Victory (Hardcover)

Woe, yes, to the man whose heart has not learned to hope or love (and is love without hope possible?) or trust in life. Without hope, without love, without trust, life is but a living death. Axel Heyst, Conrad's hero of Victory, is a complex man we are deeply drawn to--for he has the heart and he has the high ideals, if not the hope or trust. In his vulnerable youth, Heyst's father stripped him of these tools without which living a meaningful life is a barren if not futile prospect. Yet a man's heart is a stubborn thing in its will to beat with red blood. Even in his willful isolation, a woman's love finds the hermit. Conrad indulges in a little formula damsel-in-distress rescue, and Heyst brings Lena to his solitary island of Samburan, where they slowly develop a kind of haven.

Life has a way of being messy and intrusive, Conrad knows, and so he brings the conflict of the story to the island, undeservedly bad reputation following Heyst there in the often comic and villanous figures of Ricardo and Jones. This showcases the figures of Heyst and Lena. If Heyst's heart does indeed love, and passionately so, then Lena's heart has within it the unconditional devotion perhaps only a woman can fully express. And so woman gives life. The tragedy of Heyst is that he so rarely knows how to express his love. Perhaps the story ends, then, in the only way it can, in sacrifice.

The true victory of this novel is the gift of Conrad's writing. Characters have depth and motion; plot is not overwhelming, but enough to hold suspense; dialogue is real and revealing. Conrad does plenty of tell, not show, which writers are today admonished not to do, but I loved every moment of the skillful telling. He is a master, taking on themes and characters that have lasting value. I plan to read and reread his other works.

This shouldn't make the book sound unreadable or slow, because it isn't. There's an adventure story that wraps the whole thing up: A recluse on a deserted island breaks his solitude and rescues a girl from a life with a semi-shady gang. This act of kindness starts a chain of events that brings violence and change to his lonely island.

The story moves things along nicely, and you can read for the plot even if you're uninterested in the bigger issues the book raises. I found that I was interested in them. Heyst (the main character) has been infected by his father's skepticism and analytical view and never manages to find a way after that to engage with the world or other people in it. His few attempts at engagement are awkward and almost unwilling. Conrad uses a great line to describe his approach to other people's emotion:

"Consummate politeness is not the right tonic for an emotional collapse."

Everybody in the book is to some degree isolated. Wang removes himself from Chinese society to go native. Mrs. Schomberg is locked behind her mask of fear. Mr. Jones and Ricardo are set apart because of the Gentleman's obsessive fear of women. Alma/Magdalena/Lena is set apart by her past. Everybody is trying to connect, but (with the exception of Lena) always on their own terms and always within limits.

It's tempting to read Conrad's own background and separations into the mix, but I'll leave that to the Conrad scholars.

Worth reading & worth thinking about once you've read it.