Meet my metaphors #1: Lord Jim

Hedy Lamar as Tondelayo in the 1942 film "White Cargo."
Thurber, writing in 1933, was referring to the book.

     I'm not in the paper for the next two weeks — taking time off. So as not to leave you in the lurch, I'm starting with a series I'm calling "Meet my metaphors." Why that? Honestly, I'm the type of writer who would rather coin a sharp, original metaphor than break real news. Assuming that's a "type" and not solely me. Is that a good or bad thing? Probably both. As always, your indulgence is appreciated.

     Lord Jim, Conrad's haunted wanderer, seemed the natural place to begin.

     Growing up, I loved James Thurber. Loved "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty." Loved "The Catbird Seat." Loved the cartoons. Loved the man himself, half blind, often fully drunk, early on pairing up, quite improbably, with the trim, generally upright E.B. White. As a young man, I wanted to be James Thurber.
     I particularly loved his similes. Nearing 40, his "faculties may have closed up like flowers at evening." He worries about heading to his publisher and disappearing "like Ambrose Bierce." Both found in the second paragraph of "Preface to a Life," at the beginning of his classic "My Life and Hard Times."
    That slim volume's "A Note at the End" contains this passage that has never left me:

    The mistaken exits and entrances of my thirties have moved me several times to some thought of spending the rest of my days wandering aimlessly around the South Seas, like a character out of Conrad, silent and inscrutable. But the necessity for frequent visits to my oculist and dentist has prevented this. You can't be running back from Singapore every few months to get your lenses changed and still retain the proper mood for wandering. Furthermore, my horn-rimmed glasses and my Ohio accent betray me, even when I sit on the terrasses of little tropical cafes, wearing a pith helmet, starting straight ahead, and twitching a muscle in my jaw. I found this out when I tried wandering around the West Indies one summer. Instead of being followed by the whispers of men and the glances of women, I was followed by bead salesmen and native women with postcards. Nor did any dark girl, looking at all like Tondelayo in "White Cargo," come forward and offer to go to pieces with me. They tried to sell me baskets.
     Under these circumstances it is impossible to inscrutable, and a wanderer who isn't inscrutable might just as well be back at Broad and High Streets in Columbus sitting in the Baltimore Dairy Lunch
     There was, of course, even for Conrad's Lord Jim, no running away. The cloud of his special discomfiture followed him like a pup, no matter what ships he took or what wildernesses he entered.

      I thought about, and referred to, this passage for many years — I think it kept me from ever even being tempted to become one of those adventuresome young people who travel for long stretches, spend a long time staring at some distant horizon, considering themselves thus ennobled. Now that I reread the above, I realize that one of my favorite similes I believe I coined — that certain annoyances follow me "quacking like a pull toy duck," is just a reworking of Thurber's tagalong pup.

     Eventually I read Joseph Conrad's "Lord Jim," and was surprised at how dense and difficult it is. 

    But a handy metaphor — that is, an image useful in explaining something. In 2020, trying to fathom the collapse of Republican leadership in "Struggling to understand GOP cowardice," I summarized the plot — and you know a metaphor is on its last legs when you have to explain it:

     But when reflecting on the moral repugnance of men like Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio — four powerful Republican senators who know better, who see what Trump is attempting, yet do nothing, or worse abet him — I search history in vain for similar craven cowardice.
     Literature offers a few: “Lord Jim,” by Joseph Conrad. Jim is a British sailor on the crew of the Patna, a ship on the Red Sea. The ship founders, and the captain and crew — and after some hesitation, Jim — abandon the ship and its 800 Muslim pilgrims.
     Only the Patna doesn’t sink. It’s towed into port, and Jim and his shipmates are publicly vilified. He wanders the world, fleeing his shame. But that’s fiction.

     The book, if I recall properly, is narrated by an admirer of Jim's, Captain Marlowe, with more homoerotic notes than I had expected in a novel written in 1900.
   Asked in 2015 to wax eloquent on the plight of Steve Bartman (have we finally forgotten?) the man unfairly blamed for the Cubs' 2003 collapse against the Marlins in a decisive game in the National League Championship, I supported his careful silence:

     What could Bartman possibly say that would reward the media for its dozen-year quest? He could have lived the existence of Job, squatting in dust at the gates of the city, and express it with the eloquence of Joseph Conrad describing Lord Jim's wanderings around the South Seas, trying to escape his shame, and frankly it would still be inadequate. Silence is his best option.

     Being a meek man afraid of rigors, of course I embrace Thurber's self-assessment, even if it means grabbing a 126-year-old character most readers have never heard of. This, from last year, writing about getting a passport of an upcoming trip aboard:

    I am what they call "a worrier." You probably already figured that out. And I knew as the cab pulled away from my house, heading off to our big trip, in addition to my worrying about the toaster coming to life and setting fire to the drapes which we don't have, and the refrigerator door hanging open, and everything else I conjure up to mock the idea that I am Conradian wanderer out of Lord Jim, I'll also worry until we get back that every checkpoint we pass would snag me on my passport. "Oh sorry Mr., ah, Steinberg, your whole trip is ruined because your passport expires five months and 27 days after this trip is scheduled to end..."

     Are you thinking what I'm thinking? Time to retire Lord Jim. Yes, I will do so. If I can. I know he's loitering languorously somewhere along one of the dusty, narrow back alleys of my brain, in white hat and linen suit, flipping through a small volume he has picked up off a stand. It will be no easy task to find him and flush him out.