>And the only thing remaining that people have to read in school is
>this piece of shit of story that wonders if maybe the real problem
>is that colonialism might allow people to go rogue. And thinks that
>is getting at the "heart" of it.
Just as Apocalypse Now did with Vietnam.
>It's not only that the crime of the Congo was the size of the
>holocaust and nobody could miss it. It's that nobody who cared did
>miss it. It was the occasion, at the turn of the century, for the
>first really large scale international movements to publicize the
>crimes of imperialism. They were very dogged, very detailed, and
>they got their stuff out everywhere. And it echoed all of the place.
>Mark Twain even wrote his own satiric book on it ("King Leopold's
>Soliloquy.") You couldn't miss it.
That complicates the "man of his time" argument.
>His understanding couldn't be more trivial. It's not simply a
>betrayal of politics and history. It's a betrayal of
>literature. It's supposed to add something. It's supposed to be
>worth our fucking time. It's supposed to be better than reading the
>newspapers. And this isn't.
Hear hear. I think it's popularity in lit classes is illustrated by the student in the Guardian article who is quoted as saying that in Heart of Darkness Africa is "merely a setting for the disintegration of the mind of Mr Kurtz." That's apparently the way Francis Coppola read it.