The Rescue

Lingard Trilogy #3

by Joseph Conrad

Book by Conrad, Joseph

Genres: Fiction, Classics, Adventure, British Literature, Literature, Novels, Romance

484 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1920

About the author

Joseph Conrad was a Polish-British novelist and story writer. He is regarded as one of the greatest writers in the English language and, although he did not speak English fluently until his twenties, he became a master prose stylist who brought a non-English sensibility into English literature. He wrote novels and stories, many in nautical settings, that depict crises of human individuality in the midst of what he saw as an indifferent, inscrutable, and amoral world.
Conrad is considered a literary impressionist by some and an early modernist by others, though his works also contain elements of 19th-century realism. His narrative style and anti-heroic characters, as in Lord Jim, for example, have influenced numerous authors. Many dramatic films have been adapted from and inspired by his works. Numerous writers and critics have commented that his fictional works, written largely in the first two decades of the 20th century, seem to have anticipated later world events.
Writing near the peak of the British Empire, Conrad drew on the national experiences of his native Poland—during nearly all his life, parceled out among three occupying empires—and on his own experiences in the French and British merchant navies, to create short stories and novels that reflect aspects of a European-dominated world—including imperialism and colonialism—and that profoundly explore the human psyche.

Reviews

[Debbie Zapata · Rating 4 out of 5]

Review coming tomorrow. I have to think more about this one.

Jan 21 ~~ The Rescue is unusual because it is technically an early effort by Conrad, but he stopped working on it in 1898 and never went back to complete it until 1918, finally publishing in 1920. In his introduction he explains that he had put this novel aside to finish another project that had captured his imagination, and it simply became easier to then finish the next project and the next until 20 years had passed and he began to feel guilty for leaving this book dangling. He never says how much he edited the original text or at what point in the story he had stopped writing all those years ago. I am not enough of a Conrad scholar to be able to say 'this part is the younger man and this is the mature one'. But like all of his books, The Rescue is darkly intense, with much more going on beneath the surface than even the characters seem to understand. It not an easy book to spend a concentrated amount of time on. The tension, the uncertainty of what will happen next, the gloomy atmosphere, are all vivid and overwhelming. I could read in only short doses before needing to come up for clear air.

In the first section of the book we meet adventurer Tom Lingard aboard his brig Lightning. They are stuck with no wind on their way to...somewhere. The destination is not revealed just yet. We just know that the ship is not moving, the night is dark, and there may be pirates in the waters around them. But it is not a pirate who arrives beside them in a small boat. A yacht has grounded on a sandbank and the men in the boat have been sent out with urgent messages for help. But Lingard is dismayed to learn the exact location of the stranded yacht, for it turns out to be the very spot he is heading for himself, and he knows the unexpected presence of the yacht will complicate
his plans. The rest of the book deals with those plans and the way the people of the yacht (especially Mrs. Travers, the owner's wife) affect the destinies of Lingard, his crew, the friends he is on the way to meet and the plans they had made.

The events in the story take place over one week's time. A week of lurking intensity: The night effaced even words, and its mystery had captured everything and every sound—had left nothing free but the unexpected that seemed to hover about one, ready to stretch out its stealthy hand in a touch sudden, familiar, and appalling. There is a great deal of confusion on all sides; no one (not even Lingard) is quite sure what what will happen by the end of the week, and the ending surprises everyone.

I will want to read this again someday; I can never completely 'get' Conrad on a first reading. I was confused by some of the conversations between Lingard and Mrs. Travers. And I was annoyed at other times by Conrad's way here of stopping the action at a dramatic point at the end of one section, then beginning the next section with Lingard remembering what had happened. Conrad does this a few times, and I always had a 'hey, wait, what about...?' moment before I realized I would then be told about the conclusion of the scene. That broke up the flow of the story for me, but at least the next time I read the book I will be prepared.

[Feliks · Rating 4 out of 5]

This novel was a revelation for me; who am well-familiar with most of Conrad's other titles. I'm just knocking off the last few I have left ('The Rover', 'An Outcast of the Islands') and discovering in Conrad a writing style I didn't believe he had any inclination or facility for.

'Rescue' is a slow, dense, read; but its immediately noticeable that Conrad here has not skimped or made things convenient for himself --as he can often be fairly accused of doing--by writing only the content which he is master of and comfortable with. But he didn't take the easy route in this effort. Its not lightly-told, or one-dimensional; its got all the myriad facets we expect from a novel. You can't say that he 'always' dodged challenges, after this read.

'Rescue' is not just muscular descriptions of the churning sea, or some kind of intrigue or action. In a head-on manner, Conrad resolutely takes on things like lengthy/nuanced conversations; character development; thoughts-inside-characters-heads; etc. After putting it down, you may still feel that it's not that appealing a yarn, but you can't fault him for "skimping".

For me--although right from the start, I doubted that the 'predicament' of the characters in the tale was quite coherent--I thoroughly enjoyed the way Conrad brought about the emotional pitch I was seeking.

The book has all the great elements of Nostromo--but where that title is often criticized for 'shirking' female characters--Conrad more than makes up for it here. Not only does 'The Rescue' prominently feature a memorable female character, she is quite vividly drawn and we are made fully privy to her inner thoughts and psychology. Conrad writing about women! Amazing!

The book has some of the themes and some of the atmosphere of 'Heart of Darkness' as well--similarly exotic natives and brooding jungle--and while its not as powerful--'Rescue' doesn't suffer from the same flaws as that book does either. ['Heart' left me unsatisfied for it is so short and the climax so swift. Conrad's prose in HoD is so transcendent, soaring, and otherworldly that he neglects clear, straightforward storytelling. You're not quite sure what's actually going on in those last few pages].

You can see this same fault hobbling The Nigger of the Narcissus where Conrad departs from the matter-of-fact struggle of men vs sea; to ruminate pointlessly about catharsis. (Uncle Joe: show us! Don't tell us!)

One more example: the awful, Almayer's Folly which is nearly non-stop psychological rumination with but a few scraps of dialog and gesture thrown in (the climax of that tale is Almayer simply walking down the steps of his verandah briefly, taking a look around, and then pacing back inside). Groan!

Here, in 'Rescue' you don't have to fear any of that. Its nearly the same exciting set-up as 'HoD' but instead of going off into speculative inquiries on mankind's fate; Conrad's 'Rescue' has all its characters confronting each other directly. Face-to-face conversations! Something one craves desperately in 'Heart of Darkness' but which one does not receive there.

Conrad delivers, this time. When the rescue arrives, he diligently draws the outlines of everyone present; you see the tense postures of the natives and the nervous movements of the captives; you follow 'what they are gazing at' and you can see 'who steps towards whom' and 'what they are holding in their hands'. In other words, proper 'staging' is not left out. Its edge-of-the-seat stuff.

Suspense replete on every page. Every part of the narrative is soaked and saturated with it. And then when the climax is finally reached you just have to take your hat off to the Joe-Man. Ka-BOOM! You can never go wrong with a few barrels of gunpowder and a time-delay fuse; as he does here. Its glorious. Faint but much-needed touch of Alistair MaClean; reminiscent too, of 'Kwai'.

'The Rescue'. Difficult to get through along most of the way, I admit it...but the thematic and structural overtones of a really fine novel emerge in the last few chapters. Toothsome, delicious, and savory. Conrad at his best! An unexpected triumph. Hurrah!

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Joseph Conrad's The Rescue is the third volume of a trilogy centered on Captain Tom Lingard. The others were Almayer's Folly and The Outcast of the Islands. Curiously, the three volumes were in reverse chronological order, with the action of The Rescue occurring first and Almayer's Folly last.

It took twenty years for Conrad to finish this volume as he laid it aside to write several of his other masterpieces. It has some problems, mostly the introduction of a privately owned yacht owned by a rich industrialist named Martin Travers and gone aground on a shoal. He is accompanied on the yacht by an all-white crew, as well as his wife Edith.

Lingard would probably have left the crew of the yacht to their own devices if it weren't for Edith Travers. She takes his breath away. When her husband and one of their passengers are spirited away by Malay pirates, his task becomes ever more complicated. He is involved in trying to assist a Wajo Prince and his sister attain control, but his efforts are divided as he must also negotiate for the release of the two white prisoners.

This is not the best of Conrad's novels, but I still found myself looking forward each day to reading more of the book's careful plotted chapters, almost sorrowing when I came to the end.

[Patrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Joseph Conrad is one of my favourite authors, so I was delighted to find a second-hand copy of this in the Penguin Classics paperback edition. I’ve read pretty much everything else he wrote but for some reason I had overlooked this one. While it isn’t especially rare, it is one of the more neglected novels in the author’s later works; it also has the interesting position of being a book that was originally started at the very beginning of his career, then set aside and only finished near the end of his life. You could even call it the last really big book he ever completed — though I do think that ‘The Rover’, which came later, was all the finer for its relative brevity. I don’t think it’s amongst his best work, or even his second-best, so I couldn't recommend it to new readers; but there’s a great deal here that will be of interest to those who are fans of this writer’s work.

The plot is one of those things that is simple to summarise but which is rendered complex by its execution. It follows the exploits of one Tom Lingard, a sort of roving sailor and 'adventurer' in what would now be called the Malay archipelago. Lingard comes upon a yacht which has run aground on a sandbank; the residents of the yacht are Mr and Mrs Travers, a sort of parody of a late-Edwardian gentleman with his intelligent and fiercely independent wife; D’Alcacer, a cool and observant diplomat; and Carter, who does all the actual sailing for the Travers couple. What these people don’t realise is that their arrival has come directly between Lingard’s work in restoring the kingdom of Hassim and Immada, the prince and princess of a tiny Malaysian kingdom who Lingard previously rescued from exile. What follows is a kind of delicate juggling operation between the immediate needs of the rescued white Europeans at sea with Lingard’s responsibilities to a tangled and ever-changing political situation on land.

What complicates things further is a situation rare in Conrad’s work: the presence of a love affair. It’s not that this is exactly done poorly, but it seems to me that the model here is Henry James above all else, to the extent that the author has all but abandoned his own style in pursuit of the grand Jamesian manner. And so there is rather a lot of stylised dialogue which is somehow mannered and teasing and tedious all at once; lots of talk and very little action. The whole form will probably seem unrecognisable to those readers who have only previously enjoyed ‘Heart of Darkness’ or ‘Lord Jim’, but I suspect this is best considered as an evolution of an authorial method which was already emerging in books like ‘Chance’ and (the highly underrated) ‘Victory’.

What this also has in common with those novels is Conrad’s interest in strong female figures. Mrs Travers is a great example of this, and feels very much to me like an attempt to invoke a heroine in the vein of James: smart and passionate while also being tightly constrained by propriety but also her own idealism. The key relationship is between her and Lingard, but there’s also D’Alcacer, who is supposedly also in love with her; if this were really a Henry James novel, D’Alcacer would probably be one of those cold-blooded protagonist-narrators, but by separating him from the actual narrative in ‘The Rescue’, Conrad is able to set up this Jamesian perspective as a slightly different thing to the structure of his novel as a whole.

The book also notable for its depiction of a foreign civilisation; unlikes those aforementioned early novels, there’s little sense here of the Malaysians as an ‘other’ who only serve to respect the unknowable aspects of their white masters. Instead, they are presented as developed and admirable characters in their own right, being active players in a well-developed political society — and the privileged whites who look down on them are also the most ridiculous figures in the book.

So far I’ve summarised this book as if it were a kind of love story, but there’s a great deal of darkness here too. The mysterious white-suited figure of Jorgenson looms about the margins of this story; an old white sailor with a somewhat mysterious past, he harbours a kind of hollowness reminiscent of all those men Marlow encountered in the deep colonial outposts of the Congo. Like the Professor in ‘The Secret Agent’, he is a nihilist, with a casual contempt for the everyday value of human life.

Jorgenson is a puzzle. On one hand I wonder if he was included simply to add shades of gloom to the corners, as if that was what his readers were expecting; but on the other, his appearances are so scene-stealing that I can’t help but feel that he might contain some secret inner desire of the author to be done with the world, a desire so dangerous it must be personified in the character of a madman. Indeed, there is a reoccurring sense throughout this book — manifest from various perspectives — of someone who is not only alienated by their society, but who is actively repelled by it, who even wants to destroy it.

Of course you couldn’t write that directly in a novel in 1920, I suppose. But It’s most haunting regardless. Look at the ridicule inherent in the masterful flashes of bitter irony in this little passage, for example, in which the author inhabits D'Alcacer as he considers the possibility of his imminent execution:

'He wondered also how far he had been sincere and how far affected by a very natural aversion from being murdered obscurely by ferocious Moors with all the circumstances of barbarity. It was a very naked death to come upon one suddenly. It was robbed of all helpful illusions, such as the free will of a suicide, the heroism of a warrior, or the exaltation of a martyr. "Hadn't I better make some sort of fight of it?" he debated with himself. He saw himself rushing at the naked spears without any enthusiasm. Or wouldn't it be better to go forth to meet his doom (somewhere outside the stockade on that horrible beach) with calm dignity. "Pah! I shall be probably speared through the back in the beastliest possible fashion," he thought with an inward shudder. It was certainly not a shudder of fear, for Mr. d'Alcacer attached no high value to life. It was a shudder of disgust because Mr. d'Alcacer was a civilized man and though he had no illusions about civilization he could not but admit the superiority of its methods. It offered to one a certain refinement of form, a comeliness of proceedings and definite safeguards against deadly surprises...'

[Володимир Демченко · Rating 3 out of 5]

«Визволення» Джозефа Конрада — багатогранна історія, що поєднує морську пригоду, романтичні стосунки та роздуми про колоніалізм. На перший погляд, це оповідь про пригоди Лінгарда, героя інших романів Конрада, і його зв'язок з місіс Треверс, але під цим ховається критика ілюзій колоніальної експансії, роль і філософія цивілізованої людини в сучасному для Конрада світі, неможливий романтизм «білих» плям світу та їх мешканців. Конрад порушує теми втрати невинності та безвихідності, адже навіть найуспішніші спроби втекти від прогресу і колоніальних наслідків (та сама Сковородинська «втеча від світу») врешті-решт зазнають краху.
На сучасний смак оці діалоги в стилі «Ах я не смію цілувати край вашого шарфа», «Ох, який ви таємничий..» обважчують рух сюжету. Ледь не чверть тексту це тягомотні зʼясування стосунків в стилі вікторіанської епохи, де люди ходять колами навколо очевидних для всіх речей, танцюють танці пінгвіна і безкінечно згадують як важлива честь.
По результату знову через тупість і лицемірство білих гинуть купа туземців для яких та сама честь це просто розмови і ритуали
N.B: Видання від Фоліо просто лайно. Туалетний папір крізь який просвічує текст з іншої сторінки, огріхи в редактурі…

[Scribh · Rating 5 out of 5]

' "Am I a fat white man?" snapped the serang. "I was a man of the sea before you were born, O Sali! The order is to keep silence and mind the rudder, lest evil befall the ship." '

Enjoyed this read. Conrad knows how to describe a sea calm better than anyone else.

[Matthew · Rating 4 out of 5]

For good and often for bad, Joseph Conrad’s late novels saw a resurgence in his romanticism. Conrad’s novels were always romantic, but the nature of that romanticism changed over time. In his early novels, the romance lay more in the description and the plotting than in the often sordid and seedy characters who dominated the stories.

By Conrad’s middle period, the romanticism was more submerged, as he examined political systems with a cynical and pessimistic eye. Pessimism is of course itself a strain of negative romanticism, and occasionally Conrad used characters and storylines that could easily have been found in a romantic novel.

However, in his final phase, Conrad gave himself over to far more romantic tales, with characters who were far too idealised to exist in real life. While Conrad was not given to writing upbeat stories at the best of times, the later stories were almost doomed to an unhappy ending, because it was simply inconceivable that the romantic characters could do anything conceivably mundane, such as live like any normal married couple.

The Rescue is a novel of this kind. The characters are all romanticised, though thankfully the book lacks some of the worst romantic passages of late Conrad, perhaps because it was merely a work Conrad had written much earlier in his life which he now reconstituted for a late release.

This is romance by character. Indeed, we see romance in all stages of life here – in the young shipman, Carter, the middle-aged hero, Captain Lingard and the elderly adventurer, Jorgenson. The heroine is also romantic, as is her detached observer, the Spanish D’Alsacer. All of the Malays represent romantic stock figures, and are less well-defined.

The story concerns Captain Tom Lingard, a supporting character in two earlier novels, now taking centre stage. Lingard has befriended a Malay prince and princess, Hassim and Immada, and has plans to restore them to power after they are overthrown. Lingard’s confidence in his own abilities is soon put to the test when a small ship is stranded close to the area where Lingard has been seeking support from the natives.

The ship is owned by the odious businessman, Travers, who is caught with his bored and scornful wife, Edith, and their acquaintance, D’Alsacer. The presence of Europeans complicates Lingard’s plans. He feels obliged to help his own people, and to prevent them from falling into the hands of the natives, his ruthless allies. Travers and D’Alsacer fall into the hands of a faction among the natives, and Lingard finds it a difficult job to extricate them, especially since he is falling in love with Edith Travers, and neglecting his duties towards Hassim and Immada.

His dalliance causes his ally, Jorgenson to despair, and Jorgenson decides to blow up his ship, killing a number of people, including Lingard’s enemies, Jorgenson himself, and Hasssim and Immada. Wracked with guilt, Lingard allows Edith to depart with Travers, and the would-be lovers are parted.

It is a sad novel, and one that sets up a typical Conrad conundrum – a man who believes he is ready for anything, only to face a totally unprecedented and unusual situation that is out of his control. Lingard fails the test. As his name suggests, he lingers too long and fails to act.

To some extent, he is choosing between the native Hassim and Immada, who he regards as his own children, and members of his own race. In the circumstances, he does as many others have done, and chooses his own kind, precipitating the disaster. However, while his decision may be wrong, Conrad is sympathetic to his plight. Indeed, it is the European characters that bring the work to life, whilst the Malay characters are too shadowy to engage our interest. Conrad sides with the Europeans every bit as much as Lingard does.

The dilemma is presented with some weaknesses on Conrad’s part. Firstly there is an excess of dense description and psychological motivation which serves to weaken Conrad’s claim that this work is an adventure story. The book is rather static, appropriate for its subject matter perhaps, and the exciting events take place away from our full view. This may be intentional, but it sometimes renders the story slow and confusing.

Conrad is also uncertain how to present his heroine. We cannot help being drawn to Edith Travers, and in some respects her relationship towards Lingard is like that of an Ibsen heroine – romantic, passionate, fascinating the man in a harpy like manner, yet inspiring him. However, in Ibsen, they seek to inspire their lover to action, whereas Edith inspires Lingard to stasis.

However, while Edith is appealing in some ways, Conrad is ambiguous in his treatment of her. She is seen as bored and scornful, taking on roles that she should not. She wears Malay clothes, identifying her with the natives, something Conrad would not approve of. That the clothes are those that Lingard had laid aside for Immada also reinforces the sense of Edith interfering in a situation and taking their rightful place.

The Rescue is the third book in a trilogy-in-reverse. It takes place before An Outcast of the Islands, which in turn took place before Almayer’s Folly, each work acting almost as a prequel to the last. However, the 20-year gestation has perhaps changed some of Conrad’s original concerns.

The Tom Lingard of earlier books was a jovial bully, well-meaning but wrong-headed. There is something of that Lingard in this book too. He takes Carter and the Travers’ boat captive because they interfere with his plans, which he was foolish enough to believe were impregnable. He is also committed to interfering in Malayan politics for no better reason than a feeling of loyalty to a brother and sister he once befriended.

However, this is a very different Tom Lingard in other respects. He is more heroic and strong-minded, passionate and reflective. He is therefore considerably more sympathetic than the older Lingard of earlier books.

Conrad has also removed a good deal of the excessive verbiage that was in his first draft of The Rescue, making this a better book than the other two works in this loose trilogy. However, while the book is vastly improved as a result, it cannot be counted as one of Conrad’s best works. It is too wordy and abstract when it needs to be pacey and forceful.

Of course Conrad never wrote works for purely commercial effect, and the descriptive passages and psychology are the most important priorities in his writing. With all its faults, The Rescue is a worthwhile book, and there is much to enjoy in its pages.

[Paul Cornelius · Rating 3 out of 5]

Simply put, Conrad fails with this novel. It's not that it doesn't have its moments. And the cumulative impact of events on the ending brings off a tremendous effect, a blow that leaves an image of its protagonist, Lingard, forever changed--and damaged. As with many of Conrad's novels and stories, it illustrates the failure of people to connect. In this case, it is with the once heroic and respected Captain Lingard with a married woman, Mrs. Travers.

Alas, Lingard actually has few truly heroic dimensions, making the possibility of a full tragedy almost impossible. And there is one other thing at work: if the reader has completed the other books in this series that deal with Lingard, Almayer's Folly and An Outcast of the Islands, he realizes just what is so infuriating about Lingard over the entire range of experiences. It's this: he is a horrible judge of human character. Such it seems it is with Mrs. Travers and virtually ever other figure in The Rescue, except perhaps for Mr. Carter. Although even with Carter, it seems that time will eventually tell. This "flaw," of course, was really given vent in An Outcast of the Islands, where Almayer lets loose a salvo of insults against Lingard for his trust in Willems and his loss of everything they've built together because of Willems conspiracy with a rival Arab trader.

But I guess Rescue lets us see how that flaw will dominate and consume Lingard later on. Here, it is made manifest in Lingard's all but adolescent mooning over Mrs. Travers. And the dialogue reflects that. In those passages where we explore the feelings, thoughts, and temptations of Mrs. Travers and Lingard, the prose plays out in a manner so slowly, repetitiously, and tediously that it seems as if you are listening to someone giving a lengthy dissertation on how to unwind a ball of yarn. You can admire Conrad's shifts in perspective and time. And you can appreciate his attempt to delve into the minutiae of Travers' and Lingard's psyche. But with regards to the latter, I simply think Conrad fails, here. Rather than a flawed giant, which seems the intent of the novel, Lingard comes off as too much of a sniveling, self absorbed teenager in love with his first girlfriend and ready to sacrifice everyone around him in order to get a date.

[Bill Kupersmith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Except for Heart of Darkness, which any instructor in Intro to Lit gets to know a lot better than one ever wanted to, I'd not read any Conrad in decades. Lucienne in Nicholas Freeling's Gun before Butter drew me to this under-appreciated novel - Conrad's hero Captain Lingard was her masculine ideal & I wanted to find out if he was worthy & indeed he is. Tho' the sleaze & the homme moyen sensual represent most of the male species, one can aspire to being a decent man or even better, a real man. A real man is who you need to come to your aid should you be kidnapped by pirates. The victims are the odious snob Mr. Travers & his friend Mr. D'Alcacer. Their rescuer is Captain Lingard, master of the brig Lightning, a merchantman turned arms smuggler who's sworn to help his friend Hassim, an exiled rajah, regain his realm on the Malay coast. But Lingard is distracted by his fascination for Travers' beautiful wife Edith. The Rescue is a wonderful study of masculine strength, & weakness. But the character who really haunts me is not Lingard, but old Captain Jorgenson, late master of the barque Wild Rose - which like Jorgenson himself is a burnt out wreck. Jorgenson has gone totally Malasiatic and serves as both a model & warning for what can happen to a real man. Lingard has recruited him for one last adventure, with fateful results.

If you know the difference between a brig & a barque & can tell a topsail from a royal stay, you should enjoy this book very much. I liked it more than the better-known Lord Jim, which I'd read as a schoolboy.

[Neal Maro · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm always awed by Conrad's talent as a writer. So even when the plot is somewhat contrived, he gets a pass because of how he is able to psychologically investigate his characters. The plot is secondary to the moments where his characters, always miraculously, find some way of coming to understand each other. It is in these moments of characters overcoming their separatedness from the world around them that we can suspend ourselves, however illusory this suspension may be, into the minds and feelings of others. And yet we are never granted full access into the motives and intentions of these characters. They can only ever be guessed at haphazardly, though a fleeting and momentary glimpse is usually afforded to the reader.

I liked this passage from the start of the book describing Lingard's relation to his ship:

"He was aware that this little vessel could give him something not to be had from anybody or anything in the world; something specially his own. The dependence of that solid man of bone and muscle on that obedient thing of wood and iron, acquired from that feeling the mysterious dignity of love. She - the craft - had all the qualities of a living thing: speed, obedience, trustworthiness, endurance, beauty, capacity to do and to suffer - all but life. He - the man - was the inspirer of that thing that to him seemed the most perfect of its kind. His will was its will, his thought was its impulse, his breath was the breath of its existence. He felt all this confusedly, without ever shaping this feeling into the soundless formulas of thought"

The active principle and the passive principle fuse together into an arrangement that creates something distinct from both subject and object. Is this not a description of what reading is? Or to cast a wider net, is this not a description of labour in general?

I enjoyed this book. Despite its ending, it would be too simple to call the novel pessimistic. The pessimism is reserved for civilisation along with all its pretentions about progress and needn't be logically extended to all the humans that exist in, or in relation to it. Whether I agree with these romantic notions about the individual or not I'm not so sure. 3.5/5

[Lukrezia Cosimo · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best of the Lingard trilogy (for me). With the exception of the end, which somehow lacks the power of much of the rest of the book, a tour de force. I love the descriptions of the landscape, the light, the sea ... Some good characters: Jorgensen, Lingard, Mr. Travers, ...

[M.R. Dowsing · Rating 3 out of 5]

The fact that Conrad got stuck when writing this and shelved it for 20 years before finally forcing himself to finish it hardly inspires confidence and, on the whole, I felt this really was a misfire from Conrad. This is mainly because the central romance between Lingard and Mrs Travers is so unconvincing, especially in the dialogue, and I can't believe anyone has ever spoken like that!

I could just about imagine it as a 1930s movie with Errol Flynn, Barbara Stanwyck and Basil Rathbone (as Mr Travers), but I'm sure nobody would want to try filming it now as it all feels incredibly dated. (In fact, there was a 1929 movie version with Ronald Colman, who seems an odd choice for Lingard). I also felt that Conrad overused his technique of jumping forward and then backtracking in this case, but of course this author was talented enough that even his failures have some value.

[Benjamin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I remember liking Conrad a lot in high school, and I still enjoy the intense dialogues that elaborate the themes of a thoroughly gripping adventure story. But everything is melodramatic and absolute--from the opening description of the sea down to the smallest twitch of a character's arm--and that can get a little tiring to read.

[Michael Graeme · Rating 5 out of 5]

My introduction to Conrad after overdosing on Thomas Hardy. Compelling, pellucid and emotionally powerful.

[Kevin · Rating 2 out of 5]

one of the most long-winded works i have ever read. some great passages, sure, but mostly this was "slower than whale shit", even for conrad.

[Kevin Shannon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Aaah, the overwrought Victorians. This would make a good opera, much seething undisclosed passion in an exotic locale.

[Michael Canoeist · Rating 4 out of 5]

When you close the covers of this book, you have been somewhere.

And not merely to its setting by Joseph Conrad in the Malay Archipelago, where the shallow waters of the Karimata Strait separate Sumatra to the west from Borneo to the east. Exotic to western readers, the locale renders even more special the romance between a freelance sea captain of a small boat and a British woman traveling with her husband on a yacht that has gone aground on a sandbar off one of the many islands. The locale enables it, in fact. The remoteness of the spot heightens and intensifies the action among the vividly drawn characters. It is a dangerous place, with political conflicts simmering among the islanders native to the region and the potential treasure of a British yacht and its passengers too much for some of the factions to resist.

The romance features only a few kisses, physically, but an emotional intensity that threatens to burn through some of the pages on which it manifests. The needs of the two characters, the odd circumstances of their meeting, the social and cultural obstacles and the limited time they have to share -- is it a week? maybe not even -- cause their surprised feelings to move rapidly on several levels.

That intensity is somewhat conveyed by Conrad's chapter titles, which begin (1,2,3) with “The Man and the Brig,” “The Shore of Refuge,” and “The Capture” to 4, 5, and 6 which are: “The Gift of the Shallows,” “The Point of Honour and the Point of Passion,” and finally “The Claim of Life and the Toll of Death.”

Who, glancing over that table of contents, could resist?

A critic has suggested the grandiosity of the titles registers a weakness of Conrad's vision or execution. It's possible, as this is not a perfect book, just a great one -- but I fell for the rhetoric completely, baroque or not.

The major characters, perhaps six or seven, rotate through omniscient authorial treatments of their natures and feelings, immersing the reader. That is why finishing the book made me feel like I was rising to the surface of this shallow sea and both desired and dreaded coming up for air. Conrad's understanding of human nature make these haunted characters -- and by no means only the Europeans -- find their commonality with you or with people you have known.

Conrad had started The Rescue in 1898, when he was 41, but put it aside as too much of a challenge for his skills at the time. He went on instead to “The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus’,” then “Heart of Darkness,” “Lord Jim,” and his other major works of the first decade of the 20th century. He came back to this manuscript 20 years later, feeling ready to bring it to completion. It runs 469 pages of poetic but restrained prose. You can hear phrases in spots that must have encouraged William Faulkner, among others, to unleash his own verbiage.

Captain Tom Lingard and Edith Travers had a romance that I expect to remember a long time. "The Rescue" is the third of Conrad's Lingard trilogy, starting with "Almayer’s Folly," his first novel. Lingard was reportedly the real name of the figure Conrad knew from his 20 years at sea; Almayer, for another example, is an actual trader William Charles Olmeijer.

Sometimes the exoticism makes for risks. Many readers seem to have accepted the 1970s era claim that “Heart of Darkness” is a racist treatment of natives and colonial exploiters. There are characters some might consider racist, but the accusation doesn't stand up to scrutiny, in my view. To me the conflicts stem more from the gulf between such different cultures, especially as experienced by characters with limited understanding, sympathy, or wisdom. Other than rereading that novel a few years back, I have not gone into Conrad titles since the few I read while young. This book tells me that was a mistake and I look forward to rectifying it.

[Richard Swan · Rating 5 out of 5]

The third of the ‘Malay’ novels, and technically a prequel to Almayer’s Folly, this is quintessential Conrad. Here we have all his major protagonists (compare Kurtz):

‘He was not mediocre. Whatever he might have been he was not mediocre. The glamour of a lawless life stretched over him like the sky over the sea, down on all sides to an unbroken horizon. Within, he moved very lonely, dangerous and romantic. There was in him crime, sacrifice, tenderness, devotion, and the madness of a fixed idea.’ p.174 (Folio edition)

And here we have the total human condition, the lonely soul relying on a twinkling of lights in the face of an incomprehensible universe:

‘Lingard went straight aboard his vessel and, till morning, walked the poop of the brig with measured steps. The riding-lights of the ships twinkled all around him; the lights ashore twinkled in rows, the stars twinkled above his head in a black sky, and reflected in the black water of the roadstead twinkled far below his feet. And all these innumerable and shining points were utterly lost in the immense darkness.’ p.79

Splendid stuff.

There’s also an entertaining thought-provoker about the status of (former) colonial powers. At the time of the novel (late 19th century), the Dutch, the Portuguese, the Spanish and the British are vying for influence in Malaysia. Since then, the first three of these have given up all pretence of empire; they no longer seek to ‘project their power on the world stage.’ Why does Britain still feel the need to do so?

2024 Thumbnail Review #54 The Rescue by Joseph Conrad

[Marianne Roncoli · Rating 4 out of 5]

I finished it; I'm rescued. I can't include certain thoughts on the book without risking being thrown off Goodreads. Let's say that I couldn't put it down; it was an obsession captured as I was by the soaring prose that bordered on pure poetry. Conrad does that for me. For example, at the sight of his obsession on deck, Captain Linguard, observed,

..."Mrs. Travers rose nervously and going aft began to gaze at the coast. Behind her the sun, sunk already, seemed to force through the mass of waters the glow of an unextinguishable fire, and below her feet, on each side of the yacht, the lustrous sea, as if reflecting the colour of her eyes, was tinged a sombre violet hue." p.217

Who can resist? For a minute, I thought I was still reading Faust, a book I can't finish but keep reading captivated by the poetry without following the story.

It is an acquired taste. The Rescue is an advanced placement novel i.e., I wouldn't
dive into Conrad -if you pardon the expression - with this book; you could drown in the words. Start with the Heart of Darkness or Nostromo.

[HansBlog · Rating 2 out of 5]

Kurzer Auszug a.d. längeren Rezension m. Links u. Hintergründen i. m. Blog:
Fazit:
Der Ton ist teils märchenonkelhaft und voll überflüssiger Adjektive und Verallgemeinerungen. Teils konnte ich der Geschichte nicht folgen – weder den Gefühlen und Entscheidungen der Protagonisten noch den Inter-Island-Streithändeln – und musste in der englischen Zumbuchwiki die Handlung nachlesen; selbst dort verstand ich nicht alles.
Die Figuren erscheinen zu diffus, zu holzschnittartig lieb oder böse; die Hauptfigur, Kapitän Lingard, wirkt zu heroisch, solitär und überlegen ("very lonely, dangerous and romantic", S. 181). Die Erzählstimme ist weitaus zu pathetisch. Der Roman schreitet (segelt) sehr gemächlich voran.

[Eddy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This had a strong naval feel to it as most of Conrad's novels do, but I had a brighter, more enjoyable time while reading this, too. It was not as dark as his other texts, and it was nice to be in the shoes of a sea captain. Still, as part of a trilogy, it carries the same undertones as its predecessors, and a must read for those interested in colonialist works.

[James Varney · Rating 5 out of 5]

Boosting to 5 stars after a rereading. Conrad *is* sublime.

Still, there are touches here that surprise, given Conrad came back and finished "The Rescue" decades after he started it and after he'd penned some of his most famous novels. Everything in Conrad has an immensity about it: the setting, his language, the life-or-death situations he puts his characters into (or at least their certainty it's a life-or-death situations). "The Rescue" is no exception. But consider color, which is very important in "The Rescue." Conrad writes about the color of scenes throughout, whether on the sea, in the "Shallows," the jungle, the lagoon - everywhere. This is after Lingard and Mrs. Travers have returned from their opening negotiations in the settlement along the lagoon. Mrs. Travers stands at the rail of the boat:

"staring at the sheet of water turned to deep purple under the sunset sky...The sun had sunk behind the forests, leaving the contour of the treetops outlined by a thread of gold under a band of delicate green lying across the lower sky. Higher up a faint crimson glow faded into the darkened blue overhead." And just a bit later: "The delicate lemon-yellow and ethereal green tints had vanished from the sky, and the red glow darkened menacingly. The sun had set behind the black pall of the forest, no longer edged with a line of gold."

A moment later, Conrad says, "all color seemed to have gone out of the world."

Yet, despite all this meticulous attention and beautiful scene-setting, there seems to be no moonlight in "The Rescue." Constantly canoes or boats move across the water invisible to people on board the various vessels or the shore. This makes no sense. There is no artificial light in this obscure corner of the Malay Archipelago, and the bodies of water are big enough for space. On some nights, Conrad does mention overcast skies and clouds, but no one can ever make anything out by moonlight. I find that odd...

"The Rescue" ends the so-called Lingard trilogy, and oddly it is the novel that has more Lingard than any other. But I still can't place him. Essentially, he falls in love with Mrs. Travers. And here you realize love, and more especially soul mates of the opposite sex meeting, is a subject foreign to most Conrad. There is some in "Victory," Nostromo loves in "Nostromo," but the relationship itself is never the thing Conrad describes most deeply.
As in so much Conrad, and as in "Almayer's Folly" and "An Outcast of the Island," that precede "The Rescue," it is much more man and his relationship with the world, as opposed to each other, that draws his most attention.

That may explain why a reader can be sort of lost in "The Rescue" in ways unusual to Conrad - he's usually so precise. Especially for the first 175 pages or more, it's difficult to understand what, exactly, is going on. Lingard has a plan; it involves returning a fine and noble Malay to power in his little kingdom; and some crazy, rich Europeans blunder into it all in a yachting accident. But the rest seems fragmented, and each character, interpreting Lingard, only aware of a part, so the whole thing seems uncertain, at least to this reader.

Again, we have wonderful, evocative passages describing the jungle and these places - off the chart specks, really - in the Malay Archipelago, but unlike the first two volumes of the trilogy we are no longer in Borneo. And, as noted, we finally have Captain Lingard himself as a main character, rather than some overarching presence as the figure that has set everything in motion.

I think part of my problem was confusion among characters. There are a lot of them. I suspect that, like "Nostromo," repeated readings would make all clear. But, short version, there are several native chiefs who weave in and out of "The Rescue" and, improbably, they all seem to be spread along a beach in the lagoon where most of the action takes place. Despite the big cast, lots of the characters are memorable: Jaffir, the great messenger; Jorgensen, the white man lost to the jungle (and the world); D'Alcacer, a socialite that would normally be a cipher in Conrad, or a subject of his scorn, who is nevertheless sympathetically drawn and a most appealing man; and of course Tom Lingard.

Lingard has a fixation like Charles Gould in "Nostromo," although it is never explicitly spelled out just what his prize or objective is (at least not to me). Lingard does bring Mrs. Travers in on the secret - his 'Guffin,' if you will - and it attracts her even more, but to this reader anyway exactly what Lingard hopes to accomplish is never clear. That it all goes to hell, on the other hand, is. As always, Conrad paints incredible settings for his characters that, like Faulkner, go through layers and layers of thought and remembrance without, in real time, doing much or going far. The whole novel takes place in something less than a square mile, I'd say, and one of the best things about "The Rescue" is how Conrad can make a world in this postage stamp on the south seas.

"The Rescue" strikes me as something like Hamsun's "Rosa," which I also read recently. Both are outstanding books, both are written by some of the greatest writers of all time. Yet I feel like both are best suited to big fans of Conrad or Hamsun and not the ones to recommend to readers new to either author.

[Tom Leland · Rating 3 out of 5]

5 out of 10. I could hardly follow this. If I had bore down more and taken much, much longer with it, I suppose it would've made more sense to me -- but not even certain about that. Not the first Conrad that I've felt this way about. But with Conrad, there's a brilliance present at all times, whether or not you understand or even like the given story.

[Vernon Dewhurst · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not the best of Conrad, slow, verbose, heavy, over egged. Foggy plot, and the main character seems two dimentional. But i love Conrad and can forgive him this one!

[Piotr · Rating 3 out of 5]

Coś miała w sobie ale dla mnie za mało na wybitne dzieło a nader na wciągającą powieść. O tak, interesująca ale czasem zbyt wydumana w tych uczuciach i odbiorach bohaterów.

[Jack · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting story about nautical encounters and experience.

[Helen]

Malayan archipelago in 1860s: Captain Tom Linggard invests everything to help Hassim regain his lost kingdom. But a yacht gets stranded and the woman, on board, interrupts plans.

[Jim Leckband · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had a hard time with this one, my second book on estuary hijinks before the First World War (The Riddle of the Sands). Some of it had some of the best writing by Conrad I've run across - and some it I was in the same doldrums Lingard's boat starts the novel in.

In the introduction Conrad relates that he started "The Rescue" before all of his masterpieces (The Nigger of the Narcissus, Heart of Darkness, and Lord Jim and it was sitting there in an unfinished state while he wrote those books that are very related to the present one. However, those books were written with a hand of fire, while this one was written with a hand of smoke.

A brig captain, Lindgard, is hailed out of his ship's, and his, doldrums by a mysterious rowboat of sailors. This sets the tone for the rest of the book - his not knowing what is the ultimate aim of the people he brings on board and how much he should trust them. A yacht has been stranded in the shallows of a coast that Lindgard knows very well - and he knows that if that yacht stays there, everything he cares for is doomed.

This book would make an excellent sea-noir film - I'm surprised that somebody hasn't made it yet! All the tropes of noir are there - femme fatale, honorable yet conflicted "Man of Fate", shifting allegiances, mysterious and/or inscrutable happenings, and a gloom of static dread that pervades everything. However, Conrad lays on the inscrutable doom too thick - I got the point, I just want to know what is happening sometimes! I never really got why the native chiefs of the island were so interested in the hostages and why the hostages kept going back and forth like passenger pigeons.

The book might also suffer from a little too obvious allegory to the First World War - the character Mr. Travers is an obvious allusion to the dolts who started the trench warfare and then washed their hands of it. And the situations of the hostages setting off a war seemed like the assassination of a minor prince - a happenstance that really doesn't mean much, but because it took place in a powderkeg, the whole thing blew up.

[Matt Vigneau · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've wanted to read Conrad's first novel, Almayer's Folly, for a long time. Causing delay, Almayer's Folly is part of a trilogy, with the other two novels written later by Conrad, but acting as prequels in the trilogy. The trilogy: "The Rescue" -> "An Outcast of the Islands" -> "Almayer's Folly" is referred to as "The Lingard trilogy" named after the captain, protagonist, and hero in The Rescue. So I'm going to read the Lingard trilogy.

This lesser known novel, published after 20-years of working on it, is surprisingly well reviewed on Goodreads; the reviews of the novel are fair and cover most of the pros and cons.

Conrad is more of a romantic writer and less of a modernist writer in The Rescue, and at times, his romantic writing can be a bit much. That's the case here. I've read he intended the novel to be an exciting start to the trilogy, a boy's tale to kick it off, like Treasure Island or Robinson Caruso. He completely misses the mark with that. This novel is dense, complex, subtle, and contains lots of secondary characters. Conrad does write a sense of duty and adventure quite well and you have this in The Rescue. He has trouble, in my opinion, writing believable/realistic love stories, and you have this struggle in The Rescue too. It's a readable novel, the strength being a dense dose of Conrad's beautiful description, powerful prose, well-crafted sentences and precise vocabulary/word usage.

[Jrohde · Rating 5 out of 5]

my favorite of Conrad - I relate to Lindgard somehow, the independent captain of a lovely brig and admirer of a young heroic deposed chief in the jungles of Borneo. his life work of replacing this man back on his throne is abruptly interrupted by the appearance of an English 'yacht' grounded at the mouth of the river where he is mounting his native force to retake the throne/power for his friend. he relates to the woman on the yacht as a fellow European and is unable to seperate himself from her fate and that of her detested and smug husband. his life goal is frustrated in rescuing her and her husband from the tribes leaving him to sail away having reneged on his promises and self esteem. the characters are amazing and the setting so reminiscent of my time in Indonesia. I always wanted to be a Tom Lingard - and realise I would have made his choice as well. great read!