This contribution to the 'Twayne's Masterwork Studies' series offers a critical analysis of Lord Jim, the classic 1900 novel that many consider to be Joseph Conrad's best work. Author Ross C. Murfin is an academic who has written extensively on Conrad, D.H. Lawrence, and Thomas Hardy.

This book is organized as follows. Following a chronology of Conrad's life and work, it explores in successive chapters the biographical background of Lord Jim, the importance of the work, and its critical reception. It then engages in a critical analysis of the novel, considering in turn four major sets of events (the 'Patna' episode, the public inquest, Jim's subsequent quest, and what transpires in Patusan). As readers know, Lord Jim is full of ambiguities, and Ross Murfin brings to bear decades of literary criticism as well as his own expertise onto significant questions about the novel's deeper meanings. At the end of the book is provided a section of notes and references, as well as a bibliography and an index.

I read this book to gain a better understanding of Lord Jim and its status as a literary classic. Reading it gave me a better grasp of how the novel has been viewed by others, and I did appreciate the chance to learn from the author's knowledge and insight. However, my chief reaction was surprise and bemusement at how the novel has been dealt with by generations of literary critics. For example, to the psychoanalytical critics, in writing of Jim's abandonment of his ship, Conrad (we're told) was actually revealing his own "guilt" over leaving ("abandoning") his native land of Poland (!). Other critics deal with the characters as if they are real people, rather than the products of Conrad's imagination. Hence (says one critic) Jim cannot condemn Gentleman Brown because Brown represents 'the evil... within himself.' Another thinks it's because Jim and Brown are both "white". Still other critics scrutinize Conrad's life for evidence of autobiographical elements in the novel, claiming that a given character was based on this or that person that the author knew. In one case, four different people are named as models for the character "Stein" (ranging from Conrad's own uncle to the great naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace); unable to decide which is the more plausible model, we're told by Murfin that Stein is a composite of them all.

As usual, the literary critics thoroughly underestimate the inventive abilities of authors who write works of fiction. What's more, acting as amateur detectives, they scrutinize an author's life and work to concoct "explanations" based on an author's past, alleged psyche and sexual proclivities, or to damn him in accord with whatever political ideology may be in vogue. Such explanations are never testable and nothing but speculative, but are nonetheless taken as conclusions. And then there's the practice of interpreting symbolism. The famous "rotten bulkhead" of the ship is said to represent the flimsy "self image with which Jim holds back the terrible truth about himself," or alternatively, of the "rottenness... of the idealistic self- image of his (Jim's) whole culture," or rather maybe it is a "symbol of the world's unreadability", its "mysterious unknowability." (The irreverent reader may be likely to respond that sometimes a rusty bulkhead is just a rusty bulkhead.) How interesting that different expert critics look at the same passage and come away with entirely different explanations. That fact says a great deal about the reliability of their conclusions.

One can hardly fault Murfin for dutifully reporting what critics have written about Lord Jim, or from engaging in the process of "analysis" himself. However, after generations of such "criticism", the game has grown tiresome. If the self- appointed experts cannot agree on much of anything, little wonder that the mere reader is inclined to dismiss the entire enterprise as self- serving and self- indulgent. ( )