The Heart of Darkness: classic or clanger

[ussusimiel]

In this thread, Lady Revel claimed that Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad was 'painful' to read. The implication was that it was 'bad'. So confident was she in her conviction that she asserted that she could never be convinced otherwise I say that that is a foolish claim to make in the face of the rhetorical power of the Watch and the depth of literary passion that flows here betimes.

Come help me convince her (or vice versa )

u.

[Orlion]

I'd say you were reading too much into her statement. As the saying goes: "There is no accounting for taste."

Though I will try to convince others of the greatness of this work, anyway. Opinions and tastes do change overtime, I for one now like Hemingway and am even considering giving that beatnik bastard Ginseng another shot.

But I'll never change my mind on Orson Scott Card. *throws down glove*

[Vader]

Heart of Darkness is one of the few things I only know the German translation. However, I totally forgot about it - I just remember that I loved it as a young man. Gotta check the original version now.

[Vraith]

Heh...if I wanted to play tit for tat with the Lady, I'd say it is because everyone important is a man, and there is violence so of course she doesn't like it.

I think what I really think, though [it was an INTP/type 5-ish reaction, and I haven't re-examined it] is that, similar to "Citizen Kane," most of its worth-as-it-stood has become so essentially basic/subliminal that it can easily feel shallow, trite, cliche.
The difference of course is that, for "Kane," everything except Welles and birth of techniques really IS shallow/trite/cliche.

[ussusimiel]

But I'll never change my mind on Orson Scott Card. *throws down glove*

Not taking up that one. I enjoy the Ender books, but I'm fairly sure that Card himself vastly overestimates what he thinks he's achieved

u.

[Avatar]

I like HoD. But it's relation to Apocalypse Now may be a big part of the reason.

I read it at university for the first time. It was one of my 1st year set-work books, and I read it for the first time the night before the exam.

Honestly, I wasn't enjoying it, and decide to smoke a joint before calling it a night, and finishing the book the following morning before taking the exam. Then while reading those last pages before sleeping, I suddenly made the connection between the book and the movie, which I had enjoyed a lot.

Suddenly I was excited, and finished it in one sitting after all. Went in the next day, wrote the paper, and afterwards asked the prof to confirm that the movie was indeed based on the book, something I had not known.

So...I'm probably biased.

--A

[ussusimiel]

Okay, where to begin with Heart of Darkness. Not using it as an appeal to authority (we're in the Library not the 'Tank after all ), but whatever your position on the exclusivity of the academic canon they generally don't include poor material and Conrad's work, in general, is right at the centre of the canon in many universities. I studied it in college (I did a cryptanalysis of Kurtz, which was fun ) and I still have the textbook I used. It is 418 pages long, of which Heart of Darkness only takes up 70 or so. It is a very widely taught and commented on text, with writers such as Ford Maddox Ford and Chinua Achebe among those who have done so. (That it was also the inspiration for 'Apocalypse Now', arguably one of the best films about war ever made, only adds to the argument for its quality.)

Granted, none of that means that you have to like it, and there is no arguing that it's a grim book (the hint is in the title ). Part of some people's difficulty with the book may be its inconclusiveness and its impressionistic form, but we are warned of this early on in the story:

The yarns of seamen have a direct simplicity, the whole meaning of which lies within the shell of a cracked nut. But Marlow was not typical (if his propensity to spin yarns be excepted), and to him the meaning of an episode was not inside like a kernel but outside, enveloping the tale which brought it out only as a glow brings out a haze, in the likeness of one of these misty halos that sometimes are made visible by the spectral illumination of moonshine.

Hmmmm! So, a grim, dark book with an impressionistic and inconclusive narrative. We may have a bit of a job on our hands

u.

[lucimay]

i'm not sure about attempting to convince someone that they should like it, but i can talk of why i like the book so well. such a thing is so subjective. for me it's all about how the language affects the reader, what holds or doesn't hold a reader's attention, what appeals or doesn't appeal to any given reader.

Apocalypse Now was my first introduction to Conrad. the film was realeased 5 days before my 21st birthday, in august of 1979, only 4 years after the fall of saigon. i had been watching that war on television for most of my life.
i have a clear and vivid memory of going to see that movie. the theater was filled with vets. before the movie began many of them were greeting each other aloud and calling out their names, battalions, companies, squad names, tours of service, etc as greetings to one another. there was, in the theater, a great sense of comraderie, support, and pride. it seemed to me that we all knew we were there to see something that hadn't been seen before.
my father had told me that the film was based on a Conrad story so i was aware that there was a book, but had never read it.
after the film ended we all, and i do mean all, sat there, watching the credits roll, in silence. no one got up to leave. no one spoke. seriously, no one left until the credits were over and the screen went dark.

i did not see the movie again nor read the book until much later.
i did see the chronicle of the production Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse when it came out. and finally, sometime in the mid 1990's saw the movie for a second time.

i read Heart of Darkness for the first time sometime around 2005 or 2006 i think. for a class called Important Literature of the 19th Century.
i was VERY taken with the language. Conrad was Polish, fluent in French, and wrote in English. much of his writing reflects this, for me, in a positive way. his style is very painterly, bordering sometimes on decorative.
(if he'd written hard-boiled detective fiction he'd be raymond chandler who is also one of my favorites. )
i connect with his narrative style. the language is very poetic to me and
draws me in. (this happens every time i read the book, not just the
first time.) Conrad is very adept at making me "feel" the mood of the
scenes.


in the class we also discussed the structure of the story.
a frame tale told by an unnamed narrator who tells the story
of marlow telling the story, which i loved. it creates a remove
from the narrative, a question of "reliability" of the narrator.
can we believe the narrator is telling the story of marlow telling
the story accurately or is it, as are most second and third hand
stories, colored by the narrator's memory of marlow whose experiences
and memories are also colored by subsequent life experiences and the
passage of time.

these are two of the reasons i love the story. the language and the
structure.

i'm not even going to start on themes and motifs in this post.
i've blathered enough. heh.

[Lady Revel]

Heart of Darkness! Yikes! *runs far and fast*

Vraith - you got me, lol.

Funny, funny!

[ussusimiel]

Great post, luci!

You're much more likely to convince people than I am; a passionate, erudite response will top a solely intellectual one everyday

I agree that liking something is totally subjective, what I am aiming for is to foster appreciation. The more of the quality and qualities of the book that are revealed the harder, I think, it is for someone to hold a wholly negative opinion of it.

Resistance is futile, Lady Revel!

u.

P.S. I always think that I'm doing something right when luci breaks cover, even if it's being wrong in an annoying way!

[lucimay]

P.S. I always think that I'm doing something right when luci breaks cover, even if it's being wrong in an annoying way!

[Avatar]

Good on you U. It does seem to be becoming an increasingly rare occurrence. Don't fade away LuciMay.

--A

[lucimay]

Good on you U. It does seem to be becoming an increasingly rare occurrence. Don't fade away LuciMay.

--A

i won't. i've just been busy moving my entire life from
san francisco and ger to virginia and creator! lol!!
i'm still adjusting to suburbia and roomates (creator's son,
sister, and creator's son's best friend - Mox from pantheon -
all live with us. so i feel like sort of a dorm mommy here)
i'd faded out of WoW for a bit too.
but i'm starting to get a routine here and am missing my
peeps in wow and on the watch so i hazard a guess you'll
be seeing more of me than you have in the last 6 mos or so.
and thanks for missing me

[Avatar]

Of course we miss you. And house mother probably quite suits you.

Oh, and we don't care if you skip WoW to be here.

--A

[ussusimiel]

When I looked at the character of Kurtz and what it might have been that drove him to do what he did, this section from early in the book came into sharper focus:

"I began to feel slightly uneasy. You know I am not used to such ceremonies, and there was something ominous in the atmosphere. It was just as though I had been let into some conspiracy— I don't know— something not quite right; and I was glad to get out. In the outer room the two women knitted black wool feverishly. People were arriving, and the younger one was walking back and forth introducing them. The old one sat on her chair. Her flat cloth slippers were propped up on a foot-warmer, and a cat reposed on her lap. She wore a starched white affair on her head, had a wart on one cheek, and silver-rimmed spectacles hung on the tip of her nose. She glanced at me above the glasses. The swift and indifferent placidity of that look troubled me. Two youths with foolish and cheery countenances were being piloted over, and she threw at them the same quick glance of unconcerned wisdom. She seemed to know all about them and about me too. An eerie feeling came over me. She seemed uncanny and fateful. Often far away there I thought of these two, guarding the door of Darkness, knitting black wool as for a warm pall, one introducing, introducing continuously to the unknown, the other scrutinizing the cheery and foolish faces with unconcerned old eyes. 'Ave! Old knitter of black wool. Morituri te salutant.'* Not many of those she looked at ever saw her again— not half, by a long way.

[*'Hail!....Those who are about to die salute you.']

The two knitting Fates have hints of Arachne and spiders and there is also the question of who is the third Fate (the one who cuts the thread of Life). (Kurtz's fiancé, who only appears at the very end of the story, is an obvious candidate). The atmosphere of the Colosseum is invoked and air of the doom that accompanies it. And also the implication that the narrator is at the portal of Hell, 'the door of Darkness', all add to a sense that whatever is to come is almost beyond the imagination to fathom.

u.