A review by savaging
Nostromo by Joseph Conrad

1.0

I read [b:Heart of Darkness|4900|Heart of Darkness |Joseph Conrad|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1375061721s/4900.jpg|2877220] in High School and fell head-over-heels. I thought [a:Chinua Achebe|8051|Chinua Achebe|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/authors/1294661664p2/8051.jpg] had to be mistaken about Conrad's racism, because this was the primal anti-imperial text (I'm white -- a lot of us have made this mistake). I started to doubt my good opinion of Conrad by the time I tried [b:Lord Jim|12194|Lord Jim|Joseph Conrad|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1372366969s/12194.jpg|2578988] a few years later. I saw it first in the thing closest to me -- his portrayal of women, as bad as something out of Jack London's Sea Wolf.

But Nostromo is a spectacular failure. In between dense and tedious explanations of landscapes you'll get surprised by nice little morsels of racism, classism, and misogyny. The story is essentially about how the rich imperialists (the characters in the story with thoughts, names, and good taste) use overseers and foremen (a kind of upper-working class, also with names, but fewer thoughts and worse taste) to hold off the 'rabble' (people without names or thoughts or motivations beyond savage bloodlust, who have no business governing themselves, or enjoying the fruits of their own labor).

Or, as [a:Howard Zinn|1899|Howard Zinn|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/authors/1245211489p2/1899.jpg] put it:
"These people--the employed, the somewhat privileged--are drawn into alliance with the elite. They become the guards of the system, buffers between the upper and lower classes. If they stop obeying, the system falls."

Well, they may not obey perfectly. But they do the big jobs. And the system keeps on ticking.