Reading this book led me back to the days of magic eye pictures when everyone around me professed to see wonderful complex images and I just saw a bunch of wibbly dots.

I tried very hard to appreciate this book, but failed. I found it woefully tedious and I'm just glad I finished it.

Some beautiful writing, plenty of boring bits, an ending that felt tacked-on.

The first section is pretty dull, but immediately upon the beginning of the second the novel is as great as anything Conrad wrote, with sequences of riveting tension and surprisingly affecting suffering (not something I've come to expect from the characters of a Conrad novel).

A história é interessante e (como seria de esperar!) está muito bem escrito….no entanto é um pouco de realismo a mais para mim: as descrições pormenorizadas não me seduzem assim tanto, embora a mestria do Conrad seja óbvia e não tenha qualquer discussão. Impressionante como, apesar de já ter mais de 100 anos, este livro continua tão actual.

I was afraid that a longer book (longer than any I have read by Conrad) would water down Conrad's ideas or hamper the tightness of his stories. Invariably, I was wrong. Conrad confronts a whole host of complex ideas, from American Imperialism, to determinism vs, human agency. And he does so with a deft hand.

While he is introduced to Conrad's novel only incidentally and fragmentarily, Nostromo gradually rises to dominate this story of a South American country tormented by constant revolutions. Nostromo himself is something of a liminal character, caught betwixt and between. Indebted to the aristocratic Blancos, his submerged resentments put him on the side of the people he defends the Blancos from. At least theoretically. For Nostromo acknowledges the oppression of his fellow cargo handlers and the peasantry and Indians that work the mine that forms the focal point of the story, the item and its treasure over which the Blancos and revolutionaries battle. No matter, because for whomever falls under the mine's temptations becomes hardened, cold, and willing to separate himself from his ethics and honor. So it is with Nostromo, who for just a portion of the mine becomes corrupted until the very end of things.

It is a marvelous story. And Conrad is on to using the full force of literary manipulation at his call. In this case, that means his subtle shifts in time and perspective as well as sliding almost seamlessly between the stories of several different characters. And he has moments of shock as well. Like a Hitchcock movie, Psycho, Conrad is not averse to doing away with a central character some three quarters way through the book with whom the reader has begun to identify as someone redeemed from frivolous aspirations, made honorable, and prepared to sacrifice love for duty.

Too, the level of psychological study is nothing short of astounding. Not just Nostromo comes under observation, but the motivations and fears of at least a dozen other characters also undergoes thorough examination. The conflicts within that make humanity such an unpredictable and sometimes terror filled or horror laden entity rounds out the landscape of Conrad's canvas

Conrad is the master of death by the failure of an individual's ideals. Very modern in its deep subjectivity and carefully modulated jumps in time and perspective, it seems to grow steadily in it's compassion as it goes until it ends with a few momentous yet quiet cracks of bitterness and one heartrending cry. Other than the corrupting influence of wealth and some of Conrad's nasty, racist views wrapped up with it, in my limited view (having just finished it and not read criticism or let it sit to contemplate it for a while) there are no 'lessons,' let alone easy truths, offered here. Using various subjective, 3rd person narrative voices, socialistic viewpoints are given their place next to those of the aristocracy and the bourgeois. Something else extremely interesting to me as someone who's previously only read Heart of Darkness--in which I found pretty much zero levity both times I read it--is the almost incongruous mix of what seems like nearly naive romantic adventure and whimsical humor with the blackest, most world-weary irony and cynicism kept slightly in check by a genuine admiration for ideals, even while recognizing the grave danger they can pose and their failure. That Orson Welles loved Conrad now makes even more sense.