about Conrad, do not define him. To say that an author is a
stylist is about as helpful as to say that he is a thinker. And
Conrad would have had his reputation if he had migrated to Kansas
instead of to the English sea.
In point of fact, much may be said, and with justice, against
Conrad's style. It misses occasionally the English idiom, and
sometimes English grammar, which is a trivial criticism. It
offends more frequently against the literary virtues of
conciseness and economy, which is not a trivial criticism. Conrad,
like the writers of Elizabethan prose (whom he resembles in
ardency and in freshness), too often wraps you in words, stupefies
you with gorgeous repetition, goes about and about and about,
trailing phrases after him, while the procession of narrative
images halts. He can be as prolix in his brooding descriptions as
Meredith with his intellectual vaudeville. Indeed, many give him
lip service solely because they like to be intoxicated, to be
carried away, by words.
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