Book

Author:	Joseph Conrad
Title:	Heart Of Darkness
Publisher:	Penguin Books
Country:	UK
Date:	1994
Format:	Paperback
ISBN-10:	0140620486
Barcode:	9780140620481
Total Editions:	2
Rating:	6.0 Rate
Collection:	I Own It I Want It
Community:	1 Owns
Price Guide:	Valuation Page
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Published in Penguin Popular Classics

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Magic Marmalade 31st Dec 2022		Rated 6/10 Category: Small book with a disproportionately large reputation. I've been meaning to read this since the early nineties... (When of course, Apocalypse Now hoved into my consciousness - this being the prime source material, and inspiration) ...And I've got to say, it's one of those books that has a massive reputation that ultimately disappoints. As with Catcher In The Rye, the first thing that you notice is how tiny a book it is, with a little over a hundred pages there... (I felt inclined to pick the book up by the spine, and give it a good shake, to see if more words fell out of it that I might have accidentally missed - "Is that it?!!") ...And like Catcher In The Rye, it's had such a huge influence on later renditions, either of the story itself, or versions of it, and better, and more refined, that the true original can't really live up to those iterations of the central idea. In this case, it's the whole "going up river" "Into (of course) the heart of darkness", spiralling into insanity deal. Here though, it's fairly tame, and a bit, dare I say, uneventful compared, at least, to Apocalypse Now - Granted, this is largely an effect of the times in which this was published, compared to the times that movie was made, in terms of what could be presented to an audience (shifts in morality, taste, public de-sensitisation to graphic material, images / ideas etc. But even if this is so, The nutbag at the end of the pain-bow (Kurtz) is often spoken of, as in the movie adaptation, in order mythologise him, and make him grow in our minds with dread and anticipation, but even when we finally meet him here, nothing much really happens, and he is rather underwhelming... so much so, that you wonder what all the fuss was about in telling the tale leading up to it. As this is the tale told by a seaman to a new crew on a boat for seafaring expedition, about a previous experience, it has the feel of a ghost story being told, and the writing, in this regard, is really great, and with the essential bones of the story, and the concept of the character of Kurtz being a very powerful one until the let down of meeting the reality, you can see the powerful inspiration of an idea for Francis Ford Coppola to make the movie he did. What is worth while in reading this is the uneasy comparisons, and unspoken statement of the original with Apocalypse Now, in that he equates, and finds parallels between 60s America, and a late nineteenth century colonial power, exploiting, and attempting to subjugate an "inferior" people (commercially / politically motivated racism at it's best folks!), by sending one group of people into a more... *"primal"* setting that the layers of "Civilization" cannot cope with, or understand, once peeled away, layer by layer... and causing the disintegration of the artificial modern social and moral constructs to precipitate insanity in those that venture there. So a good companion piece to the movie, or curio, but in this case, the movie wins, hands down, so you wouldn't be missing much by not reading the source text. Apocalypse now makes all these points, more graphically, effectively, and thoroughly. ✔︎ Helpful Review?

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Other Editions

Book

Joseph Conrad - Heart Of Darkness - Penguin Classics - Paperback - UK - 0141182431 (2000)