3Vote!
The Guardian (Free subscription) | 11/06/2009
... thus far attached themselves to this most extraordinary tale, which is pitched somewhere between a Joseph Conrad novel, one by Freddie Forsyth, and an exquisite establishment satire. It is like the Sarlacc, that monstrous pit in Return of the Jedi, threatening to suck in multiple members of the ruling class, and digest them with agonising slowness for our general entertainment. And...
3Vote!
BrontëBlog (Free subscription) | 11/05/2009
... or Emily Brontë in Wuthering Heights or Nathaniel Hawthorne in The Scarlet Letter or Joseph Conrad in Heart of Darkness is that - as in the work of Stephen Poliakoff - the necessity of the telling is accorded far greater significance than the telling itself. This priority misses the reliance of the former on the latter. ( Leo Robson ) Literary Minded features Emily Maguire, author...
4Vote!
Christian Science Monitor (Free subscription) | 11/05/2009
... the topics of two of his most controversial older essays: “An Image of Africa,” on the racism of Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness,” and “The African Writer and the English Language,” on the use of English by African writers.“Politics and Politicians of Language in African Literature” renews Achebe’s argument with Ngugi wa Thiong’o, the best-known proponent of the idea that African...
5Vote!
World Hum (Free subscription) | 11/04/2009
Traveling the same year Joseph Conrad’s heart darkened on the Congo (and a year before the Trans-Siberian Railway construction began), Chekhov went the hard way—overland, across 6,000 miles of muddy roads and rivers, an epic three months one way. While living on the island, he woke to the clanking sounds of prisoners in chains, witnessed bare-backed lashings, and noted how wives and daughters...
3Vote!
Mission & Justice (Free subscription) | 11/04/2009
... assumptions of racial and cultural superiority. “The conquest of the earth,” Marlow declares in Joseph Conrad’s classic novella Heart of Darkness, “which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look at it too much.” Beyond the brutal reality of this process, which Marlow bluntly...
5Vote!
Ferdy on Films, etc. (Free subscription) | 11/04/2009
... for me. Eyes Wide Shut did for writer Arthur Schnitzler’s Traumnovelle what Apocalypse Now did for Joseph Conrad—transpose it to the modern day without ejecting its crucial flavour of timeless, mystified sensuality filtered through a cutting sarcasm that was Kubrick’s own. Frederic Raphael, who wrote the screenplay with Kubrick’s aid, had tackled similar themes, with some similar...
