Notes on Life and Letters Book

The title might mislead some since it sounds like one of those thick "Life and Letters" biographies that were fashionable a century ago. Instead, this book is a miscellany, collecting some of Conrad's book reviews and essays. A such, it is a mixed bag.
The collection is divided into two parts, with the "Letters" sections, his reviews, coming first. The first writer treated, after an essay on books, is Henry James. I enjoyed reading what one great writer appreciated about another. Among the keen insights was one I fond particularly apt: James refuses to fulfill the desire for finality that readers want from writers. Some of the other authors he expresses his admiration for are Turgenev, Maupassant, and Stephen Crane. Less interesting were some lukewarm and ironic reviews of books now forgotten.
The second section is entitled "Life," but that's only true in a limited sense. It contains Conrad's views on some topical political issues of the day. These range from the Russo-Japanese war and the question of Polish independence to the sinking of the Titanic. Particularly the latter still makes for great reading because of Conrad's mourning for the lost passengers and seamen mixed with his white-hot scorn for the irresponsible "bigger is better" marketing of the commercial interests.
Conrad is a great writer, but very much of his time. This is not only evident in his elaborate, century-old prose, but also in his attitudes toward people of color and women. Toward the first, he displays a benign colonial superiority, toward the latter, a chivalrous patronization. Admittedly, there were indeed worse ways to think back then, and still are. And it's a futile wish that our favorite writers should be politically correct according to our standards.
He is less charitable toward Russians and Germans ("There was little to choose between the methods of Russian barbarism, which were both crude and rotten, and the cultivated brutality tinged with contempt of Germany's superficial, grinding civilisation"). His feeling is understandable, given the fate of his native land, Poland, at their hands. As I read the first few essays in the section, my interest waned. But then I was pulled up by a lengthy account of his fatefully-timed visit back to Cracow, arriving just before the guns of August, and kept there by the changed circumstance longer than planned, narrowly escaping being held by the Habsburg empire as an enemy alien. This essay alone made the book worth reading. Five stars for it and the Henry James and first of the Titanic essays, three stars overall.