[lbo-talk] Lincoln Gordon, he dead

Dennis Claxton ddclaxton at earthlink.net
Thu Jan 14 12:39:21 PST 2010


At 12:04 PM 1/14/2010, Michael Pollak wrote:


>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.



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