Typhoon and Other Stories

This Penguin edition assembles 4 stories that were first published together in 1904, and written in nearly the same sequence. 3 were first published in magazines, 1 not. The reasons why 'Falk' was not able to find a magazine publisher are attributed either to its inconvenient length, or to the upsetting subject of canibalism. The stories share several themes: the sea is there, even when the action is on land, and so are ships and the people who spend parts of their lives on them. Alienation is in all, being a stranger, being expatriate, as is the reverse of the medal, xenophobia, condescension, racism. One common theme is 'imagination', twice for the alleged lack of it, twice for the obvious overabundance of it. Best of the crop is Typhoon, which I have reviewed separately and longer. A funny adventure story, as I see it. The other long story is Falk, which is actually 2 for the price of one. The main story, the frame, is a farce about expatriates in Bangkok; inside the main story, the title hero tells the narrator his adventure on a Danish steamer that went adrift in the Southern ocean, leading to the horrifying experience that some readers found disgusting. 2 shorter stories are set in Kentish villages near the sea, and both deal with strangers. Amy Foster is the far better one of the two stories, dealing with a shipwrecked man from Eastern Europe who gets stranded and is treated like an animal until he slowly manages to establish a rudimentary foothold in a hostile environment. The title hero is a domestic helper who is the first to show pity for the 'madman' and even falls in love. Tragically, she is not fully able to discard the prejudices of her countrymen. (Is there an autobiographical component here? John Stape, the Conrad biographer who wrote the introduction, thinks not. I guess he is right.) The last story (To-Morrow) is maybe the least remarkable piece of writing from Conrad that I know, and quite forgettable.

Re-visiting Conrad, I find that he enchants me more and more. My old impressions and hence my expectations now were totally off. He is so much better and funnier and more interesting. Typhoon is a funny adventure story. Don't fear you will get cheated on either side of the contradictory promise. The funny side is the social one: the novella or long story is told partly by quoting and summarizing letters that the protagonists write to their families at home or to friends. The writing protagonists: Captain MacWhirr, the man without imagination. First mate Jukes, a bigot with presumptions. First engineer Rout, the man with a Solomonic reputation, at least with wife and mother at home. The adventure: MacWhirr is not exactly a greenhorn, he has been skipper for a while, and he knows the South China Sea, where he works now, captaining a steamer under Siamese flag. The ship is 'Nan Shan', 'Southern Mountain', recently built in Scotland ; she carries 200 coolies back home to Fuzhou on the Fujian coast of the mainland in the Formosa Channel. They have been working in plantations or similar enterprises and are returning home with their savings in wooden boxes. The captain has two shortcomings. One is that he never experienced a taifoon. The other is purely subjective on the part of Jukes: the captain has no imagination. He takes everything literally. He runs his ship and his job and doesn't even come near to understanding why Jukes is bothered by the fact that the ship owners changed it to Siamese registration. Jukes is fully aware of his superiority over the 'passengers'. Or are they freight? They are packaged as such, nearly. The captain is too much down to earth to bother about such things. Unfortunately he does not know what a taifoon is. When it comes, he despises advice to steer around it. He goes the straight line, after all he has to justify his coal bill. The ship barely makes it. The coolies' boxes are smashed about in the storm. Their money is spilled out and fights erupt. The captain re-establishes control and solves the potential big isssue in a wise and shrewd way. Maybe no imagination, but lots of common sense. Conrad wrote this story after Lord Jim, and the subject has similarities. It was initially published in a magazine, then together with 3 other stories in a collection. It has some similarities with his 'Nigger of the Narcissus', insofar as ships have to survive big storms. But there is a big difference: the Narcissus is a sailing ship of high quality, managed by a top class professional crew. The Nan Shan is a modern steamer, and the crew has no idea what is coming for them, and has no influence on the ship's survival. A part of the plot here is Conrad's revenge against steam ships. They are just chunks of steel and they require little seamanship.

Typhoon and Other Short Stories -By Joseph Conrad ***** "She seemed, indeed, to have been used as a running target for the secondary batteries of a cruiser. A hail of minor shells could not have given her upper works a more broken, torn, and devastated aspect; and she had about her the worn, weary air of ships coming from the far ends of the world - and indeed with truth, for in her short passage she had been very far; sighting, truly, even the coast of the Great Beyond, whence no ship ever returns to give up her crew to the dust of the earth." Typhoon Conrad is a master of observation. His novels and short stories aren't great narratives and dramas so much as they are depictions of the mind and the human spirit. In Typhoon, to be sure, nothing really happens: a coastal ship with a bizarre captain encounters some "dirty weather knocking about" and barely survives. Except for the ending, it's "The Perfect Storm" without the A-List cast. The relationship between Mr. Jukes, the first officer, and Captain McWhirr, the distant and preoccupied ship's master, is the story, such as it is. The Captain is infuriatingly obtuse, choosing to trust his own judgment rather than the experience of others: "Captain McWhirr, took a run and brought himself up by an awning stanchion. "A Profane man," he said, obstinately. "If this goes on, I'll have to get rid of him first chance." "It's the heat,' said Jukes. "The weather's awful. It would make a saint swear. Even up here I feel exactly as if I had my head tied up in a woolen blanket." Captain McWhirr looked up. "D'ye mean to say, Mr. Jukes, that you ever had your head tied up in a blanket? What was that for?" It's a manner of speaking, sir." Said Jukes,Stolidly. I cite another paragraph of Conrad's simply for the beauty of his language (which, after all, he didn't learn until he was 20 years old): "The Nan-Shan was plowing a vanishing furrow upon the circle of the sea that had the surface and the shimmer of an undulating piece of gray silk. The sun, pale and without rays, poured down leaden heat in a strangely indecisive light, and the Chinamen were lying prostrate about the decks. Their bloodless, pinched, yellow faces were like the faces of bilious invalids. ... The smoke struggled with difficulty out of the funnel, and instead of streaming away spread itself out like an infernal sort of cloud, smelling of sulphur and raining soot all over the decks." Another reviewer has taken other critics to task for panning Conrad's work. I won't bother: it's enough for me to know that Conrad is ranked among the greatest of writers of English. From his novels (Nostromo, Lord Jim) to short works (Heart of Darkness; The Secret Sharer) he is a universally acknowledged master. -Philip Henry FIVE STARS *****

Joseph Conrad was a master of language. In a brief but classic book, you will experience the incredible power of a typhoon while on a steamer as if you were there. Especially real is the scene in the chart room after the initial damage. It is very dark, and Captain MacWhirr lights matches to see his surroundings. Conrad's concise descriptions make you feel even the flame of the match as it burns down. If only this book were longer! I would have loved to know more about Captain MacWhirr's adventures. I HIGHLY recommend this book, as well as Conrad's "Heart of Darkness."

Taking maximum advantage from his long years at sea, and from his innate insight into the human soul, Conrad tells an outright and direct story about a huge typhoon in the midst of the Yellow Sea. But the book is not so much about the storm in itself, but about the human character and how it reacts to disaster.Captain MacWhirr is famous for being an efficient, calm, dull and silent man, someone you would trust but not like. He seems to be rather unbrilliant, though, never understanding why people talk so much. The other characters are also interesting, especially Jukes, the "young Turk", vivid and dynamic; Solomon the head engineer, another wise man from the sea, and the disgusting and repugnant "second officer", the type of coward you don't want to be with in this kind of drama.Human character, then, is revealed by limit-situations much more than at any other time, as war literature fans know, and this tale will leave you wondering how YOU would react if you had to make decisions in the midst of a horrible, and wonderfully depicted, typhoon.