Typhoon

by Joseph Conrad

Book Overview

The main characteristic of this volume consists in this, that all the stories composing it belong not only to the same period but have been written one after another in the order in which they appear in the book. The period is that which follows on my connection with Blackwood's Magazine. I had just finished writing "The End of the Tether" and was casting about for some subject which could be developed in a shorter form than the tales in the volume...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1512064181
• ISBN13: 9781512064186
• Release Date: May 2015
• Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
• Length: 62 Pages
• Weight: 0.21 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.1" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

No imagination

Re-visiting Conrad, I find that he enchants me more and more. My old impressions and hence my expectations now were totally off. He is so much better and funnier and more interesting. Typhoon is a funny adventure story. Don't fear you will get cheated on either side of the contradictory promise. The funny side is the social one: the novella or long story is told partly by quoting and summarizing letters that the protagonists write to their families at home or to friends. The writing protagonists: Captain MacWhirr, the man without imagination. First mate Jukes, a bigot with presumptions. First engineer Rout, the man with a Solomonic reputation, at least with wife and mother at home. The adventure: MacWhirr is not exactly a greenhorn, he has been skipper for a while, and he knows the South China Sea, where he works now, captaining a steamer under Siamese flag. The ship is 'Nan Shan', 'Southern Mountain', recently built in Scotland ; she carries 200 coolies back home to Fuzhou on the Fujian coast of the mainland in the Formosa Channel. They have been working in plantations or similar enterprises and are returning home with their savings in wooden boxes. The captain has two shortcomings. One is that he never experienced a taifoon. The other is purely subjective on the part of Jukes: the captain has no imagination. He takes everything literally. He runs his ship and his job and doesn't even come near to understanding why Jukes is bothered by the fact that the ship owners changed it to Siamese registration. Jukes is fully aware of his superiority over the 'passengers'. Or are they freight? They are packaged as such, nearly. The captain is too much down to earth to bother about such things. Unfortunately he does not know what a taifoon is. When it comes, he despises advice to steer around it. He goes the straight line, after all he has to justify his coal bill. The ship barely makes it. The coolies' boxes are smashed about in the storm. Their money is spilled out and fights erupt. The captain re-establishes control and solves the potential big isssue in a wise and shrewd way. Maybe no imagination, but lots of common sense. Conrad wrote this story after Lord Jim, and the subject has similarities. It was initially published in a magazine, then together with 3 other stories in a collection. It has some similarities with his 'Nigger of the Narcissus', insofar as ships have to survive big storms. But there is a big difference: the Narcissus is a sailing ship of high quality, managed by a top class professional crew. The Nan Shan is a modern steamer, and the crew has no idea what is coming for them, and has no influence on the ship's survival. A part of the plot here is Conrad's revenge against steam ships. They are just chunks of steel and they require little seamanship.

Conrad the master!

Joseph Conrad was a master of language. In a brief but classic book, you will experience the incredible power of a typhoon while on a steamer as if you were there. Especially real is the scene in the chart room after the initial damage. It is very dark, and Captain MacWhirr lights matches to see his surroundings. Conrad's concise descriptions make you feel even the flame of the match as it burns down. If only this book were longer! I would have loved to know more about Captain MacWhirr's adventures. I HIGHLY recommend this book, as well as Conrad's "Heart of Darkness."

A storm and how to survive it

Taking maximum advantage from his long years at sea, and from his innate insight into the human soul, Conrad tells an outright and direct story about a huge typhoon in the midst of the Yellow Sea. But the book is not so much about the storm in itself, but about the human character and how it reacts to disaster.Captain MacWhirr is famous for being an efficient, calm, dull and silent man, someone you would trust but not like. He seems to be rather unbrilliant, though, never understanding why people talk so much. The other characters are also interesting, especially Jukes, the "young Turk", vivid and dynamic; Solomon the head engineer, another wise man from the sea, and the disgusting and repugnant "second officer", the type of coward you don't want to be with in this kind of drama.Human character, then, is revealed by limit-situations much more than at any other time, as war literature fans know, and this tale will leave you wondering how YOU would react if you had to make decisions in the midst of a horrible, and wonderfully depicted, typhoon.

Better than a perfect storm

This novel is unforgettable. Conrad creates a sense of terror regarding the forces of nature that will stand up to any special effects that Hollywood can produce. The scene describing the panic below deck of the Chinese workers is one of the most powerful in literature. Not to be missed.

"Perfidy, Violence, and Terror"

It has been over 30 years since the first time I read this book. Coming back to it after all this time, my overwhelming impression was how much Conrad had compressed into so few pages. TYPHOON can easily be read in a single sitting; but don't plan on going to bed right after. Not without a good stiff drink. The Nan-Shan, a steamer of Siamese registry but with English officers, and with a cargo of Chinese coolie laborers returning from a stint overseas, encounters a deadly typhoon and somehow survives it. We see the story unfold through the eyes of Jukes, the first mate, who is awed by his stoic Captain MacWhirr's quiet resolve in the face of a storm of the century. Reading it, I felt transported to the Northridge Earthquake of 1994. A sound as of all the demons of hell -- shaking and rolling in six directions at once -- flashes of light from exploding transformers -- barefooted stumbling for my boots in a world of broken glass and crockery -- found by the police hours later walking down the street, stunned, with blood pouring from my ankle and a gallon jug of water in my hand. Or, replace it with an equivalent experience of your own. Conrad had looked death in the face and learned how to face it. His Captain MacWhirr stands fast in the fury and doesn't let his imagination of untold horrors interfere with guiding the ship through the storm. At one point, he tells Jukes in the wheelhouse, "We must trust her [the ship] to go through it and come out the other side, That's plain and straight." Conrad is a wise teacher and a great writer. TYPHOON did more than survive a second reading: It awed me a second time. If I may quote once more from the book: "MacWhirr had sailed over the surface of the oceans as some men go skimming over the years of existence to sink gently into a placid grave, ignorant of life to the last, without ever having been made to see all that it may contain of perfidy, of violence, and of terror." MacWhirr's initiation into this perfidy, violence, and terror shows us how we might likewise survive the storms and shipwrecks of our own lives. What an incredible book!