 First book edition (US) | |
| Author | Joseph Conrad |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | Adventure story |
| Publisher | Pall Mall Magazine |
Publication date | 1902 |
| Publication place | United Kingdom |
| Media type | Print (hardback & paperback) |
| OCLC | 2312277 |
Typhoon is a novella byJoseph Conrad, begun in 1899 and serialised inPall Mall Magazine in January–March 1902. Its first book publication was in New York byPutnam in 1902; it was also published in Britain inTyphoon and Other Stories byHeinemann in 1903.
Captain MacWhirr sails theNan-Shan, a British-built steamer running under theSiamese flag, into atyphoon—a maturetropical cyclone of the northwestern part of thePacific Ocean. Other characters include the young Jukes—most probably analter ego of Conrad from the time he had sailed under captain John McWhir—and Solomon Rout, the chief engineer. While MacWhirr, who, according to Conrad, "never walked on this Earth"—is emotionally estranged from his family and crew, and though he refuses to consider an alternative course to skirt the typhoon, his indomitable will in the face of a superior natural force elicits grudging admiration.
Conrad "broke new ground" by showing the ways a steam ship differs from a sailing vessel, an historic shift occurring at the time: for example how the crew are broken into "sailors and firemen [engineers]"; the unromantic labours of Hackett and Beal; and the captain as a mirror of his ship, isolated from nature and lacking the power of imagination.[1]
Stylistically, Conrad made "perhaps the most celebratedellipsis in modern short fiction".[1] At the end of chapter V the story reaches a climactic point, when the ship barely makes it into the eye of the typhoon and faces a final challenge to exit the storm through the eye wall:
This is followed by a single sentence:
The story then leaps forward in time with the ship back in port, the events unstated of how this happened. This was an innovative technique with hints ofpost-modernism:[1] Conrad challenges the reader to fill in the events of the story themselves. The break in the chronology is particularly effective, and jarring, as the preceding passages had been so detailed that the time it took to read the novella and the real time of the story were not so different.[1]
In 1887, Conrad worked as chief mate on theHighland Forest under Captain John McWhir, whom he portrays in the novel as "McWhirr".[2] He drew upon this six months' voyage for the novel.[3]
Conrad once dictated to biographer and friendRichard Curle a list of ships he had served on, and the stories they were connected to. The connections might have been minor (a single character or incident) or major (a complete voyage), but Conrad did not indicate which. ForTyphoon, he said it "suggested" the steamerJohn P. Best which he had served on.[4][5]
Joseph Conrad dedicated the book toCunninghame Graham, a fellow writer and Scots radical who was an enthusiastic supporter of Conrad from his earliest publications.[6]
Typhoon public domain audiobook atLibriVox