Book Review: The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad in a Global World, by Maya Jasanoff (2017)

The paperback cover of The Dawn Watch, by Maya Jasanoff. (Photo by Mark C. Taylor)

Maya Jasanoff’s 2017 book The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad in a Global World, is a fascinating examination of Conrad’s major writings. Focusing on Heart of Darkness, Nostromo, Lord Jim, and The Secret Agent, Jasanoff makes the argument that Conrad’s writings contain themes that speak deeply to our own era, as well as Conrad’s.  

Joseph Conrad had a fascinating life: born Jozef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski to Polish parents in Berdychiv, in what was then the Russian Empire, and is now part of Ukraine. His parents were staunch Polish nationalists and were sent into exile by the Russian government. Jozef was 7 when his mother died, and just 11 when his father died. Sent to live with his uncle Tadeusz Bobrowski, Jozef dreamed of becoming a sailor, and he joined the French merchant marine at age 16.  

Korzeniowski eventually moved to England and joined the British merchant marine, becoming a British citizen and passing the master mariner examination—the highest examination level—in 1886. It would be nine more years before he published his first novel, Almayer’s Folly, written in English, his third language. It was not much of a change to go from Jozef Konrad to the Anglicized pen name Joseph Conrad.  

Conrad had a unique viewpoint through which to view the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His career in the merchant marine had taken him to Australia, Singapore, Indonesia, and the Congo, to name just a few of his journeys. Conrad was better traveled than perhaps any other writer of his era, and his novels were set throughout the world.  

During his lifetime, Conrad’s world was becoming more interconnected. One of the major concerns of his fiction is what happens when different societies and cultures comes into contact with each other. You could argue that Conrad was not sufficiently attuned to indigenous peoples, but it’s clear that he was critical of European imperialism and colonialism.  

The Dawn Watch is a good book, but it’s a little odd. It’s part biography, part literary examination, but it might not be enough of either part to satisfy readers. You’d better make sure you’ve read all four of the major works that Jasanoff discusses, as she will take you through painstakingly detailed plot summaries. Jasanoff spends too much time detailing the plot points, and not enough time analyzing what makes Conrad’s writing great. I suppose that I am the target audience for The Dawn Watch: I’ve read the four books by Conrad, but I haven’t read any biographies of him.  

The narrative is not chronological, which fits with Conrad’s own writings, as they often jump forwards and backwards in time, but in a biography, the non-linear approach is tricky. For example, The Secret Agent is discussed first in the book, when it actually comes last in the chronology of the four major works that Jasanoff discusses.  

Conrad did not write much about his own childhood, which makes sense, given how painful the losses of his parents must have been. While I was reading The Dawn Watch, I happened to page through a novel by Dick Francis, the British mystery writer. Francis wrote in the foreword to the novel that people often speculated about his relationship with his parents, because so often his characters had difficult family lives. Francis wrote that he had a good relationship with his parents and enjoyed a good relationship with his two sons. He wrote, and I’m paraphrasing here, that because he had such good family relationships, he was able to write about dysfunctional families in his fiction. If he would have had bad family relationships, it would have been too painful to write about. That made me think of Conrad: he probably didn’t write about his parents because it would have been difficult.  

Conrad’s sailing career bridged the time between sail and steam, and he clearly preferred the former, which was quickly becoming a relic of the past. Conrad lived his life in a middle zone: the Polish side of him pined for a country that did not exist, and the English part of him perhaps sensed that he would never be “truly” English. Perhaps it was this push and pull that made Conrad such a great writer—he understood the displacement that all of his characters in Nostromo felt, for example.  

Conrad’s trip as a captain up the Congo River in 1890 was awful, and it provided much of the inspiration for Heart of Darkness. After his return to England, Conrad was still plagued by nightmares and poor health. He wrote in a letter: “I am still plunged in densest night and my dreams are only nightmares.” (p.215)  

Jasanoff pinpoints Conrad’s clear vision about the horrors of colonialism and imperialism in this passage: “What made the difference between savagery and civilization, Conrad was saying, transcended skin color; it even transcended place. The issue for Conrad wasn’t that ‘savages’ were inhuman. It was that any human could be a savage.” (p.224-5) This is exactly the point of Heart of Darkness: that Kurtz has been corrupted, not by the Africans, but by power, by the whole corrupt system of colonialism and imperialism.   

The Dawn Watch is a fascinating glimpse into the life and times of Joseph Conrad. After I finished reading The Dawn Watch, I pulled out my old Encyclopedia Britannica to read the entry on Conrad. The end of the first paragraph struck me as a wonderful summation of his talents: “A writer of complex skill and striking insight, but above all of an intensely personal vision, he has been increasingly regarded as one of the greatest English novelists.”  

Book Review: Airborne: A Sentimental Journey, by William F. Buckley, Jr. (1976)

Paperback cover of Airborne: A Sentimental Journey, by William F. Buckley, Jr., 1976. (Photo by Mark C. Taylor)

William F. Buckley sailing.

Christo and Pup, Christopher Buckley and William F. Buckley.

William F. Buckley Jr. was a man of many talents and interests. Buckley founded the influential conservative political magazine National Review, hosted the weekly public affairs talk show Firing Line, wrote a syndicated newspaper column three days a week, played the harpsichord, started writing novels at the age of 50, and was passionate about sailing. Oh, and one time he ran for Mayor of New York City. And what have you done today, old sport?

Buckley’s first book about sailing, Airborne: A Sentimental Journey, was published in 1976. Airborne chronicles Buckley’s 1975 voyage across the Atlantic Ocean in his schooner Cyrano. Various friends are along for the ride, chief amongst them Buckley’s only child, Christopher, or “Christo” as WFB refers to him. When Airborne takes place, Christo is a recent college graduate, figuring out what he wants to do with his life. Airborne features excerpts from Christopher’s journal of the voyage, and it’s very clear that he has a way with words—no surprise since we know that he goes on to become the author of 18 books, famous for political satires like Thank You for Smoking and Little Green Men. Christopher Buckley also wrote a fantastic memoir about his parents, Losing Mum and Pup, and reading that book piqued my interest in reading his father’s more personal books, like Cruising Speed and Overdrive, which both chronicle a week in the life of WFB. 

Buckley uses the ocean journey at the center of Airborne as a jumping-off point to describe the important role that sailing has played in his life. Throughout the book, Buckley weaves in many stories about the boats he has owned, and the adventures they have taken him on. Buckley writes eloquently about sailing: “The ocean and the sky and the night are suddenly alive, your friends and your enemies, but not any longer just workaday abstractions. It is most surely another world and a world worth knowing.” (p.26) 

The sailing bug bit Buckley early. At age 13 he was sailing regularly on a lake near the family home in Connecticut, where he raced neighbors twice his age: “Seventy-five races per summer for three summers may strike some as a few races too many. It struck me as too few races by far.” (p.58) 

Buckley also describes the dangers of sailing and the power of the sea. He also gives the reader an account of the tragic events of a cruise on Cyrano in June of 1971. While sailing on the Hudson River in Manhattan, a young African American advertising executive named Marvin Hayes was sitting on the lifeline of the boat when it broke. He fell into the water, did not know how to swim, and drowned before the boat could get back to him. Lawsuits were filed, and it was ultimately determined that shoddy workmanship was to blame: the lifeline should have held up to 3,000 pounds but “the rigger had applied the wrong kind of crimp to bind the cable to the fitting that secures it to the stanchion.” (p.82) (Buckley was not on board when this accident took place.) 

The voyage that Buckley describes in Airborne begins in Miami, with a stopover in Bermuda, and then on to the Azores. The trip is rife with technological problems from the very start. By the end of the voyage, even Buckley’s trusty sextant has failed him. “Now the list is pretty nearly complete: the radar, the autopilot, the batteries, the motor, the generator, the RDF, the loran, the chronometer, and the sextant. The factual errors in the instruction book for the HP-65 seem almost a diversion.” (p.211)

There’s an interesting section on celestial navigation, which Buckley was a big fan of. It sounds very complicated to a non-sailor like me, but it’s fascinating to learn about how you can find out where you are, even when you’re in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. (As long as you can see either the sun or the stars.) 

As a prose writer, Buckley’s style is surprisingly similar to that of his nemesis, Gore Vidal. Both men were devotees of the aside, the digression, as though their brilliant brains had so many competing thoughts occurring to them at the same moment that they simply had to set it all down, and well, dear reader, you’ll just have to try your best to catch up with them! Sarcasm aside, that may have been close to the truth, as they were both exceptionally brilliant men who probably did have a million different thoughts rushing through their heads at any given moment. And while that is entertaining to read, it can be tough to follow sometimes. 

What I like so much about William F. Buckley’s personal style is his confidence. You can see it on Firing Line. He’s leaning back in his chair, slouching, with his clipboard and pencil, eyes lidded as though he might suddenly drift off to sleep, and yet, he is never at a loss for words, for threading the complicated tapestry of the argument he is weaving. He can write a newspaper column in 30 minutes. He can sail across the Atlantic. I’m in awe of that kind of confidence, probably because I simply don’t posses it. As Christopher Buckley writes in his journal: “There are times when I’m right and times when I’m wrong. Usually, I admit when I’m wrong. WFB, it seems, does not subscribe to this.” (p.94)

Buckley was renowned for possessing a huge vocabulary, and it’s on full display throughout the book. I was thrilled to read Buckley use the word “arteriosclerotic” which was one of Tom Wolfe’s favorite words that he used throughout his first book, The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby. Buckley finds the world of sailors even a little too conservative for him: “Sometimes, though, the tribal spirit spills over, and you get arteriosclerotic stuffiness.” (p.127) 

Buckley is aware that owning a yacht is what we would now call a “first world problem,” as he writes about reprogramming his constantly malfunctioning HP-65 navigation device: “You may put that down, if you insist, in the category of the Problems of the Idle Rich.” (p.189)

Buckley also came up with the perfect metaphor for Donald Trump when he wrote: "The key to a serene relationship with sharks is simply this: Bear it in mind that they are so dumb, you can neither anticipate nor outwit them." (p.133)

Throughout Airborne, we see Buckley’s pride in his son, and so it seems fitting at the very end of the book he lets Christopher have the last word. “…even though I’m restless for the touch of land, if you were to set sail tomorrow to cross another ocean, I’d sell my soul to ship out with you. Any day.” (p.252)