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When ``Lord Jim`` first appeared in 1900, many took Joseph Conrad to task for couching an entire novel in the form of an extended conversation - a ripping good yarn, if you like (one critic in The Academy complained that the narrator `was telling that after-dinner story to his companions for eleven solid hours`). Conrad defended his method, insisting that people really do talk for that long, and listen as well. In fact his chatty masterwork requires no defense - it offers up not only linguistic pleasures but a timeless exploration of morality. The eponymous Jim is a young, good-looking, genial, and naive water-clerk on the Patna, a cargo ship plying Asian waters. He is, we are told, `the kind of fellow you would, on the strength of his looks, leave in charge of the deck`.