Joseph Conrad and the Anxiety of Knowledge

An alternate view of the perplexing and often contradictory fiction of an elusive author

Few if any writers in the English language have been cited, praised, chided, or marveled at more routinely than Joseph Conrad for the perplexing evasiveness, contradictoriness, and indeterminacy of their fiction. William Freedman argues that the explanations typically offered for these identifying characteristics of much of Conrad's work are inadequate if not mistaken.

Freedman's claim is that the illusi...