Volume 29, Number 20 · December 16, 1982
A Note on a Borrowing by Conrad
By V.S. Naipaul
'The Return' (in Tales of Unrest, 1898) is an early story by Conrad. It is about 20,000 words long, and Conrad worked on it for four or five tormenting months in 1897. The labor was not really rewarded. 'The Return' was too long and too difficult for the magazines Edward Garnett, Conrad's friend and adviser, didn't like it. And Conrad himself seems later to have felt that the story was a failure—though he welcomed kind words about it ('for I know how much the writing of that fantasy has cost me in sheer toil, in temper and in disillusion').
Feature, 1397 words
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