On Sat, 16 Jan 2010, Michael Smith wrote:
> I might even agree with "tuneless and rhythmless".
>
> The guy is a very much a *prose* writer and he's determined to avoid
> anything that smacks of the lyrical. His tone is discursive,
> conversational, even a little rambling. It's like when your uncle
> settles down to tell a story -- get comfortable, because this will take
> a while....
Really? I ask this honestly. I'm perfectly happy for us to have opposite tastes on this matter, with neither inferior to the other, both of us true to ourselves.
But I also think that, at least in theory, it is always possible to communicate across such divides of taste. It doen't happen often, because it usually requires skill, good faith, insight and an inspired turn of phrase to have an Aha experience. But it's always satisfying when it does. And since you seem to have these qualities, I ask again in earnest what you see in him. Because this explanation doesn't ring true to me.
You say he has the homeliness of a garrulous uncle. This baffles me, because if there is one thing about Conrad's writing that always slaps me in the face like a wet fish it's its stiltedness. For example, in the lines you provide:
> The sea-reach of the Thames stretched before us like the beginning of an
> interminable waterway. In the offing the sea and the sky were welded together
> without a joint, and in the luminous space the tanned sails of the barges
> drifting up with the tide seemed to stand still in red clusters of canvas
> sharply peaked, with gleams of varnished sprits.
Would your uncle really use the simile "like an interminable waterway?" Is there a more bureaucratic way to put it? Would he say "in the offing?" or "sea-reach?" Would he say "red clusters of canvas sharply peaked?"
For me the problem with this is that it doesn't sound like a human voice at all. It sounds like a jangle of clashing conventions. It sounds like someone trying to sound literary.
I'm not at all knocking it because of it's lack of poetic-ness. It's rather that it's too poetic, it's poetastic. Conrad seems miles from the reproduction of a normal voice. He seems rather like the kind of guy who writes "the evening passed" rather than "it got late." It's possible to be great in both modes. I like stylized writers too. But for me, Conrad seems helplessly and uncoordinatedly caught between the two. He's seem to be trying his best at every moment to communicate that something portentious is going on. And subordinating all qualities of language to that, he comes out with something that seems to me supremely fake.
Michael