Monday, October 14, 2024

Book Review: Nostromo, by Joseph Conrad (1904)

Paperback cover of the 2004 Barnes & Noble Classics edition of Nostromo, by Joseph Conrad, originally published in 1904. (Photo by Mark C. Taylor) 

Joseph Conrad’s 1904 novel
Nostromo is long, dense, complicated, and brilliant. Set in the fictional South American republic of Costaguana, Nostromo follows a large cast of characters. Conrad masterfully shifts between many points of view in the novel, and it’s a stunning example of an artist working at the height of his powers. The frequent shifts in point of view and time make reading Nostromo a challenge, but the reader’s efforts are rewarded by Conrad’s beautiful prose and his insights into human nature. 

The Barnes & Noble Classics edition of Nostromo features an excellent introduction by Brent Hayes Edwards, who writes “Nostromo is not just a single novel, but a stunning orchestration of many novels at once.” (p.xiii) Hayes Edwards then goes on to list the many themes and plotlines of the novel.  

One of the main plotlines in Nostromo deals with the San Tome silver mine. Charles Gould, a Costaguanero of English heritage, has inherited the mine from his father. It has never turned much of a profit in the past, but Charles Gould is determined to change that. Gould succeeds, and the silver that the mine produces becomes central to the fate of many characters and to Costaguana itself. (Side note: my father’s cousin is named Charles Gould, a coincidence that I enjoyed. And I was constantly reminded of this as Conrad almost always calls the character “Charles Gould,” never “Charles” or “Gould.”)  

The novel begins with a detailed physical description of Costaguana, and although Conrad had only been to South America once during his sailing career, he was able to conjure up a thoroughly believable landscape. (Conrad went ashore during the voyage for just three and a half days.) The action of Nostromo occurs in the port town of Sulaco, which is a somewhat sleepy place as the novel opens.  

Conrad was an insightful political thinker. An American tycoon who invests in the San Tome mine has a jingoistic monologue in which he says, “We shall run the world’s business whether the world likes it or not.” (p.75) A prophetic statement to make in 1904.  

There are many beautiful passages in Nostromo. One of my favorite lines is in a letter that Martin Decoud writes to his sister: “All this is life, must be life, since it is so much like a dream.” (p.205)  

Several of my favorite lines in Nostromo are about the character Colonel Sotillo: “Like most of his countrymen, he was carried away by the sound of fine words, especially if uttered by himself.” (p.233) Conrad shows off his wit with this line: “Sotillo had spent the morning in battling with his thoughts; a contest to which he was unequal, from the vacuity of his mind and the violence of his passions.” (p.350) Now that’s a burn, Joseph Conrad style.  

Late in the novel, there’s a wonderful line about Emilia Gould: “It had come into her mind that for life to be large and full, it must contain the care of the past and of the future in every passing moment of the present.” (p.410) 

Class and status play important roles in the novel, and Nostromo, who is unable to hold onto money, has a great line: “It seems to me that everything is permitted to the rich.” (p.347)  

Nostromo is a novel about outsiders. Charles Gould is born in Costaguana, but he comes from an English family, and he was educated in England. His wife, Emilia, is also British, as is Captain Mitchell. Nostromo and the Viola family are Italian. Martin Decoud has spent much of his life in France. And much of the elite of Sulaco is of Spanish descent. The fascinating mix of ethnicities in South America was a perfect subject for a novelist like Conrad, who traveled around the world as a sailor. Conrad’s own life found him living in many different cultures. Conrad was born in the city of Berdychiv, which had been part of Poland, was in the Russian Empire when Conrad was born in 1857 and is now in Ukraine. Conrad’s heritage was Polish, he moved to France to begin his career at sea. He eventually moved to England, and wrote his novels in English, his third language.  

It wouldn’t be a Joseph Conrad novel without some time spent on the water, and one of the most dramatic parts of the novel is when Nostromo and Martin Decoud are tasked with sailing a lighter (small barge) full of silver out of the Placid Gulf that surrounds Sulaco, in the hopes of keeping it away from the military, who have overthrown the president of Costaguana.  

Nostromo has a bad premonition about transporting the silver from the beginning, and it’s certainly not an envious job. Conrad builds the tension with a night so dark that nothing can be seen. Catastrophe occurs when the lighter is struck by the ship bringing the soldiers to occupy Sulaco. Knowing the lighter is slowly sinking, Nostromo and Decoud bury the silver on one of the small islands in the gulf. Decoud stays on the island with a small rowboat, while Nostromo deliberately sinks the lighter and swims back to shore.  

The passages describing Decoud’s time on the island are beautiful and sad: “Solitude from mere outward condition of existence becomes very swiftly a state of soul in which the affectations of irony and skepticism have no place...In our activity alone do we find the sustaining illusion of an independent existence as against the whole scheme of things of which we form a helpless part.” (p.393)  

One of the many admirers of Nostromo was F. Scott Fitzgerald, who wrote in a 1923 article that Nostromo was “the great novel of the past fifty years.” (F. Scott Fitzgerald on Authorship, p.86) High praise indeed.  

Silver tarnishes when it comes into contact with sulfur, and the silver of the San Tome mine tarnishes everyone in the novel who comes into contact with it. Perhaps that is the lesson of Nostromo.  

Monday, October 7, 2024

Album Review: Wild Fire, In Between (2022)

My signed copy of In Between, by Wild Fire (Photo by Mark C. Taylor)
Promo photo for Wild Fire's single "Don't Mess with Exes"


The talented sister duo of Kelli and Kayla
Iutzwig perform together under the name Wild Fire, and they have released six albums, as well as many singles. Wild Fire’s second album is 2022’s excellent
In Between, which features 10 original songs written by Kelli and Kayla. Wild Fire’s music is an engaging mix of pop with a country flavoring, and Kelli and Kayla’s fantastic voices carry their songs effortlessly.  

I discovered Wild Fire through an Instagram ad offering a free signed CD and a signed 8x10 photo, for just the cost of shipping. I always enjoy discovering new music, so I thought it was worth taking a chance, and I’m very glad I did. 

There’s something special about the vocal blend between siblings, and Kelli and Kayla are no exception to that rule. Their voices blend together incredibly smoothly in beautiful harmony. They are both gifted lead singers as well, and their pleasant vocal tones are very appealing.  

Kelli and Kayla are also very talented songwriters, and they have a knack for crafting songs with catchy hooks and intelligent lyrics. The songs on In Between cover a variety of subjects, and many of them detail the tribulations of moving into young adulthood, a time when many people feel “in between” one world and another. A song that explores this feeling is “Seventeen,” which features the clever lyrics “Apparently I’m supposed to be/living wild like a dancing queen/I guess the movies lied to me/about what matters when you’re seventeen.”  

One of my favorite songs on In Between is the sassy and catchy leadoff track “Don’t Mess with Exes.” It’s a terrific kiss-off song to all exes who just aren’t worth the trouble. As Kelli and Kayla sing, “When you got a heartbreak as big as Texas/you don’t mess with exes,” a perfect lyric to sing for two young women who hail from Houston.  

Other great songs include the ballads “Alone” and “Dear Life,” which mix intelligent lyrics with catchy and wistful melodies. For me, I’d say the standout tracks on In Between are “Don’t Mess with Exes,” “Looking Out for You,” “Seventeen,” “Alone,” and “Dear Life.” The whole album shows a nice range of singing and songwriting for Kayla and Kelli, as they can capture many different moods and emotions with their songs.  

If you like well-crafted pop songs with a country flavor, do yourself a favor and check out Wild Fire.  

Tuesday, October 1, 2024

Pete Rose 1941-2024

Pete Rose, sliding in headfirst, as always.

Baseball’s Hit King, Pete Rose, died yesterday at the age of 83. Pete Rose was one of the greatest players in baseball history, as well as one of the most controversial. Rose has been the MLB hit leader for 39 years, and 
it’s safe to say that his record of 4,256 hits will stand for many more years. The controversy surrounding Rose will last for many more years too, as fans and historians will debate if he belongs in the Hall of Fame after his 1989 ban for betting on baseball.
 

As a player, Pete Rose obviously belongs in the Hall of Fame. His accomplishments are amazing. Rose was a 17-time All-Star (a fun Minnesota connection—his first All-Star appearance was at Metropolitan Stadium in 1965, and his last All-Star appearance was at the Metrodome in 1985) he made the All-Star team at 5 different positions, (second base, left field, right field, third base, and first base) a record that will be impossible to break. Has anyone else even matched Rose’s accomplishment of being an All-Star at 3 different infield positions? Rose was a 3-time batting champion, and he finished in the top ten of batting average 13 times. He was the 1963 NL Rookie of the Year, and the 1973 NL MVP. Rose was a .321 hitter in the postseason, and he appeared in 6 World Series, winning the 1975 World Series MVP. Rose led the league in runs scored 4 times, in hits 7 times, and in doubles 5 times. Not known as a power hitter, Rose is second all-time in doubles, with an incredible total of 746.  

As a person, Pete Rose falls short of the Hall of Fame. Rose bet on baseball, and while no one ever accused him of throwing a game or giving less than his full effort on the field, it’s still a cardinal sin in baseball. I think it’s ridiculous that Rose didn’t just come clean in 1989 and confess that he had bet on baseball. Instead, he lied about betting on baseball for 15 years, before finally admitting the truth in a 2004 book. As a kid, that always confused me. If Rose didn’t bet on baseball, then why did he accept the ban from baseball? If he didn’t bet on baseball, then why didn’t he fight the ban? It’s a bit like Richard Nixon accepting Gerald Ford’s pardon after he resigned in 1974. I’m not going to say I did anything wrong, but I’ll accept this pardon just in case I may have done something wrong.  

But Rose fooled a lot of people for a long time, and even a baseball writer as smart as Bill James was an apologist for Pete Rose. In his 2001 book The New Bill James Historical Abstract, James spent six pages attacking the Dowd Report and casting doubt on the evidence that Rose bet on baseball. Of course, read today, it makes James sound foolish. 

You can admire Pete Rose’s grit, his tenacity, his hustle, and still find him lacking as a human being. If Rose had truly reconstituted his life in 1989 and lived the rest of his life after his ban from baseball the way, say, Stan Musial lived his life, maybe Rose would have seen the ban lifted. But he didn’t live his life that way, because he was Pete Rose. How could he do anything wrong?  

I was born in 1981, the year that Rose passed Stan Musial for the National League hit record. (Back in the day, records for each league had more importance than they do today.) Rose was an icon from the moment I became a baseball fan. To anyone slightly older than I am, Pete Rose was a huge symbol of baseball. You could argue that Pete Rose and Reggie Jackson were the two most iconic baseball players of the 1970’s. They were opposites, Reggie the powerful home run slugger, Rose the dedicated contact and average hitter. But they both captured the media’s attention and became stars.  

Back in 2015, Rose applied for reinstatement, hoping that Rob Manfred would be more receptive to his case than Bud Selig ever was. Rose was wrong. Reading Manfred’s statement is illuminating of the kind of person Pete Rose was. In true Rose fashion, he told Manfred he didn’t currently bet on baseball, and then backtracked later in his interview to say he does still bet on baseball. 

Rose still generates conversation, 35 years after his ban from baseball. When I was in Cooperstown with my family this summer, Pete Rose was there, signing autographs. We talked to a guy who had eaten breakfast at the same place Rose did. He said that one morning, Pete was facing away from the door, and he figured Rose didn’t want people to bother him, but the next morning, he was sitting facing out to the restaurant, so this guy said hi to Pete and ended up having a nice conversation with him for 10 minutes about baseball. We had breakfast at that restaurant the next morning, but we didn’t see Pete there. We did see Rose at the Safe at Home memorabilia store in Cooperstown. I didn’t pay for an autograph, but we at least saw Pete, although the store had practically blockaded him, I assume to keep people like us from just looking at Pete for free. Rose looked good when I saw him. He looked like, well, how Pete Rose always did.  

I also had a conversation about Pete Rose with a guy who was staying at the same motel. Like most people, this guy thought Rose should be in the Hall of Fame. I’m torn, because I do believe that Rose deserves to be in the Hall of Fame as a player. But I also believe that Rose bet on baseball, and he accepted the ban, and he really didn’t do much to change his ways after 1989. I do think it’s a positive sign that people wanted Pete Rose back in baseball—people were not full of hatred and retribution towards Pete Rose. And even though I might seem harsh on Rose, there’s part of me that still likes him. He was a great player. He loved playing the game, and he played all-out, every single day. Pete Rose is so close to being the perfect role model. So close, and yet so far. Maybe that’s the moral of Pete Rose, that he was so talented, so gifted, but he had fatal flaws as well. He was human.