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Rating: 
Summary: A Great Work of Literature
Review: In my opinion, Nigger of the 'Narcissus' by Joseph Conrad is one of the truly great novels in English. It goes on the list with such works as The Great Gatsby, Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Passage to India, and Moby Dick. It is fascinating, gripping, deep, and entertaining. It defies description, analysis, or summary. (Nevertheless Doug Anderson in his review has done a pretty good job, so I won't even try.) I don't feel competent to write reviews of great literary works, but not everyone may be familiar with Conrad's Nigger of the 'Narcissus' and what a wonderful novel it is. ... I had no expectations about it and was taken completely by surprise. Nigger of the 'Narcissus' is not just another good novel. It is a masterpiece of literature.
Rating:
Summary: The sea of another time
Review: Joseph Conrad provides a memory from life of the sea in the waning days of square-rigged ships. How far that age is gone is illustrated by the rebuilt Constitution. When she was gotten out in recent years after her reconstruction she really wasn't put under full sail--you couldn't assemble a crew to do so in the USA. Conrad suggests he was among the crew but at other times assumes the stance of an omniscient observer (as when he reports that conversation between Donkin and Jim Wait in the closed deck house). Yet he does this in other novels and I can live with it for the reward of his evocation of the sea--at least I think it's a realistic evocation of the sea, I who have voyaged only in air conditioned cruise ships and a small inland sail boat. More important than Conrad's nautical narration is his penetration into the psyche of nearly everyone on board. The first customer reviewer was wrong to say that "the loathsome Donkin" stands for the crew and to align the novel with political literature. A great humanistic work cannot be demeaned to the status of a political analysis, at least this one can't. The last pages of the novel are as melancholy a picture of the vanished men of a dead age as I can imagine. They have undergone three fates (except for Donkin, who of course succeeds): death at sea, death by land, and transfer to a steam vessel, the latter equated with a sort of death. Even the material remnants of that age are fragmentary and unsatisfactory, a few ships in dock as museum specimens and the great East India docks transformed to the trendy "Docklands" development.
Rating: 
Summary: depressingly mean-spirited
Review: This is the first Conrad novel I've disliked for its racism. "Lord Jim" and "Nostromo" were also about the struggle of racial empire, but more complex and rich in feeling. This one, like "The Secret Agent," seems propelled mainly by resentment. Here the "Nigger" of the title, and his white ally on the ship, are despised by the true-hearted English sailors yet have somehow learned to make the modern world work for them. The message seems to be that weak manipulators, racially corrupt, are taking over the empire. The action of the plot is more allegorical then consequential and lacks internal logic. However the "Nigger" has the seeds of an interesting character, if we could only get to know him -- maybe on shore, and in good health.
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