The Project Gutenberg EBook of Notes on My Books, by Joseph Conrad

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Title: Notes on My Books

Author: Joseph Conrad

Release Date: December 20, 2006 [EBook #20150]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NOTES ON MY BOOKS ***

Produced by Janet Blenkinship and also, thanks to Michael
Kerwin of Occidental College for supplying images of the
missing pages from the book I had in hand, and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

This "O-P Book" Is an Authorized Reprint of the Original Edition,
Produced by Microfilm-Xerography by University Microfilms, Inc., Ann
Arbor, Michigan, 1966

NOTES ON MY BOOKS

BY
JOSEPH CONRAD

GARDEN CITY, N. Y., AND TORONTO
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
MCMXXI

COPYRIGHT, 1920, 1921, BY
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION
INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN

NOTES ON MY BOOKS

ALMAYER'S FOLLY

I am informed that in criticizing that literature which preys on
strange people and prowls in far-off countries, under the shade of
palms, in the unsheltered glare of sunbeaten beaches, amongst honest
cannibals and the more sophisticated pioneers of our glorious virtues, a
lady--distinguished in the world of letters--summed up her disapproval
of it by saying that the tales it produced were "de-civilized." And in
that sentence not only the tales but, I apprehend, the strange people
and the far-off countries also, are finally condemned in a verdict of
contemptuous dislike.

A woman's judgment: intuitive, clever, expressed with felicitous
charm--infallible. A judgment that has nothing to do with justice. The
critic and the judge seems to think that in those distant lands all joy
is a yell and a war dance, all pathos is a howl and a ghastly grin of
filed teeth, and that the solution of all problems is found in the
barrel of a revolver or on the point of an assegai. And yet it is not
so. But the erring magistrate may plead in excuse the misleading nature
of the evidence.

The picture of life, there as here, is drawn with the same elaborati