Nihilism & Working

I've hit a slog stretch lately and, while having put away The Leopard by Lampedusa, Working by Studs Terkel, and The Myth of Sisyphus by Camus, I haven't felt inspired or gripped by any of them. I did enjoy Working more than the other two because of 1) the novelty of reading interviews with people who worked now-obsolete jobs and 2) reinforcing the truth that, generally, your job is no "better" than the next person's. 

The juxtaposition of reading Sisyphus right after Working:

"The workman of today works every day in his life at the same tasks ... But it is tragic only at the rare moments when it becomes conscious." (p.90)

"I create for myself barriers between which I confine my life." (p.43)

See also: nihilism and my previous entry on Sartre's Nausea

While reading through Working, probably half of the interviewees said something to effect of their job being boring/monotonous/pointless; sortof a nihilism at the workplace. When faced with the absurdity of their jobs, some confronted it through passion (the lady who actually loved waitressing, the guy who actually loved valet parking cars) and others through family (they kept working to give their children a better life, oh hay there "Death of a Salesman" undertones).  I suppose this dovetails with the "revolt" that Camus advocates for, in opposition to suicide as the ultimate acceptance of nothingness. To revolt is to live with the knowledge of the absurdity of life. 

Other miscellaneous notes:
- reference to The Plague in Camus' short story "The Minotaur" about Oran (wait, that's a real place?)
- loved the sumptuously descriptive "Summer in Algiers"
- Justin O'Brien, I am calling you out for how shitty your French-to-English translation was. And this wasn't even a Barnes & Noble translation edition. 

Bottom line: Sub-par winter reading

 

The Waves: Woolf Returns to the Beach

The Waves is my least favorite Woolf book thus far but also allegedly the one closest to her vision. To The Lighthouse and Mrs. Dalloway were dreamy and beautiful but held together by some semblance of plot scaffolding. Here, none of that. Woolf goes directly to the essence of the thing ("inner life") and, rather than a conventional novel, we get an abstract poem-play. Beautiful, but a bit too much on the dreamy side for my taste.

to the Godrevy Lighthouse, the waves in St. Ives Bay

The fuzzy "setting" is similar to Lighthouse, with the childhood garden scenes and then recurrent ocean/beach interludes as metaphors for time passing (To the Lighthouse and the Letter H). Themes from Lighthouse appear again here: the inadequacy of language and communication, and the acute presence of time through a combination of nostalgia and Being In The Moment. The book is five friends from childhood to old age ... but they all sound the same -- on purpose, because there is no narrator. Taking things a step further than Lighthouse, where the characters were always wishing to know what others were thinking, here all the characters are the same thing, i.e., an internal monologue divided into parts.

So, in absence of a plot, what the heck is this book about?  It's about the EXPERIENCE of reading Woolf's style, with the purpose of connecting with the characters' inner lives/life. (see: Susan Sontag, On Style)  To be right now In The Moment is to have sensual perceptions and impressions, versus: "this appalling narrative business of the realist: getting on from lunch to dinner: it is false, unreal, merely conventional" (A Writer's Diary, 139).  Everything in the book -- places, people and even time -- then "exist[s] only in relation to the consciousnesses on which the novelist-poet concentrates exclusively"; basically, subjective rather than objective (Virginia Woolf and Her Works, 287).  Any event or place "exists only in the mind that is aware of it ... a single bundle of sensations, images and thoughts, hastily tied up and labelled" (VWHW, 288).  So, the complexities of friendships and life throughout the book are addressed indirectly but also MOST directly. 

As Guiguet notes in Virginia Woolf and Her Works, "a certain community of vision is undoubtedly necessary for the understanding of The Waves" (302).  I felt a better connection reading Mrs. Dalloway and especially To The Lighthouse; I tend to be uncomfortable with loosely structured books/poems/plays and really the style WAS the book here. Unanswered (unanswerable?) questions include: What is Percival representing and what's his point here? Why does Rhoda kill herself and what's with the pillar in the desert? Is there intentional symbolism for either of those or am I trying to over-interpret?

The book ends with Bernard, who, like Woolf, is the "phrase-keeper" -- although in the spirit of the book, Woolf is all of the characters and all of the characters are one another (i.e., different facets of the same entity). Bernard's pseudo-explanation at the conclusion is "enabled by means of phrases to shape life into groups and sequences and constructions" (VWHW, 294); in other words, talking about life rather than being in it, which is something he's pitied for throughout the book:

"We are all phrases in Bernard's story, things he writes down in his notebook ... He tells our story with extraordinary understanding, except of what we most feel" (The Waves, 70).

Bottom line: Stylized stream-of-consciousness, difficulty Class III rapids.

Joyce's Selfie

Post-"Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" thoughts on James Joyce --

1) I now realize I need to re-read "Dubliners" and "Portrait" with some sort of guide.

2) And definitely get a guide for "Ulysses", which is where all this mandatory Joyce reading is heading.

3) I am okay with never reading past page 7 of "Finnegan's Wake".

I don't have anything insightful or profound to say about "Portrait" except to say that the middle sermon section WILL KILL YOU.  So many naps.  And once you get past that, just wait for the end aesthetic argument.  The intro to my copy of the book (one Hugh Kenner) discusses how "Portrait" follows in writing the maturing of Stephen Dedalus (aka Joyce), with sections either mimicking his consciousness or as models of writing he would admire at a particular age.  The sermon then being his time of piousness and the philosophical argument when he's attending the university and agnostic.  There's a ton of other crafty information hidden away in the text and structure, like how odd-numbered chapters deal with father figures and even-numbered chapters with women, but this stuff is totally missed during a first naive reading (see thought #1 above).  On the ole' "experimental fiction and bildungsroman" scale, I will say that "Portait" > "The Bell Jar" and it's not even a fair comparison.  Reading Joyce always makes me feel like I'm missing half the pieces needed to comprehend the whole story (because I am), which is a nice humbling experience.

This book also left me wondering: did Joyce really sleep with that many women before he was 16?!  I always pictured him as this nerdy guy ... Pre-sermon section, things are pretty dark. 

To the Lighthouse and the Letter H

While I was in the midst of Virginia Woolf's "To the Lighthouse" (hark! a reprieve from Game of Thrones!), this article generated quite the buzz: The Top 10 Most Difficult Books.  Recalling the angst of many classmates during "Mrs. Dalloway" in college, it seems Woolf's writing inspires a love or hate reaction.  You either bang your head against the wall because WHAT DOES IT MEAN or you let the prose carry you forward.  After "Game of Thrones," reading a sentence by Virginia Woolf was like a refreshing splash of water on a hot day.  

There are so many levels to talking about "To the Lighthouse" that I've decided to focus on three of the big picture themes: structure, time, and (some) communication.  If for whatever reason I ever need to reconsider the socio-economic undertones of the book, well, then, that's another post.  Much of this post will be quotations, because sometimes my blabbering just dilutes things and this is one of those times.

Godrevy Island, St. Ives Bay, where Woolf visited

"Woolf described the structure of To the Lighthouse as if it were a letter H, 'Two blocks joined by a corridor,' in which the uprights, the first and third sections, recorded a day in the lives of the family on holiday, although substantial changes took place between the two."  (Cambridge Companion, Julia Briggs, p.74)

The above quote is brilliantly true and frames the entire novel in a simple yet elegant fashion.  In the book, spinster Lily Briscoe struggles with her painting hobby as Woolf presumably strugged with the novel; how to capture it all, how the light and shadows must interact, what's the structure that will be most perfect and illuminate fundamental truths of life:  "To say: 'But this is what I see, this is what I see,' and so to clasp some miserable remnant of her vision to her breast" (p.19).  I thought it was interesting how much the grey-green color is emphasized throughout but that Lily's painting attempts to buck that trend with bright blues and purples. In any case, the book IS the painting and Woolf says as much in her personal letters:

"I meant nothing by The Lighthouse.  One has to have a central line down the middle of the book to hold the design together."  (The Letters of Virginia Woolf, 1923-1928)

Which is the same reason for Lily Briscoe's final artistic vision at the end of the novel; drawing the line of The Lighthouse down the middle of her painting.  It holds her vivid portrait of the Ramsays cottage (and her time with them) together.  The Lighthouse also functions as the bridge to the H structure; "Time Passes" but The Lighthouse remains.  Like the saying goes, the more things change the more things stay the same.

For as much as the book is about time passing and the transience of existence, it's also about repetition.  The waves, the beacon from The Lighthouse, Mr. Ramsay pacing up and down the terrace, and the nostalgic repetition in the second half of the novel.  Woolf practically bangs the reader over the head with it: "It was to repeat that they met" (p.21) and, "He had made a definite contribution to philosophy in one little book when he was only five and twenty; what came after was more or less amplification, repetition" (p.23).  The subject of the latter being Mr. Ramsay the philosopher.  His work is described as imagining a kitchen table with no one there -- more or less what occurs in the "Time Passes" section -- and seems to connect with a quote from Mrs. Ramsay ("For it was extraordinary to think that they had been capable of going on living all these years when she had not thought of them more than once all that time" p.88).  Ramsay and, to a different extent, his wife are painfully aware of their mortality and insignificance. 

Mrs. Ramsay says that the sea "made one think of the destruction of the island and its engulfment in the sea, and warned her whose day had slipped past in one quick doing after another that it was all ephemeral as a rainbow -- this sound which had been obscured and concealed under the other sounds suddenly thundered hollow in her ears and made her look up with an impulse of terror" (p.16).

Her husbands shares the shelter of domesticity a few pages later, with one of my favorite sentences of all time:  "He turned from the sight of human ignorance and human fate and the sea eating the ground we stand on, which, had he been able to contemplate it fixedly might have led to something; and found consolation in trifles so slight compared with the august theme just now before him that he was disposed to slur that comfort over, to deprecate it, as if to be caught happy in a world of misery was for an honest man the most despicable of crimes" (p.44).   

In both cases, the emphasis of nature eating away at civilization and humanity is tempered by domestic duties.  Mr. Ramsay glumly notes that, "The very stone one kicks with one's boot will outlast Shakespeare" (p.35) and Lily Briscoe picks up the theme on the beach, saying the "distant views seem to outlast the gazer and to be communing already with a sky which beholds an earth entirely at rest" (p.20).  Towards the end of the book, Lily seems to connect this mortal transience with the urgency of her painting:

"... She could not shake herself free from the sense that everything this morning was happening for the first time, perhaps the last time, as a traveler, even though he is half asleep, knows, looking out of the train window, that he must look now, for he will never see that town, or that mule-cart, or that woman at work in the fields, again" (p.194).

Sound advice for the reader in the aptly-titled "The Window" section, for one may never see Mrs. Ramsay or Prue or Andrew ever again.  Blink and you'll miss the parenthetical deaths. 

Lastly, sticking to a theme that really defines Virginia Woolf's work, the novel depends on relationships between characters.  The narrative floats from one to another and portrays attempts at understanding, at empathy and sympathy.  All the characters are perpetually trying to see what the other characters are thinking, to imagine or persuade their thoughts.  Much like Lily's translation from sight to canvas, the thoughts-to-actions route is imperfect and muddled, thus compounding the tragedy of mortality.  "She had done the usual trick -- been nice.  She would never know him.  He would never know her,"  Lily realizes after conversing with a guest (p.92).  Another acute moment occurs after Mrs. Ramsay's death, while Lily is trying to paint the empty steps where once she had sat (p.178; and likely mimicking Woolf's own grief after the death of her mother):

"For how could one express in words these emotions of the body? express that emptiness there? ... It was one's body feeling, not one's mind.  The physical sensations that went with the bare look of the steps had become suddenly extremely unpleasant.  To want and not to have, sent all up her body a hardness, a hollowness, a strain.  And then to want and not to have -- to want and want -- how that wrung the heart, and wrung it again and again!"

And finally, an equally poignant moment of non-communication between Mr. Ramsay and his two older children as they reach The Lighthouse, ten years past the initial expedition that never was (p.207):

"They both wanted to say, Ask us anything and we will give it you.  But he did not ask them anything.  He sat and looked at the island and he might be thinking, We perished, each alone, or he might be thinking, I have reached it.  I have found it; but he said nothing."

The Castaway

Camus' Notebooks & More Greece

I picked up Albert Camus' Notebooks: 1951-59 at the sad closing sale of my local Borders, and thought it would be like the Kerouac-Ginsberg letters that I read last summer. Not so. The letters were much more interesting, and while Camus has some excellent moments ("The Hague") it's more of a collection of notes and ideas than an insightful diary.

Before I read the Notebooks, I had also happened to read Susan Sontag's critical essay on the first collection of his notebooks (think these were from the late 30s?), so I went back to see if anything rang true for me. She notes that it's very "anti-autobiographical"; not really any mention of events or other people -- SO TRUE. And of course in true Sontag fashion she points out that, "solitariness is the indispensable metaphor of the modern writer's consciousness." In other words, the writer is always alone.

From Camus, p.65:

It is alone that one must decide if he loves, and it is all alone that one must respond to the incalculable consequences of true love ... He is afraid of himself and for himself. He wants to spare himself, refusing then his condition.

For the most part in the diaries, it seems like he's trying to escape things -- his work, possibly the boredom of his marriage, politicians ... p.47:

The tragedy is not that we are alone, but that we cannot be. At times I would give anything in the world to no longer be connected by anything to this universe of men. But I am a part of this universe, and the most courageous thing to do is to accept it and the tragedy at the same time.

I think that quote relates to what Sontag describes as Camus' "leaping of the abyss of nihilism." To be honest, I really need to brush up on this whole nihilism thing and especially the ol' oft-mentioned Nietzsche. Like Zorba, Camus mentions this a bunch of time. Along with Greece. What the heck is it with optimistic quasi-nihilists writing about Greece?! ("For the first time I watch a land that I love disappearing with the painful feeling that perhaps I will never see it again before dying," p.155)

Other tidbits of interest that I starred & picked out:

- Joanna of Castile
- Sontag told me to go read Camus' "Reflections on the Guillotine," so there's a detour
- wrote more about Countess Tolstoy than Leo (should I put her diary on my reading list?)
- had a lifelong desire to write a combo of Faust and Don Juan, on the nature of love I guess

Bottom line: Mildly interesting but not impressive.

Next up: "Pillars of the Earth" ... I should also note that I read "A Decade of Hope" in the interim and was pleased with its tastefulness and wide representation. In addition, I was trying to nab "Freedom" by Jonathan Franzen from the public library and the online catalogue told me it was finally available after months and months of all copies checked out. I walk over to the library, wander around in squeaky sneakers for half an hour because the fiction section is under construction and I CANNOT FIND THE BOOKS. I finally find a small segment of new fiction moved out in the hallway and there is a book-sized gap where 'Franzen' should be. Really? Really. I got "A Decade of Hope" instead and felt self-conscious about just getting a book about 9/11, so I almost got "Pillars of the Earth" before realizing that I was not realistically going to read a 900+ page book in two weeks. My coworker kindly lent me a battered copy.

Going Greek

Last weekend I finished with "Zorba the Greek" by Nikos Kazantzakis and I've been waiting for a good air-conditioned moment to finally post. So first, my initial thoughts: well-written, thought-provoking, but Zorba is kind of maniacal and it got really irritating that the narrator was always running around shouting "Zorba! Zorba!". I wonder if my particular translated edition wasn't the best.

Philosophically, Zorba's another modernist novel and focuses especially on existentialism -- your existence precedes your "essence," which you create for yourself (i.e. make your own life). A great essay on this is Sartre's "Existentialism is a Humanism." While this whole concept can be construed as an atheistic and pessimistic worldview, I think it's pretty optimistic. Sartre says:

Man is nothing else but what he purposes, he exists only in so far as he realizes himself, he is therefore nothing else but the sum of his actions, nothing else but what his life is.

Thus, it follows that the hero of an existentialist work should be a brave non-conformist that makes the most of his life ... "Zorba!" This is one (and IMHO the best) solution to the modernist quandary of How Do I Deal With My Life. Kazantzakis' views are summed up nicely in Peter Bien's Why Read Kazantzakis in the Twenty-first Century. Apparently they show the influence of Nietzsche and Bergson -- neither of whom I've read, so I'll just stop there and come back when I'm more informed.

Kazantzakis is decidedly not an atheist but neither is he overly religious. As reflected in "Zorba" he "believed in a not all-powerful deity that struggles together with humanity and that needs humanity in order to stay alive" (Anti-Nihilism in the Thought of Nikos Kazantzakis, Galanopoulos). Somewhat related side note: I had no idea this was the same guy who wrote "The Last Temptation of Christ."

As to the actual book, this is my favorite description: "popular with educated readers of discriminating literary taste ... terrifyingly intellectual" (Life Span Development in Kazantzakis' Zorba the Greek, Elsman). I wouldn't call it terrifying or intellectual, or even that you need to have some sort of trained bookworm palate to enjoy the book. Can I better appreciate the novel now that I realize the underlying philosophy? Yup. Would I have also enjoyed it on surface-value alone? Probably.

The same article above points out that "Zorba" is fairly autobiographical; Kazantzakis operated a lignite mine with George Zorba, a friend of 27 years, before parting ways with him. Interesting.

Quotes that I want to comment on or just generally connected with:

"Woe betide the woman who could sleep with a man and who did not do so!" (p.106)
... Oh Zorba, thanks for making me feel better about my weekends.

"If you take a magnifying-glass and look at your drinking water ... You'll see the worms and you won't drink. You won't drink and you'll curl up with thirst." (p.117)

"I have always been consumed with one desire: to touch and see as much as possible of the earth and the sea before I die." (p.139)
... I feel the same way. Because really, going back to Sartre, then in a way you've made your life as much as you possibly could.

"I let the brakes off when I get to the most dangerous slopes. The life of man is a road with steep rises and dips. All sensible people use their brakes." (p.146)
... Basically this is why sometimes Zorba came across as being psychotic.

And, in light of my current endeavors, one of the most important lines from the narrator:

"All the problems I was trying to solve point by point in my solitude and glued to my chair, this man had solved up in the pure air of the mountains with his sword." (p.127)

Bottom line: Not to say that reading is useless, but sometimes you just gotta live it to understand.

Most memorable moment:

When I am dead write to him and tell him that right until the very last minute I was in full possession of my senses and was thinking of him. And tell him that whatever I have done, I have no regrets. Tell him I hope he is well and that it's about time he showed a bit of sense.

"My Antonia": Little House on the Prairie?

I read every single book from the "Little House on the Prairie" series when I was a kid, to the point where I must've been sick of pioneer adventures. Opening "My Antonia" by Willa Cather, my reaction was something along the lines of: oh great, this is where the prairie cliches started. I was also biased by a friend who recalled studying the book in high school. One of those books.

Two things kept this book going for me. 1) I knew nothing of Willa Cather and I wanted to get an idea of what she was about, and 2) I never knew the Midwest had such a multicultural heritage (Swedish, Norwegian, Dutch, Russian, Bohemian). Shame on my American history teachers.

Upon finishing the novel, I was able to give it an amiable shrug and return it to the bookcase in the "to be donated/sold" section. A nice, nostalgic book about life on the frontier and the identity of America. Harsh but still romantic. I felt kind of jilted-- shouldn't there be more to it? So, I did some surfing around and dug up a couple of unexpected, interesting nuggets.

The book was written in 1918 and, taken in context, is a strong voice for women's rights. Antonia works as hard as any man, with pride in her strength and fertility; the main women of the novel survive the frontier and go on to be successful wives/businesswomen. Cather herself had quite the interesting life, leaving Virginia for Nebraska and then beginning a writing career in Pittsburgh and New York. There's quite a bit of speculation as to whether or not she was a lesbian (an actual article: "My Gay Antonia: The Politics of Willa Cather's Lesbianism"). Her works, like those of Edith Wharton, seem to be in the midst of a revival -- the female counterparts to Fitzgerald & company. I'd put her on par with "The Great Gatsby" ... but the fact remains that I knew who Fitzgerald was by the 7th grade and I didn't know who Cather was until a week ago.

As for the structure of the novel, I hadn't given it much thought but then stumbled across an article by Richard Millington, "Willa Cather and 'The Storyteller': Hostility to the Novel in 'My Antonia.'" EGADS! I referenced Walter Benjamin's essay earlier, via Sontag. The point here is that "My Antonia" is more in the tradition of stories and telling from experience than the restrictive "form" of the novel; in this sense, it's a mildly modernist work. In fact, more than just the loose structure is modernist. Jim is a subjective narrator for describing the women foreigners and their social interactions (Lena vs. Antonia, for example), but not to the point where the reader questions his reliability. And, importantly, this Georg Simmel quote from my post on Lord Jim, regarding the theme:

"to preserve the autonomy and individuality of [the character's] existence in the face of overwhelming social forces, of historical heritage, of external culture, and of the technique of life"

The immigrant residents of Black Hawk, Nebraska facing Mother Nature and American society (to grotesquely simplify things).

Bottom line: An interesting read after the actual read. Now I know who Willa Cather is, and I'm curious to see if I'll enjoy her writing in a setting other than a prairie.

Side notes: There's a PA beer called My Antonia. Thanks to a scene in this book, I discovered that the movie "Moulin Rouge" is based on the opera "La Traviata."

I also did a quick read of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's "Memories of My Melancholy Whores" and thoroughly enjoyed it. In stark comparison of writing styles, Marquez wins over Cather for sure.

Next up: "Zorba the Greek"

"Lord Jim" and (accidentally) Modernism

It's been a few years since I last read Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness," but it's one of my favorite books and I had been looking forward to reading "Lord Jim." I was excited to discover that Marlow the narrator returns ... and, upon reading the introduction, that Conrad was actually Polish. For years I thought the guy was British. Not only that, but "Lord Jim" is considered in some circles to be THE beginning of modernist literature, moving away from Victorian themes.

My immediate question: "Wait, what does this modernist thing mean?"

Modernist lit generally concerns the "isolation of consciousness" (Seeley, "Conrad's Modernist Romance"), subjective narrators, possibly a nonchronological structure, and a theme of indeterminacy. Georg Simmel elaborates on the central concern "to preserve the autonomy and individuality of [the character's] existence in the face of overwhelming social forces, of historical heritage, of external culture, and of the technique of life" ... i.e., how to make sense of the world.

Modernism tends to be pessimistic, but Conrad's "Lord Jim" is also vividly romantic-- pirates! heroism! adoring natives! So, keeping this in mind, back to the actual book.

As far as Marlow and the fragmented storytelling structure go: On Lord Jim by Adam Roberts

Though parts of the book leap around in time and place, the story's bound tightly with Jim and the Patna incident, in which he abandons what he thinks is a sinking ship. Embarrassingly, the ship doesn't sink-- and Jim must face his cowardly act in court, as well as through the rest of his life. Thus, "Lord Jim" deals with his sense of self and "problems of conduct" (see Thorburn "Conrad's Romanticism"). As Thorburn notes, the story begins and ends with external disasters provoking psychic collapse, or illustrating the "antipathy of the world toward human aspirations" (Matin's introduction). Marlow, the seasoned narrator, seems to grasp this idea- after all, he's witnessed Colonel Kurtz in "Heart of Darkness."

Jim is alternately portrayed in great detail, down to his posture, and also remains vague as some kind of almost secondary character (recall the theme of indeterminacy) -- Jim's presumed lines of thought are told through Marlow, so the reader is never really clear on what's "right." Plus, Jim is a less than eloquent speaker. Significantly, at the end of the novel he is unable to write a letter explaining himself, and competing points of view on his death/suicide are offered by Stein, Jewel and Marlow.

Regarding Jim's voluntary meeting with Doramin (whom he knows will shoot him), Jim wants to prove he values his honor over life-- which is essentially what he's been trying to do ever since the Patna incident. Whether he needs to prove this to himself or others is a complex issue. Probably both. Now that I think about it, definitely both -- to resolve his own psychic/ego crisis and to have witnesses that validate his action. It's clearly a selfish move, as he leaves Jewel and the villagers to fend for themselves, and based on the idealistic & romantic nature of his character. Going back to Simmel's quote, Jim spends most of the book trying to escape a society that defines him through his worst moment. Even in Patusan, the appearance of Gentleman Brown throws a wrench into his careful fortifications and Jim is only able to preserve his individual existence through death (see! I AM honorable and heroic!). At least, that's the best theory I can muster.

I really didn't think "Lord Jim" was that pessimistic. Yeah, the guy dies in the end, and his life is haunted by the stupid Patna disaster, but I didn't find it to be this huge downer of a book. Then again, I'm a sucker for romantic idealism, so maybe I do see a noble aspect in Jim's death. Marlow says it was "the call of his exalted egoism" that led to "his pitiless wedding with a shadowy ideal of conduct" ... but he also calls Jim "one of us." No doubt Jim's a tragic figure, but I don't think the story's depressing.

I want to touch base on one more interesting thing from the introduction (and how often does that happen?): the comparison between Jim and Colonel Kurtz. In many ways, "Lord Jim" is the foil to "Heart of Darkness" ... but! It's "another tale that focuses on [Marlow's] complicated relationship with an idealistic white man who uses an imperial territory to live out his own grandiose fantasies."

In short, Marlow has already seen how a megalomaniac who arrogates to himself dictatorial powers based on racial prestige can lose sight of the putatively ethical basis of imperialism, and Jim is evidently not exempt from such tendencies, no matter how benevolent his rule in Patusan may appear.

Dangerously similar situations and personalities! While I recognized the strains of racial superiority from "Heart of Darkness" (worship the white man, because colored people can't govern themselves!), I would have never thought to compare Jim and Kurtz. I guess I was too busy trying to sympathize with Jim. Hmm.

Two favorite moments:

"And do you know how many opportunities I let escape; how many dreams I had lost that had come in my way? ... It seems to me that some would have been very fine- if I had made them come true." -Stein

"Are not our lives too short for that full utterance which through all our stammerings is of course our only and abiding intention?" -Marlow

Bottom line: this book had way more layers than I expected. Plus, Conrad is Polish and I learned what modernist literature was!

Next up is a brief break from my canon list, with Robert Wright's "The Evolution of God." Then probably some philosophical essays on love, some Kundera and Sondak, and likely "Mansfield Park" by Jane Austen to get back to the list.