The Secret History of Costaguana

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The Complete Critical Guide to Joseph Conrad is a good introduction to Conrad criticism. It includes a potted biography, an outline of the stories and novels, and pointers towards the main critical writings – from the early comments by his contemporaries to critics of the present day. Also includes a thorough bibliography which covers biography, criticism in books and articles, plus pointers towards specialist Conrad journals. These guides are very popular. Recommended.

He helps the town get rid of thieves and protects the Violas (i.e., the family he lives with), and he's instrumental in helping to get Don Vincente out of Costaguana before the rebel forces can seize him. His name sounds a tad occult, but he's a good dude with a sound head on his shoulders.It takes a couple of chapters for a clear set of plot points to emerge, and even then, there's a ton of jumping around. That being said, we'll lay out the novel's events for you in more or less linear form, because we're total sweethearts like that. Conrad... adopted a broader ironic stance—a sort of blanket incredulity, defined by a character in Under Western Eyes as the negation of all faith, devotion, and action. Through control of tone and narrative detail... Conrad exposes what he considered to be the naïveté of movements like anarchism and socialism, and the self-serving logic of such historical but "naturalized" phenomena as capitalism (piracy with good PR), rationalism (an elaborate defense against our innate irrationality), and imperialism (a grandiose front for old-school rape and pillage). To be ironic is to be awake—and alert to the prevailing "somnolence." In Nostromo... the journalist Martin Decoud... ridicul[es] the idea that people "believe themselves to be influencing the fate of the universe." ( H. G. Wells recalled Conrad's astonishment that "I could take social and political issues seriously.") [114] The location of the novel is Costaguana, a fictional country on the western seaboard of South America, and the focus of events is in its capital Sulaco, where a silver mine has been inherited by English-born Charles Gould but is controlled by American capitalists in San Francisco. Competing military factions plunge the country in a state of civil war, and Gould tries desperately to keep the mine working. Amidst political chaos, he dispatches a huge consignment of silver, putting it into the hands of the eponymous hero, the incorruptible Capataz de Cargadores, Nostromo. Zagórska introduced Conrad to Polish writers, intellectuals, and artists who had also taken refuge in Zakopane, including novelist Stefan Żeromski and Tadeusz Nalepiński, a writer friend of anthropologist Bronisław Malinowski. Conrad aroused interest among the Poles as a famous writer and an exotic compatriot from abroad. He charmed new acquaintances, especially women. However, Marie Curie's physician sister, Bronisława Dłuska, wife of fellow physician and eminent socialist activist Kazimierz Dłuski, openly berated Conrad for having used his great talent for purposes other than bettering the future of his native land. [93] [note 19] [note 20]

The story is set in the Occidental Province of Costaguana, a nation in Central America. Isolated behind an almost impassable mountain range and situated on a broad but windless bay, the Golfo Placido, Sulaco, the capital city of the province, has for centuries remained outside of events. Sulaco’s only importance comes from the riches of its nearby silver mine, known as the Gould Concession because it is operated by an English family of that name. The Goulds, who have lived in Costaguana for three generations, are permitted to work the mine so long as they pay sufficient bribes to whatever government happens to control Costaguana. Charles Gould, who has brought the mine to its greatest productivity, has grown tired of this endless extortion and resolves to throw his great wealth behind a revolution that will finally bring a responsible government to power in Costaguana.Costaguana. Imaginary South American republic vaguely located on the continent’s west coast, with the bulk of the country over the mountains, or cordillera, where is situated its capital, Santa Marta. Costaguana suffers under political corruption and instability, and its people live in great poverty. In Conrad’s universe, however, almost no one is incorruptible. The exploit does not bring Nostromo the fame he had hoped for, and he feels slighted and used. Feeling that he has risked his life for nothing, he is consumed by resentment, which leads to his corruption and ultimate destruction, for he had kept secret the true fate of the silver after all others believed it lost at sea, rather than hidden on an offshore island. In recovering the silver for himself, he is shot and killed, mistaken for a trespasser, by the father of his fiancée, the keeper of the lighthouse on the island of Great Isabel. Indeed, Nostromo is a remarkable achievement. It has been long recognized that it is, by far, a vivid and, above all, a most credible literary re-creation of a newly-formed South American nation—the Republic of Costaguana. In its engagement with politics and imperialism, Nostromo is a logical bridge between Conrad’s earlier and later work. It is set (like Heart of Darkness and Lord Jim) within the realms of overseas empire, but Costaguana is post-colonial and the key players are, by culture if not always by birth, English, French, Italian, and Spanish, so that the situation that plays out resembles in some ways the European turmoil of The Secret Agent and Under Western Eyes. As in earlier work, the plot is told largely from the point of view of the powerful, though Conrad’s deepening engagement with the revolutionary mindset is betokened by Nostromo himself, who is transformed from an ignorant servant of the capitalists into an Marxist: he becomes a self-aware, if not particularly intelligent, “Man of the People.” As we know from the historical record, Panama gained its independence from Colombia in 1903 and José was there but he was not happy about it. He left immediately for London where he met Conrad, told him his story and the story of Colombia and was devastated that Conrad did use the story he had told him but created his own novel. Does it all work? The answer is more or less but we are left unsure as to whether Vásquez wants to tell the Conrad-Altamirano story or the history of Colombia/Panama. While not, of course, mutually exclusive, we do sometimes get the sense that Vásquez is not always sure where his focus is. Nevertheless, it is a fascinating account of one man’s perspective of Latin American turmoil. Publishing history