> At 12:04 PM 1/14/2010, scriptum erat:
>
> >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.
Boy, poor ol' Cap'n Joe is coming in for quite a drubbing here, isn't he?
Much of this criticism falls into a familiar category -- people reproaching an author for not writing the book they would have written, if they could write books.
Would Conrad even have said that "colonialism" was what he was writing about? Much less that he meant to tell us what the "real problem" of colonialism is?
It doesn't seem likely. From my distant memories of the book, I would have said he was writing about what can happen to human character under certain circumstances.
I haven't read HoD in decades, but out of curiosity I turned over the first few pages just now. Say what you will about the old Pole, the boy could write. He's one of those authors who gives me a distinct physical sensation in my jaw and teeth when I start reading -- as if I've just bitten into something savory and firm-textured, something that's not gonna go without a fight, something that will take a lot of chewing. I literally salivate. Sorry if this is TMI.
I get this with Thackeray and Balzac -- but not with Trollope, oddly enough, though I venerate Trollope extravagantly and he may be my favorite English novelist. Seldom with the poets, apart from Spenser and Ovid (the Metamorphoses Ovid, anyway). Sometimes with Dickens. And oh, Middlemarch -- that first graf is like biting into a big thick juicy medium-rare free-range grass-fed steak. With mushroom sauce. *Wild* mushroom sauce.
--
Michael Smith mjs at smithbowen.net http://stopmebeforeivoteagain.org http://fakesprogress.blogspot.com