The Secret Agent A Simple Tale

Trying to decide if you “liked” a book can become a complicated process. Oh, not for some books. Some books catch you quickly and slyly sink in and mingle with your reality and whisper to you during the day when you are supposed to be working or driving or running. But there are some just plain stubborn books; books that almost seem to be daring you to put them down and move on to something else. Conrad’s The Secret Agent affected me that way. I read the Introduction, the select Bibliography, the Chronology and the Author’s preface and was very intrigued. I loved learning about the parallels in the story with the events in the author’s life. I liked seeing what historical events were taking place during the time Conrad was working in the Belgian Congo. I enjoyed reading about how the author came up with the idea for the story: Someone had attempted to blow up the Greenwich Observatory and instead blew himself to bits. And a friend of Conrad’s observed: “Oh, that fellow was half an idiot. His sister committed suicide afterwards.” The Secret Agent is a man called Mr. Verloc. He’s married a woman who looks after her invalid mother and her “not quite right” brother. Winnie Verlock has settled for this existence. Her husband runs a store that sells male potency pills and soft porn. He doesn’t do much business, but Winnie asks no questions and tolerates life. Suddenly her life is disrupted when an officer comes to the house with a cloth with their address written on it which was taken from the body that was blown into a million bits and pieces and had to be collected with a shovel after being disintegrated by a bomb which was intended for the Greenwich Observatory. Her brother is missing and it dawns on her that her brother was wearing the coat which had the cloth address sewn into it. Her husband is responsible for the murder of her brother. It’s a pretty simple, straightforward story and one that shouldn’t take too long to tell. But after we meet Winnie, and Adolf and Stevie and Mr. Vladimir we have to have conversation after conversation between Mr. Verloc, the secret agent, and the First Secretary of the Embassy and Mr. Vladimir and other shady characters and I’d find myself very disengaged and instead of escaping from reality with my book I’d be sorting out some work entanglement or planning dinner or (worse than anything) silently singing a small inane segment of some pop tune. I found I didn’t care if this was one of the first books about a terrorist act. The whole engaging conversation that had occurred earlier in the book about how anarchists should make it clear that they are “determined to make a clean sweep of the whole social creation” by “directing [their:] blows at something outside the ordinary passions of humanity” which had intrigued me so much in the beginning suddenly was forgotten and I cared so much more about the split-end I had just spotted or who was driving by in that loud car. In short, the book became very tedious and I lost any concern for the characters or about the outcome. But then I’d find myself thinking about The Secret Agent during the day. I’d wonder about Winnie’s earlier boyfriend, the butcher, whose father refused to let him marry Winnie because she came as a package with an invalid mother and a half-wit brother. I'd try to decide if I thought Stevie was autistic. Or I’d stumble on a sentence like this: He paused, and a snarl lifting his moustaches above a gleam of white teeth gave him the expression of a reflective beast, not very dangerous – a slow beast with a sleek head, gloomier than a seal, and with a husky voice. And I’d much rather have that sentence bouncing around in my head than have the partial chorus to some Kate Perry song. Gloomier than a seal! Man I love that phrase! I’m almost tempted to give the dang book 4 stars just because of that seal reference. But then, no, I can’t, I do have too intense a memory of barely getting through 2 paragraphs before my eyes began to shut and my conscience thought started merging with that of the dream world and I’ll stay with a three star rating. But I will recommend that you read this 1907 book on political terrorism.

At the moment I try to read as much book off my shelves as I can and only supplement those with books that are public domain, so I can get them free as audiobook from LibriVox or as ebook. That made The Secret Agent the obvious choice for me when deciding which group read to read. They even had an audiobook of it at LibriVox. When I downloaded that I noticed that this was the first audiobook produced by LibriVox. One also notices this by listening, because there are still some stumbles of the narrators that would have been edited out in a newer production. Still, the overall quality of the production was quite good, considering that it was the first audiobook at LibriVox. Content-wise I found The Secret Agent one of those average books that I like well enough but where I don't feel the urge to re-read it over and over again.

I really had no idea what to expect when I opened this book so I can't say that I was disappointed. At the same time, I never really got into the book. Quite frankly, I really don't understand the point of the plot which was fairly incomprehensible. I suppose that if I had slowed down and taken more time with this book than I was willing to, then the overly complicated plot would have made more sense. I finished the book with the thought "what on earth just happened?" This is another so-called classic that I finish wondering what made the book such a classic.

3.5*

Me fue my difícil leer este libro, aunque las descripciones de los personajes son extraordinaras, (cada uno más patético que el otro), aunque perfile deliciosamente a pseudo revolucionarios de salon(que, supongo, siempre han existido y exisitran) hay algo en la propia historia que me demoro mucho la lectura. La ironia y el patetismo, tanto de los personajes como de la situación que impulsa a Verloc a tomar las acciones que toma son realmente palpables, el libro de por si no me termino de cuajar completamente.