Joseph Conrad: The Secret Agent

Early in this short novel, Conrad describes what, for lack of a more accurate term, we may call his protagonist as "constitutionally averse to every superfluous exertion" (9). As I continued to read, I seldom went a page without wishing that Conrad, or at least his narrator, had the same tendency. This book needed Strunk and White to take a chisel to it, and winnow it down by half. Let's select a random page and see if I can't find you a good example, shall we? Here's one from page 49:

He walked with the nerveless gait of a tramp going on, still going on, indifferent to rain or sun in a sinister detachment from the aspects of sky and earth. Chief inspector Heat, on the other hand, after watching him a while, stepped out with the purposeful briskness of a man disregarding indeed the inclemencies of the weather, but conscious of having an authorized mission on this earth and the moral support of his kind.

Belch. The passage, as a microcosm of the entire book, overflows with "superfluous exertion". This is only two sentences, mind you. Can't you see Mark Twain spinning in his grave, perhaps wishing he were a lathe upon which to shear down Conrad's pointlessly flowery tone?

Whatever the flaws of this particular book, however, Conrad is still canonical for a reason. Even in the midst of all this diarrhoea, he manages to reach a mental study that would have merited Dostoevsky's admiration. When he confines his love of detail solely to the inner workings of his characters, he shines. Just as his "superfluous effort" is in startling contrast to Mr. Verloc's hatred of the same, so does his conscientious probity of his characters' minds stand in contrast to Mrs. Verloc's "belief that things did not stand being looked into" (89). Now that I mention it, perhaps he needn't be chastised quite so rashly for his loquacity after all . . .