sh0ck3r on 4/6/2009 at 23:08
I switched books when I got a ways into the Quentin section not so much out of difficulty but due to disappointment compared to the Benji section, which I found immersive and powerful and evoking nostalgia for childhood. The disapointment was partly due to my feeling that is was like a token gesture to the modernist SoC world, i.e. "Hey, I can do this too." It was still great literature but I need to keep the ball rolling and there is a ton of high-quality, lucid reading available.
I'll probably pick up the book again some time down the road but I'm binging on Russian lit right now. I've read Notes from Underground and after Anna Karenina I am going to read the Brothers Karamazov.
june gloom on 4/6/2009 at 23:17
The Wild Shore is a decent read so far (2 chapters in.) I'd heard the Three Californias books weren't that great, but the people who told me that were basically assho(
http://ttlg.com/forums/member.php?u=21623) les who didn't like anything.
Angel Dust on 5/6/2009 at 13:31
Quote Posted by Aja
The Quentin section is probably the most difficult to read but you shouldn't have given up. I was reading it a few months ago, wired on americanos, super-alert, and by the end it practically had me in tears even though I wasn't entirely sure what was happening. The last few pages of that chapter are monumental.
Just finished it and agree 100%, especially with the whole emotional power still hitting home even if I wasn't quite sure what was going on. When I finished it, I just sat there for a minute or two, completely stunned. I think I'm going to read the first section again before getting stuck into
Heart of Darkness.
Matthew on 5/6/2009 at 15:04
So am I! :D
sh0ck3r on 5/6/2009 at 17:03
Quote Posted by Angel Dust
Heart of Darkness.
Heart of Darkness is endless meandering about how everything is both bleak and beautiful. Perhaps it was a result of "splitting," i.e. in borderline personality disorder. The Secret Agent is probably better. And if you want the perspective of a racist imperialist, Carlyle is a more amusing fool.
Aja on 5/6/2009 at 17:19
Heart of Darkness isn't told from the perspective of a racist imperialist, though.
sh0ck3r on 5/6/2009 at 17:27
I'm talking about Conrad's perspective:
"A certain enormous buck nigger encountered in Haiti fixed my conception of blind, furious, unreasoning rage, as manifested in the human animal to the end of my days. Of the nigger I used to dream for years afterwards."
But anyway, you'd be wrong even if I were talking about the main character. Marlowe is an imperialist, notwithstanding any haphazard, implicit criticisms of imperialism, who says:
"And whiles I had to look after the savage who was a fireman...to look at him was as edifying as seeing a dog in a parody of breeches and a feather hat, walking on his hind-legs...he was useful because he had been instructed".
It doesn't matter though. The book is weak.
Aja on 5/6/2009 at 17:52
A few passages that are written quite in character with the common perspectives of the time are hardly proof of racism on Conrad's part. To the contrary: if Heart of Darkness is a racist novel, then it is absolutely meaningless.
sh0ck3r on 5/6/2009 at 18:07
I would disagree with the first part of what you said and so would Chinua Achebe. I don't see how the second part is coherent, although I do think Heart of Darkness is insignificant with or without its racism. it's just an extended and boring meditation on how serene and scary nature and humanity is.
june gloom on 5/6/2009 at 18:35
Heart of Darkness, besides being a radical indictment of the effects of colonialism, is the basis of one of my favourite movies of all time so you can go get buried alive in a septic tank if you think it's insignificant.
