基本信息出版社：Signet Classics; Reissue edition
页码：352 页
出版日期：2000年07月
ISBN：0451527674
条形码：9780451527677
装帧：简装
开本：32开 Pages Per Sheet
丛书名：Signet Classics
外文书名：吉姆老爷

内容简介 With gorgeous new packaging, a new introduction, and an updated bibliography, this reissue celebrates the classic novel that set the style for a whole new class of literature: novels of an outcast from civilization finding refuge in the tropics. This is a story of dramatic action and psychological penetration, a work that critic Morton Danwen Zabel calls an example of Conrad's "central theme...the grip of circumstances that enforce self-discovery and its cognate, the discovery of reality of truth."
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Amazon.com
When Lord Jim first appeared in 1900, many took Joseph Conrad to task for couching an entire novel in the form of an extended conversation--a ripping good yarn, if you like. (One critic in The Academy complained that the narrator "was telling that after-dinner story to his companions for eleven solid hours.") Conrad defended his method, insisting that people really do talk for that long, and listen as well. In fact his chatty masterwork requires no defense--it offers up not only linguistic pleasures but a timeless exploration of morality.

The eponymous Jim is a young, good-looking, genial, and naive water-clerk on the Patna, a cargo ship plying Asian waters. He is, we are told, "the kind of fellow you would, on the strength of his looks, leave in charge of the deck." He also harbors romantic fantasies of adventure and heroism--which are promptly scuttled one night when the ship collides with an obstacle and begins to sink. Acting on impulse, Jim jumps overboard and lands in a lifeboat, which happens to be bearing the unscrupulous captain and his cohorts away from the disaster. The Patna, however, manages to stay afloat. The foundering vessel is towed into port--and since the officers have strategically vanished, Jim is left to stand trial for abandoning the ship and its 800 passengers.

Stripped of his seaman''s license, convinced of his own cowardice, Jim sets out on a tragic and transcendent search for redemption. This may sound like the bleakest of narratives. But Lord Jim is also touching, elevating, and often funny. Here, for example, the narrator describes the ship''s captain (proving that clothes do indeed make the man):

He made me think of a trained baby elephant walking on hind-legs. He was extravagantly gorgeous too--got up in a soiled sleeping suit, bright green and deep orange vertical stripes, with a pair of ragged straw slippers on his bare feet, and somebody''s cast-off pith hat, very dirty and two sizes too small for him, tied up with a manilla rope-yarn on the top of his big head. You understand a man like that hasn''t a ghost of a chance when it comes to borrowing clothes.

This is formidable prose by any standard. But when you consider that Conrad was working in his third language, the sublime after-dinner story that is Lord Jim seems even more astonishing an accomplishment. --Teri Kieffer --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

The New York Times Book Review
A book of the rare literary quality ofLord Jim is something to receive with gratitude and joy, and with a sense of a distinction conferred upon the readers of romance. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From AudioFile
Conrad''s haunting story of adventure turned tragedy portrays a young man''s struggle against his own weaknesses. Because of its complex characters, shifting settings and roving points of view, Lord Jim needs an attentive and insightful narrator. Nigel Graham is just such a performer. Keeping a cool, steady tone, Graham captures the excitement and terror of the story. Listeners are lead in and out of grueling psychological sketches which run side by side with scenes of intense characterizations and action. Graham handles all with expertise. Vocal characterizations and accents are present but not overwhelming; the narrator ensures the story''s continuity. J.S.G. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine --This text refers to the Audio Cassette edition.

Laurence Davies, Dartmouth College
Is there room for yet another Lord Jim? The answer is emphatically yes. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Allan Simmons, General Editor of The Conradian
Professor Watts''s assiduity and thoroughness make this edition of Lord Jim a delight... --This text refers to the Paperback edition.