I don’t get the sea and boat shit, maybe for one book I get it but when literally all your books are about it you must be some kind of autist or basedboy
Before he became a writer, he had a 19-year career sailing in the French, then the British, merchant marine
During the height of the British Empire, he sailed from the French Riveria to the Caribbean, around the Cape of Good Hope to Australia (Sydney Harbour) and later from London (the capital of the world's richest and most powerful country) to Bangkok, Siam (Thailand). Before returning to London he explored Singapore's harbor district, which would be the scene for many of his pages
Then he sailed London to Madras, India. took a train to Bombay, then sailed back to London
Then he sailed from England to Singapore, then Calcutta then back to London
Then Amsterdam to the the capital and largest city of Central Java, to Singapore, where he joined a ship that routinely penetrated deep inland, steaming up the rivers in SE Asia
then as captain of a barque, he left Bangkok, Siam (Thailand), to Singapore, to Sydney, Australia, to Melbourne, to Port Louis, Mauritius, to Melbourne, to Port Adelaide
>Once the first charm of commanding a ship faded, the future writer must have felt the dreariness of sailing... He must have been oppressed by a sense of being cut off from Europe, deprived of newspapers, books and current news. ...[T]he command of a small barque with a crew of nine could satisfy neither [Conrad's] ambitions nor his needs"
then he returned to Englandand began writing his first novel,
Then he sailed to Congo, explored the Congo (which inspired his Heart of Darkness )
Orson Welles adapted and starred in Heart of Darkness in a CBS Radio broadcast in the 30s
the best film adaptation of Heart of Darkness is Francis Ford Coppola's 1979 film Apocalypse Now, which moves the story from the Congo to Vietnam and Cambodia during the Vietnam War
Chinua Achebe called it a "an offensive and deplorable book" so he wrote his novel Things Fall Apart as his response ... Achebe wanted to write a novel about Africa and Africans by an African.
In the Polish People's Republic, translations of Conrad's works were openly published, except for Under Western Eyes
though Conrad protested that Dostoyevsky was "too Russian for me" and that Russian literature generally was "repugnant to me hereditarily and individually," Under Western Eyes (1911) is viewed as Conrad's response to the themes explored in Dostoyevsky's crime and Punishment
The plot of Under Western Eyes (completed 1910) is kicked off by the assassination of a brutal Russian government minister, modelled after the real-life 1904 assassination of Russian Minister of the Interior Vyacheslav von Plehve.
In Under Western Eyes, Razumov betrays a fellow University of St. Petersburg student, the revolutionist Victor Haldin (the assassin). Haldin is tortured and hanged by the authorities. Later Razumov, sent as a government spy to Geneva, a centre of anti-tsarist intrigue, meets the mother and sister of Haldin, who share Haldin's liberal convictions. Razumov falls in love with the sister and confesses his betrayal of her brother; later, he makes the same avowal to assembled revolutionists, and their professional executioner bursts his eardrums, making him deaf for life. Razumov staggers away, is knocked down by a streetcar, and finally returns as a cripple to Russia
Interesting you say that because I considered that to be one of his best books because the boat stuff gets tiring after awhile. And I say this as someone who has read four or five of his books.
I've only read Heart of Darkness and the N.. I mean Children of the Sea.
Saw them both through, but can't say I enjoyed either very much.
HoD is just miserable, not much to say. I get the point, I just don't find it particularly profound or engaging. Apocalypse Now does everything HoD does but more succinctly and with more gusto.
Children of the Sea was somewhat more enjoyable, but only because I found myself in a particularly maritime mood. That being said, I really couldn't appreciate the extremely verbose descriptions of the ship (but at least now I know what a fo'c'sle is). A perilous storm at sea just isn't quite as riveting when you have to stop every two sentences to find out what a catharpin or a knighthead is. The eponymous Black person is kind of a source of tension, I guess. The only problem is that the conflict is resolved in the most boring manner possible . If there is anything meaningful to be gleaned from that outcome (beyond being a joke at the reader's expense), it is completely lost on me.
Conrad has the unfortunate ability to make a hazardous gale feel exactly like the doldrums. I'm not saying good books have to be action-filled pageturners, but insubstantial impressionist works spread across a comically oversized verbal canvas don't exactly leave me wanting more. There are far better authors to waste your time on.
Wow, I just briefly revisited HoD after writing this, and I finally get it!
Nobody (not even Conrad) gave a shit about this waste of ink during his lifetime. It was rediscovered long after Conrad's death by a bunch of Freudo-Trotskyist academics who coincidentally shared a hatred of Europe/NATO/Esau/Amalek.
I can't believe I didn't realize it was just "white man bad" dressed up in tedious darkness and mystery and darkness and darkness and darkness and oh by the way do you get the metaphor yet? You know.. the heart thing? Shits dark yo. You know it's really an exploration of the psyche and if you just consider that savagery and colonialism is bad it'll all make sense. Did I mention the darkness and the ambiguity and the groundbreaking poststructuralism (a mere 34 years after Peer Gynt... bravo!)!
To think I was almost gaslit into believing that I had missed something profound here. This is just midwit-slop for freshmen who were pleasantly surprised to find out they could get a B by parroting their professors' hatred of whites.
This type of shit really boils my piss. I'm not going to defend colonialism as I find it inherently immoral, but this kind of Emperors-New-Clothes bullshit almost makes me want to.
what a hideous little freak you are. another book, another battle won: "it's just [buzzword buzzword buzzword]," phew, your withered little soul is once again safe from any threat of change. what's the point of teaching a dung beetle to read?
No, good books are good in their own right. Sure, a book can be decent in light of a well-informed political take, but masterpieces are sublime without ever needing to sink to that level.
I used to think there was something to Conrad, something I'd just "get" once I passed a certain age (like I had previously experienced with writers like Ibsen). Now I realize that the reason behind academics rediscovering and forcing this torpid tedium into the canon was entirely political. Sure, old Joe certainly could write a captivating sentence. Maybe he could even meander his way through a paragraph or two in a not entirely uncomfortable manner. The problem occurs when you compile these shiny trinkets and realize that the whole is far from a justification for the sum of its parts. Not pure rubbish, mind you (my last comment was probably a bit harsh), but certainly overrated.
If you want to see buzzwords, take a look at the criticism surrounding Heart of Darkness. It is among the most profane and overtly political miasmas that have ever emanated from a piece of fiction. Any book worth reading will have a couple of Marxist gnats buzz by and claim a bellyful of blood, but with HoD it is almost as if the buzzing originates from the murky waters within. Whenever I take a glance at a text's critical reception and find nothing but the most fashionable shibboleths, I can be fairly certain that there is a complete lack of "there" there. If there ever was some living substance in this work, it has long since perished to the parasites. I would truly appreciate if you could guide me in the direction of an analysis that goes beyond "colonialism was really really bad and these people were racists which is also bad".
I don’t get the sea and boat shit, maybe for one book I get it but when literally all your books are about it you must be some kind of autist or basedboy
Before he became a writer, he had a 19-year career sailing in the French, then the British, merchant marine
During the height of the British Empire, he sailed from the French Riveria to the Caribbean, around the Cape of Good Hope to Australia (Sydney Harbour) and later from London (the capital of the world's richest and most powerful country) to Bangkok, Siam (Thailand). Before returning to London he explored Singapore's harbor district, which would be the scene for many of his pages
Then he sailed London to Madras, India. took a train to Bombay, then sailed back to London
Then he sailed from England to Singapore, then Calcutta then back to London
Then Amsterdam to the the capital and largest city of Central Java, to Singapore, where he joined a ship that routinely penetrated deep inland, steaming up the rivers in SE Asia
then as captain of a barque, he left Bangkok, Siam (Thailand), to Singapore, to Sydney, Australia, to Melbourne, to Port Louis, Mauritius, to Melbourne, to Port Adelaide
>Once the first charm of commanding a ship faded, the future writer must have felt the dreariness of sailing... He must have been oppressed by a sense of being cut off from Europe, deprived of newspapers, books and current news. ...[T]he command of a small barque with a crew of nine could satisfy neither [Conrad's] ambitions nor his needs"
then he returned to Englandand began writing his first novel,
Then he sailed to Congo, explored the Congo (which inspired his Heart of Darkness )
Orson Welles adapted and starred in Heart of Darkness in a CBS Radio broadcast in the 30s
the best film adaptation of Heart of Darkness is Francis Ford Coppola's 1979 film Apocalypse Now, which moves the story from the Congo to Vietnam and Cambodia during the Vietnam War
Chinua Achebe called it a "an offensive and deplorable book" so he wrote his novel Things Fall Apart as his response ... Achebe wanted to write a novel about Africa and Africans by an African.
In the Polish People's Republic, translations of Conrad's works were openly published, except for Under Western Eyes
though Conrad protested that Dostoyevsky was "too Russian for me" and that Russian literature generally was "repugnant to me hereditarily and individually," Under Western Eyes (1911) is viewed as Conrad's response to the themes explored in Dostoyevsky's crime and Punishment
The plot of Under Western Eyes (completed 1910) is kicked off by the assassination of a brutal Russian government minister, modelled after the real-life 1904 assassination of Russian Minister of the Interior Vyacheslav von Plehve.
In Under Western Eyes, Razumov betrays a fellow University of St. Petersburg student, the revolutionist Victor Haldin (the assassin). Haldin is tortured and hanged by the authorities. Later Razumov, sent as a government spy to Geneva, a centre of anti-tsarist intrigue, meets the mother and sister of Haldin, who share Haldin's liberal convictions. Razumov falls in love with the sister and confesses his betrayal of her brother; later, he makes the same avowal to assembled revolutionists, and their professional executioner bursts his eardrums, making him deaf for life. Razumov staggers away, is knocked down by a streetcar, and finally returns as a cripple to Russia
The Secret Agent is one of the worst books I ever read. But Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim and Nostromo are all great.
Interesting you say that because I considered that to be one of his best books because the boat stuff gets tiring after awhile. And I say this as someone who has read four or five of his books.
Excuse me.
The WHAT of the Narcissus?!
ESL who keeps showing up the soulless ang*loids
Read Heart of Darkness two times and loved it, want to read Lord Jim.
I've only read Heart of Darkness and the N.. I mean Children of the Sea.
Saw them both through, but can't say I enjoyed either very much.
HoD is just miserable, not much to say. I get the point, I just don't find it particularly profound or engaging. Apocalypse Now does everything HoD does but more succinctly and with more gusto.
Children of the Sea was somewhat more enjoyable, but only because I found myself in a particularly maritime mood. That being said, I really couldn't appreciate the extremely verbose descriptions of the ship (but at least now I know what a fo'c'sle is). A perilous storm at sea just isn't quite as riveting when you have to stop every two sentences to find out what a catharpin or a knighthead is. The eponymous Black person is kind of a source of tension, I guess. The only problem is that the conflict is resolved in the most boring manner possible . If there is anything meaningful to be gleaned from that outcome (beyond being a joke at the reader's expense), it is completely lost on me.
Conrad has the unfortunate ability to make a hazardous gale feel exactly like the doldrums. I'm not saying good books have to be action-filled pageturners, but insubstantial impressionist works spread across a comically oversized verbal canvas don't exactly leave me wanting more. There are far better authors to waste your time on.
Wow, I just briefly revisited HoD after writing this, and I finally get it!
Nobody (not even Conrad) gave a shit about this waste of ink during his lifetime. It was rediscovered long after Conrad's death by a bunch of Freudo-Trotskyist academics who coincidentally shared a hatred of Europe/NATO/Esau/Amalek.
I can't believe I didn't realize it was just "white man bad" dressed up in tedious darkness and mystery and darkness and darkness and darkness and oh by the way do you get the metaphor yet? You know.. the heart thing? Shits dark yo. You know it's really an exploration of the psyche and if you just consider that savagery and colonialism is bad it'll all make sense. Did I mention the darkness and the ambiguity and the groundbreaking poststructuralism (a mere 34 years after Peer Gynt... bravo!)!
To think I was almost gaslit into believing that I had missed something profound here. This is just midwit-slop for freshmen who were pleasantly surprised to find out they could get a B by parroting their professors' hatred of whites.
This type of shit really boils my piss. I'm not going to defend colonialism as I find it inherently immoral, but this kind of Emperors-New-Clothes bullshit almost makes me want to.
what a hideous little freak you are. another book, another battle won: "it's just [buzzword buzzword buzzword]," phew, your withered little soul is once again safe from any threat of change. what's the point of teaching a dung beetle to read?
No, good books are good in their own right. Sure, a book can be decent in light of a well-informed political take, but masterpieces are sublime without ever needing to sink to that level.
I used to think there was something to Conrad, something I'd just "get" once I passed a certain age (like I had previously experienced with writers like Ibsen). Now I realize that the reason behind academics rediscovering and forcing this torpid tedium into the canon was entirely political. Sure, old Joe certainly could write a captivating sentence. Maybe he could even meander his way through a paragraph or two in a not entirely uncomfortable manner. The problem occurs when you compile these shiny trinkets and realize that the whole is far from a justification for the sum of its parts. Not pure rubbish, mind you (my last comment was probably a bit harsh), but certainly overrated.
If you want to see buzzwords, take a look at the criticism surrounding Heart of Darkness. It is among the most profane and overtly political miasmas that have ever emanated from a piece of fiction. Any book worth reading will have a couple of Marxist gnats buzz by and claim a bellyful of blood, but with HoD it is almost as if the buzzing originates from the murky waters within. Whenever I take a glance at a text's critical reception and find nothing but the most fashionable shibboleths, I can be fairly certain that there is a complete lack of "there" there. If there ever was some living substance in this work, it has long since perished to the parasites. I would truly appreciate if you could guide me in the direction of an analysis that goes beyond "colonialism was really really bad and these people were racists which is also bad".
I read Conrad because I like boats 🙂
Nice 🙂
Fricking boring.
Victory is his best book don't @ me.
he is based as he is an esl yet mogs most english writers at their own game.
the way he writes is obviously esl and i thought heart of darkness dragged on. i own 5 of his books and i don't think i'll read one again