"The Profound Perplexity of the Living": Narrating the Bewildered Self in the Colonial World of Victory (2009)

FAMOUSLY, WALTER BENJAMIN distinguished story from novel, in terms of authority of told versus perplexity of written: storyteller takes what he tells from experience his own or that reported by And he in turn makes it experience of those who are listening to his tale. But, Benjamin goes on, birthplace of novel is solitary individual, who is no longer able to express himself by giving examples of his most important concerns, is himself uncounseled, and cannot counsel others. Rather novel can only give evidence of profound perplexity of living (1969: 87). While spoken story possesses authentic counsel and authority, Benjamin claims novel can speak only of our perplexity. Although Conrad's fictions repeatedly attempt to replicate storyteller's situation and foreground told nature of narration, in each case effect is somehow to inauthenticate what is being narrated or at least destabilize narrator's authority. The Conradian novel insists, in myriad of ways, that knowledge is local and provisional, and, of necessity, partial. Moreover, as things turn out in Victory, counsel - Heyst senior's and professed wisdom of Western imperialism - turns to ashes.According to his many visitors over years, was spellbinding storyteller. His spoken voice, although heavily accented, seemed to create an experience for listeners that held and moved them. Edward Said has noticed that in his fiction as well: Conrad never lets us forget that written transcribes told narrative (1983: 96), and that the dramatic protocol of much of Conrad's fiction is swapped yarn, historical report, mutually exchanged legend, musing recollection, involving speaker and hearer and often a specific enabling occasion (1983: 94). Although this storytelling situation is rehearsed in most of Conrad's fictions, as Said and others have noted, written texts chronicle an anxiety about authority, especially authority of European self in colonial world. The usual intent of his fictions, in fact, is to foreground failures of Victorian fathers, smash-up of their dreams of progress, and inadequacy of various patriarchal inheritances, more stuff of inconclusive novel than of gripping story that provides counsel. Victory, in particular, narrates bankruptcy of European expansionism and consequent perplexity of bewildered self unsupported by authority of imperial discourses or of any sovereign power that might justify and centre European self. It chronicles failure of Western patriarchal inheritances of both public policy and personal philosophy - empire and Heyst senior's philosophy of pessimistic, paralyzing withdrawal - and does so in particularly peculiar manner, as though itself were site of disorder.In no other Conradian fiction is tension between solitary novelist and authoritative storyteller so pronounced. We are made to sense through unruly, disruptive narration consternation of an author who understood his task to be to make you see (The Nigger of Narcissus x) and yet was aware of himself as uncounselled novelist writing out of his own darkness with only uncertainty and bewilderment to report. While many studies have examined irregularities at work in Conrad's fiction written before 1910, few have thought in these terms about Victory, popular work at time of its publication but later disparaged and dismissed by many as melodramatic, second-rate Conrad. Others have noticed Victory's instability and have either denounced it as careless craftsmanship or have written to justify its use and explain its effects artistically and thematically. I also find discontinuous to be purposeful, in main, rather than incompetent, but would argue, from vantage point of early twenty-first century, for its rather different thematic effects. …