Word: conrades
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...CONRAD AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES-J. H. Retinger...
Potatoes Collect Poison. When Retinger first went to Kent to visit Conrad, the rosy literary agent J. B. Pinker was still keeping the novelist just one jump ahead of starvation. Conrad, then a little over 50, "even to the old-fashioned sort of brown greatcoat . . . seemed, indeed, a typical Polish landowner from the Ukraine." In Conrad's decaying Cadillac, Retinger got his first taste of the driving which horrified Conrad's family...
...Conrad's lame English wife Jessie "was without exception the best and most perfect woman I have ever had the good fortune to know. . . . She was not intellectual, but hers was that wisdom of quiet, unassumed, penetrating judgment of people and situations, the well-balanced poise of mind, which is found among old and very honorable people." To Conrad, "she was wife, mother and guardian, besides being his secretary and assistant in his work." During Conrad's frequent bouts with acute malaria and gout, he could endure no nursing except hers (though, with a desperate...
Soda Hardens Arteries. "Conrad had no use for small talk, but always saw to it that a definite theme qualified the conversation. He cared little for politics, and slightly despised politicians. . . . He was an opponent of British Imperialism. . . . He did not like Socialism-I suppose because sailors were not Socialists in his time." In foreign politics, "he had one horror-of Russia; and no definite idea, unless good wishes for the independence of Poland." He shared Retinger's "myopia to music," and liked to listen to stories of personal adventure, though he rarely spoke...
...Conrad liked best to talk about people. "I do not mean gossip . . . he liked to probe the psychology of people, known or even unknown to him, just as he liked best to read diaries and memoirs, infinitely more than fiction or history." He had "the Slav love for long, intimate talk." They used to sit by the fire "until 2 or 3 in the morning, sipping whiskey, which he always took with plain water, advising me never to take soda, as it hardens arteries...