This is a historic moment in my blog's history. The picture above is an actual picture of the book that I read. I took this photo myself (on our Mexican-style outside table that was given to us for free). Usually I find the same book cover photo online somewhere. I think only about three or four times I wasn't able to find the actual book cover and just selected a random one. But not today. Enough was enough.
This book is easily one of my top five least favorite books that I have ever read. I read it back around 2006 or 2007. I was so disappointed too because I had just recently read Heart of Darkness by Conrad and loved it, so I was expecting this one to be very good.
I was immediately disappointed that he was using the same device as that used in Heart of Darkness, namely to have a character in the book named Marlow basically tell the story to a group of other characters in the book. It worked splendidly in Heart of Darkness but was instantly ridiculous in Lord Jim. The reason being that Heart of Darkness was a short novella whereas Lord Jim is a long 400-plus page novel. I can buy into a guy sitting around telling a campfire-esque story to a bunch of dudes if the story can be told in one sitting. Am I really to believe that he is telling a 400-page long story to guys and they are still sitting there listening at the end? What did it take, five days straight uninterrupted? And it's something like that which can get me to not buy into a book from the get-go. And I didn't.
Plus, the story wasn't all that cool or interesting anyway for Marlow to even tell, unlike Heart of Darkness. It was kind of a confusing story overall and Marlow's telling of it built on the confusion.
I will end with this one quote:
"[W]ho once gives way to temptation, in the very instant hazards his total depravity and everlasting ruin. Therefore resolve fixedly never, through any possible motives, to do anything which you believe to be wrong."
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