Comments | bookfails: Heart of Darkness

polarisdib in bookfails

Heart of Darkness

Dec 30, 2009 12:42

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the movie was better, author last names a-f, it's literature dammit

Comments 35

notoriousreign December 30 2009, 20:27:34 UTC

I actually agree with you. I had to read it for school and it was just so hard to slug through. I'm glad I'm not the only one who didn't like it. ><

bubblefaerie December 30 2009, 20:30:24 UTC

I did not particularly care for this book either. I haven't read it since high school so I couldn't say exactly why, though.

intertribal December 30 2009, 20:32:23 UTC

I agree that Conrad doesn't make you "care" about the characters, but IMO that actually makes the ideas come across way harder. And I would say the same is true of Apocalypse Now.

But, Heart of Darkness is one of my favorite books, so I'm biased.

random_prophet December 30 2009, 20:44:37 UTC

...man I was going to post this rant but it would be a lot less articulate and more bitching about the formatting; namely, the endless walls of text.

I think Kurtz's final words aren't about colonialism or capitalism or anything like that. No, Conrad was being postmodern, man. In Kurtz's madness, he broke the fourth wall and saw the horrible, horrible formatting with no breaks for in-story dialogue or anything else. That is the real horror. There is no convincing me otherwise.

Goddamn, Conrad. Why would you think that's a good idea. Was it a metaphor for the impenetrable jungle or something? Anyway, I didn't hate what I could absorb from the walls of text when my eyes weren't glazing over, but I think Apocalypse Now was better at evoking the kind of "...holy shit, man" feeling at the end that I think the book was meant to evoke. Probably because it was a movie instead of walls of text.

polarisdib December 30 2009, 20:50:16 UTC

"I think Kurtz's final words aren't about colonialism or capitalism or anything like that. No, Conrad was being postmodern, man. In Kurtz's madness, he broke the fourth wall and saw the horrible, horrible formatting with no breaks for in-story dialogue or anything else. That is the real horror. There is no convincing me otherwise."

Hahaha! "The horror, the horror.... tl;dr."

--PolarisDiB

cesaretech December 30 2009, 20:58:28 UTC

As bad as Conrad was, no one built monstrous walls of text like the eighteenth-century writers. I love the prose, but if I come across a page like that, I have to force myself to look away, lest I go blind.

random_prophet December 30 2009, 21:00:42 UTC

See, somehow I can put up with Jane Austen, but reading Conrad was... the worst...

I think I had the same problem when I tried to read Dostoevsky. It seemed very interesting but oh my god, tiny font+huge paragraphs=whyyyyyy.

Thread 11

demented2468 December 30 2009, 20:59:15 UTC

I agree. The idea was interesting but the writing was so slow and boring. The book wasn't that long but it felt like a struggle the slog through

polarisdib December 31 2009, 09:02:58 UTC

Considering I'm a structuralist, I should appreciate that, right? That the book is a struggle, a slog, like the journey itself? But I don't, mostly because it's not just the journey but everything that is written in this book that is so damnedably dense, and because there are other, better ways to structure this story. Anyway, the reason I bring this up is because I always like the idea of someone making a book read exactly like the drama inside of it, and in THAT way Conrad excelled. He just, you know, didn't intend for that connection, which is the problem.

--DiB