The Secret Agent

Illustration: from the New York Times review of first edition, in 1907.

I’d been reading a trio of Conrad’s sea stories. Two were about storms, one a calm; two about sailing ships, one steam; two about serious illness on board, one about the obstinacy of a captain. The stories were The Nigger of the Narcissus, Typhoon and The Shadow-Line. After these I was hungry for more Conrad, but could not imagine that any land-based tale could be as gripping. Landlubbers are not bound together like sailors by mutual dependence whilst racked by the elements. As my recent posts bear witness, I’m moved by the elemental: in my tame inland suburb I cannot be up in the rigging of some creaking schooner, but I can still hang sheets on the washing-line in a medium breeze.

So when Suzan Abrams revealed on her blog she was reading The Secret Agent---with all her travels to Frankfurt, Dublin and Singapore I suspect her for a secret agent herself!---I decided that that title would be my next port of call. I buy books mainly at the Cottage Bookshop in Penn (I’ve found some photos of it to share with you!), not just because they’re cheap there: the chain bookstore in town has a vibe inimical to my sensibility. Waterstone’s, for that’s its name, also doesn’t sell old hard-backed editions whose physical forms are mute messengers from decades long past. I’ll choose an old Conrad in preference to a virgin paperback, any day.

What attracted him to write on spying and skulduggery in London? As he says in his Author’s Note:

“It seems to me now that even an artless person might have foreseen that some criticisms would be based on the ground of sordid surroundings and the moral squalor of the tale.”

His tale, like most he wrote, is the fleshing out of an anecdote or news story, to imagine the possible background of a bizarre event. I found a resemblance to one of the inner themes of Nostromo, which is still fresh in my mind after reading it immediately before the sailing yarns referred to above. Gould in Nostromo and Verloc, the Secret Agent himself, are each compromised and corrupted by their chosen occupations, whilst clinging to some fig-leaf of idealism. In this attempt, their dutiful long-suffering wives play a major part by their faithfulness and apparent love. In The Secret Agent, this theme, with an underlying concern for morality in a compromised world, grows in strength till it swallows the thriller intact, suspense and all, adding a universal dimension.

I found by looking at online reviews that some readers were disappointed that it wasn’t more of an action thriller. But I’m no critic: when I fall in love with an author I am blind to his faults, or rather I adapt myself to them, make allowances. Reading is an active process, like listening to music. You sing along and your own wrong notes are likely to exceed those of the musician. So don’t look to me for any listing of Conrad’s shortcomings. I don’t see any, and each story I read is better than his last.

So in my amateur reading (fie! to the pretentiousness of literary criticism, as taught, with its pat answers and downloadable essays from the Internet), the central characters are Winnie Verloc and her retarded brother Stevie. The others, including her husband, the Secret Agent, reveal themselves in their actions and posturing words more than in inner monologues. Winnie and Stevie are vulnerable and innocent: to survive the callous machinations of this foggy London of hansom cabs and gaslight, they have to attach themselves to benefactors as best they can. And this is where the link to the sea-stories comes in. Just as in those, just as in Nostromo, his plots are focused on the dynamics of survival: the twisted honour and pride of men coping with circumstances.

It’s still a thriller: he maintains suspense throughout---even to the last few pages, which often under his pen are calm and reflective and anti-climactic. His plot details are managed with complete mastery, so that things and personal quirks which appear in the first pages like mere descriptive colour play pivotal roles in the denouement. It’s not a detective story full of red herrings. It’s irreducible, as its much disputed subtitle “A Simple Tale” proclaims. Every part is essential to the whole in this classical tragedy. The characters themselves may misinterpret what is going on but the author never uses cunning to mislead us. Gradually, we put the hints together and work out with a sense of horror and pity what must have happened. It becomes unbearable as we wait for the characters to find out the truth that we have only guessed. And this truth is inevitable, for the characters have been shaped by life to have limited horizons. Here the self-effacing Winnie gradually comes to the fore, as we see that the plot is shaped by her strengths and limitations, unleashing a triple tragedy. She can’t live without a benefactor: at first the excuse is her responsibility to look after Stevie. But whenever she fastens on to a benefactor, she refuses to look beneath the surface or ask questions. “Things don’t stand much looking into”, she says to herself.

I’d drafted out a quite different piece at first, whilst I was still halfway through the book, for what struck me then was the relevance today of this tale involving suicide bombers and deadly disregard of ordered society. It all seemed so believable and modern. In the back of my mind, I was contrasting Conrad with another literary hero, John Cowper Powys, whose dramas take place within the souls of lonely individuals: every character reflecting an aspect of its author. Conrad seems the opposite, concerned with the dynamics of action in a tough world. But now I see that The Secret Agent, for all its sordidness and dark intrigue, is psychological too, a mirror to the real world.

The modern school of literary criticism, if I am not mistaken, analyses texts as objects with intrinsic qualities. I don’t take that view. Texts are nothing without the reader, who alone constructs the meaning. They are dishes served up to a person, preferably hungry, on a particular occasion. By this, my book-reviewing is a subcategory of memoir-writing. Here’s my bit of cooking for you, my reader. I have to guess your taste in spices for I don’t know you that well.

Last night I watched a DVD, Crash (2005). The premise, played out on dangerous streets in LA, is that racial prejudice is lethal but redemption is always possible, with a bouquet of unlikely coincidences to help it on. Being a child at heart, the bit I liked the best was the invisible cloak of invulnerability which a father bestows on his five-year-old daughter. She believes, and it doesn’t let her down.

From Conrad to a popular movie: I am not going to say “from the sublime to the ridiculous”. I’ve read few novels, and until recently seen few films. As far as I am concerned, all experience is worth savouring as if rare and precious, full of significance. Because it is.

PS Have just republished a set of posts in October which I had suppressed for reasons of style and/or content. I don't feel so critical of them now, since they can be buried in the archives.