Book review - Heart of Darkness (Joseph Conrad)
I read this on the electronic book reader on my Android phone, which is awesome and absolutely stuffed to the gunwhales with free books to read on the bus and so on. One of those books I'd always meant to read, but never got around to, and then it was namechecked by the Dark Mountain crew and seemed to fit with the things I'm interested in at the moment, so...
It was actually a really good read - just the style of fairly sparse yet rich and intense writing that I get on well with. The theme of man's inhumanity to man, as played out in African colonialism, is interesting to me personally, but I think it's one of those books that could move that theme from intellectual appreciation to emotional appreciation. If it hasn't already happened for you, obviously. I'm one of those people that it sometimes takes a while for things to move from my head to my heart. And probably vice versa
Actually, somehow in that theme it seemed to remind me of two of my favourite films - The Proposition and Dead Man. The former in its exploration of how badly we can treat people in the name of our own version of what we call civilisation, and the latter in the feeling of a man being pushed to the frontiers both of general and personal humanity, and the psychedelic epic through that journey. Maybe just me. They're both subjectively awesome films if you've not seen them yet.
Like I said, the book pushed into a lot of the stuff that I've been pondering recently. I liked the concept that I might be "becoming scientifically interesting" or having the "delicious sensation of having come across something unmistakeably real". Lovely resonant chunks :) On a more global scale, the description of the wage system cracked me up:
Besides that, they had given them every week three pieces of brass wire, each about nine inches long; and the theory was they were to buy their provisions with that currency in riverside villages. You can see how that worked. There were either no villages, or the people were hostile, or the director, who like the rest of us fed out of tins, with an occasional old he-goat thrown in, didn't want to stop the steamer for some more or less recondite reason. So, unless they swallowed the wire itself, or made loops of it to snare the fishes with, I don't see what good their extravagant salary could be to them. I must say it was paid with a regularity worthy of a large and honourable trading company.
And the forces of unsatisfied basic needs on the higher human functions:
Restraint! What possible restraint? Was it superstition, disgust, patience, fear--or some kind of primitive honour? No fear can stand up to hunger, no patience can wear it out, disgust simply does not exist where hunger is; and as to superstition, beliefs, and what you may call principles, they are less than chaff in a breeze. Don't you know the devilry of lingering starvation, its exasperating torment, its black thoughts, its sombre and brooding ferocity? Well, I do. It takes a man all his inborn strength to fight hunger properly. It's really easier to face bereavement, dishonour, and the perdition of one's soul--than this kind of prolonged hunger. Sad, but true.
Those are mostly just for my own interest ;)
It was actually a really good read - just the style of fairly sparse yet rich and intense writing that I get on well with. The theme of man's inhumanity to man, as played out in African colonialism, is interesting to me personally, but I think it's one of those books that could move that theme from intellectual appreciation to emotional appreciation. If it hasn't already happened for you, obviously. I'm one of those people that it sometimes takes a while for things to move from my head to my heart. And probably vice versa
Actually, somehow in that theme it seemed to remind me of two of my favourite films - The Proposition and Dead Man. The former in its exploration of how badly we can treat people in the name of our own version of what we call civilisation, and the latter in the feeling of a man being pushed to the frontiers both of general and personal humanity, and the psychedelic epic through that journey. Maybe just me. They're both subjectively awesome films if you've not seen them yet.
Like I said, the book pushed into a lot of the stuff that I've been pondering recently. I liked the concept that I might be "becoming scientifically interesting" or having the "delicious sensation of having come across something unmistakeably real". Lovely resonant chunks :) On a more global scale, the description of the wage system cracked me up:
Besides that, they had given them every week three pieces of brass wire, each about nine inches long; and the theory was they were to buy their provisions with that currency in riverside villages. You can see how that worked. There were either no villages, or the people were hostile, or the director, who like the rest of us fed out of tins, with an occasional old he-goat thrown in, didn't want to stop the steamer for some more or less recondite reason. So, unless they swallowed the wire itself, or made loops of it to snare the fishes with, I don't see what good their extravagant salary could be to them. I must say it was paid with a regularity worthy of a large and honourable trading company.
And the forces of unsatisfied basic needs on the higher human functions:
Restraint! What possible restraint? Was it superstition, disgust, patience, fear--or some kind of primitive honour? No fear can stand up to hunger, no patience can wear it out, disgust simply does not exist where hunger is; and as to superstition, beliefs, and what you may call principles, they are less than chaff in a breeze. Don't you know the devilry of lingering starvation, its exasperating torment, its black thoughts, its sombre and brooding ferocity? Well, I do. It takes a man all his inborn strength to fight hunger properly. It's really easier to face bereavement, dishonour, and the perdition of one's soul--than this kind of prolonged hunger. Sad, but true.
Those are mostly just for my own interest ;)