Conrad's Narrative Voice: Stylistic Aspects of His Fiction by Werner Senn

Abstract

Reviewed by: Conrad's Narrative Voice: Stylistic Aspects of His Fiction by Werner Senn Brian Richardson (bio) Werner Senn. Conrad's Narrative Voice: Stylistic Aspects of His Fiction. Boston and Leiden: Brill Rodopi, 2017. ix + 262 pp. ISBN: 9789004339828 hardback; 9789004339835 e-book. This volume is a reprinting of a book first published in 1980 that explores a cluster of issues related to Conrad's style. It first appeared at the apogee of critical interest in issues of style, and it is the most thorough and persuasive book on its subject. But it is also about much more than style: it regularly moves outward into several adjacent areas, including philosophy, perception studies, linguistics, aesthetics, reader-response, and narrative theory. In addition to sections devoted to more purely stylistic issues, there are chapters on sight and insight, physiognomy, character and naming, interpretation and distancing, and free indirect discourse. Throughout, it traces Conrad's negotiations over orality and verisimilitude, as "the narrative voice continuously offsets the primacy of the printed text" (vii): Marlow's desire to make his listeners see continuously clashes with his recognition that it is impossible to fully tell the truth. The fourth chapter, on sight and insight, gives a good idea of the scope and strengths of the book. It traces out the numerous manifestations of literal vision and its lack, whether through darkness or blindness, in conjunction with insight, which is at times opposed to literal sight, especially in "Heart of Darkness": in this text Marlow claims he first really sees Kurtz when he hears a revealing incident about him. The various permutations and oppositions between vision and knowledge, appearances and essence, conjecture and refutation, are expertly delineated in relation to the Marlow narratives and "Typhoon." The chapter on character reference includes all aspects and implications of names, titles, nicknames, honorifics, slurs, and appositions, and is extremely revealing as it traces the various ways that individuals are referred to. Senn's range and depth are evident in his discussion of the ways in which General Barrios is designated in Nostromo: he "calls himself 'Pablo Barrios' and is introduced by the narrator in his usual manner by a series of cataphoric appositions: 'Pablo Ignacio Barrios, son of a village alcade, general of division, commanding in chief the Oriental Military district.' This contains his astonishing career in a nutshell. A different light is thrown upon him by his popular nickname: 'the Tiger-killer, as the populace called him.'" Senn goes on to note the negative ways he is referred to by Decoud (an ignorant, boastful Indio) and Father Corbelàn ("a drunkard"), before Captain Mitchell finally states he has been declared "Generalissimo." Senn concludes this is "an apt reflection of the [End Page 98] vicissitudes of careers and lives in Sulaco and of the kinds of rewards given to those who happen to be on the winning side" (152). Comparable, equally compelling accounts are given of the various names and terms designating the novel's other major characters: Gould, Viola, Decoud, Dr. Monygham, Captain Mitchell, and, of course, Nostromo. Another useful chapter is that on physiognomy, or the ways that people's characters are revealed or occluded by their physical appearances. As usual, Senn's analyses of "the language of eyes, faces, and looks" (96) as they appear both to characters and readers show this to be extremely varied, subtle, and ironic. The main texts examined here include "The End of the Tether," Lord Jim, The Secret Agent, Under Western Eyes, and "The Secret Sharer," and Senn provides considerable insight into each of these works. In addition, this discussion could be fruitfully mined and situated within a contemporary critical context, given the new research by cognitive scientists and narrative theorists like Alan Palmer and Lisa Zunshine into what they call "mind reading," or the determination of mental states through external signs. The final chapter ventures compellingly into narrative theory with its masterful discussion of Conrad's deployment of free indirect discourse, a substantially third-person type of narration into which the thoughts of a character are situated without being marked off by any special punctuation, as in the sentence in which Mrs. Gould reflects on her husband: "Poor boy...