Conrad Revisited, But Even Bleaker
930274
V.S. Naipaul looks into the heart of Africa and sees mankind's sordid state in this bleak and powerful account of a striving merchant's struggle to thrive and survive in a jungle nation only just emerging from years of European domination.

Published in 1979, the same year Francis Ford Coppola's "Apocalypse Now" similarly updated Joseph Conrad's "Heart Of Darkness", "A Bend In The River" captures how the white man's burden remains with a native population even after the white man is gone. In Salim, the narrator, we have a walking, talking example of utter dislocation in a part of the world alienated from itself by the intrusion of colonialism and other western products like totalitarianism and capitalism.

"Affection, just before betrayal" could be said to be the sum total of the European experience in Africa, an experience crystallized in a single moment when Salim finds himself with a European woman who uses him for sex. It's sex he enjoys, but he is conscious of his place in her life, especially when she jokes about it, and it causes him to lash out at her in a way that, like Naipaul's indifference to the virtues of African identity, draw many criticisms to this otherwise well-regarded book.

It should be noted that, whatever his hang-ups about women, Naipaul makes a strong case here against colonialism, using a sordid go-nowhere affair as metaphor, and it works in large part because it shocks. Also, it warns us Salim is not a reliable narrator, his perspective skewed by the same isolation that surrounds Africa itself.

"A Bend In The River" takes a long time to get started, though it's oddly a better book before things do happen. Naipaul gives us the jungle in all its fetid glory. A recurring image of hyacinths choking the river beside Salim's town suggests the pointless growth and ultimate choking off of progress and fulfillment. Naipaul describes the sights of an outdoor market, monkeys chewing on seeds waiting to be eaten while people around them jostle for their higher place on the food chain. An educated friend of Salim notes the only good thing one can do with their past is to trample it into nothingness.

"In the beginning it is like trampling on a garden. In the end you are just walking on ground."

You can call this a despondent, cynical view, or you can call it an honest one that takes in more than just Africa. The power of Naipaul is in his way of presenting searingly ugly ideas in beautiful and recognizable ways, in creating tragedy at the same time he seems to counsel a kind of emotional withdrawal.

Is it better not to care? Salim seems to think so, and absent any input to the contrary, Naipaul seems to agree. I can't quite embrace this attitude so fully that I can accept it not being better explained to me. And Naipaul's story detours here don't always work, like a trip Salim takes to London that pulls us from Naipaul's richly unique central setting. From some reviews here, you might think the story here was about a revolution, but that only occurs near the end, which pulls us up rather abruptly in an unresolved finish.

Of course Naipaul probably wanted to leave things unresolved. "A Bend In The River" works best in the way it avoids resolutions of any kind, suggesting a sort of human malaise that endures beyond the ant-like lives of individuals. Not a fun read, but a rich and absorbing one that demands to be taken seriously.
2110585
Unlike most true-crime writers, who write about contemporary criminals, Harold Schechter writes about criminals in the past, primarily in the 1800s and early 1900s. He does a remarkable job of bringing the long-dead characters in his books to life, as well as bringing to life the era in which they lived by describing the current events of the time and integrating them into the account of the criminal's life and activities. I've read several of his books, and they all display this same ability to make the forgotten past as fresh and vivid as today's headlines.

Earle Leonard Nelson, aka Earle Leonard Ferral, was damaged from birth.  Born to parents who both died of syphilis not long after his birth, he possibly had congenital syphilis himself.  Even if he didn't, he was manic-depressive and probably autistic as well.  He suffered from bouts of severe depression; even as a young boy, he would sob, "I am not good for anything.  I will never be good for anything.  Nobody wants me.  I would be better off out of this world."

He was right.  Not only would he have been better off out of the world, but many other people would have been better off if he had died in childhood.

After his parents died, Nelson was taken in by his maternal grandmother, a woman who apparently lacked much imagination or education.  She was also a fanatic follower of an unspecified variety of fundamentalist Protestantism who drummed the Bible into grandson's head.  Her religious teachings took root, but in the strange soil of his mind, they grew into twisted plants that bore strange, perverted fruit.  By the time he was fifteen, he was already frequenting the Barbary Coast whorehouses, drinking heavily, and brawling.  He had also become an accomplished thief.

In reading about Nelson, one can almost feel sorry for him.  Certainly one has to wonder how he might have turned out if he had been born in a later time, when his mental problems might have had a chance of being identified and treated.  On the other hand, given how often children today do not receive desperately needed psychiatric care-- e.g., Adam Lanza, whose parents, despite being wealthy, failed to provide him with psychiatric treatment or even to recognize that he needed it-- the outcome might have been the same.

Schechter's account of this very strange killer, like all his other books, is well-written and thorough.
3467015
As luck would have it, I was in the midst of rereading Frankenstein as my local One County, One Book selection when I was chosen to receive an advanced reading copy of Frankenstein's Monster. The follow-up experience started out well, with the sequel picking up right where its predecessor left off. But with the original fresh in my mind and still haunting me with its starkness solitariness, I soon sound the newly invented Frankenstein too sharp of a contrast from what Shelley envisioned. Unfortunately, all the aching loneliness that drew me to the classic and made the monster's deeds forgivable in the end are completely lacking from Frankenstein's Monster.

I think it's only fair to compare this novel to the one it is based on, but that accomplished, this is not a bad book. If you like dark settings, complex character motivations and fast-paced action, you'll likely enjoy this novel. It has all three and is overall well written. If you're a devoted fan of the 19th century prequel, however, I think you'll find the lack of internal and (even more so) external isolation of this Frankenstein a bit of a disappointment.
4645795
A bit more eloquent and interesting than 100 Years of Solitude (or, as I like to call it, The 100-Year Roll Call of Walking Mistakes) or anything that Faulkner ever wrote (Thas here's Jemmy.  Jemmy, go cut me a hickory), this novel still remains in the "who cares" department of my mental notes.  Who cares about Mr. Biswas and his daily neanderthalian struggles to eat, sleep, work and make money?  The one positive element of this horrible history is the writing skill of Mr. Naipaul, a good friend and contemporary of Anthony Powell.  The filthy stories of these filthy people, without a larger context, is pretty much pointless.  The characters are talking vermin, lower and more expendable than common animals.  And glancing at descriptions of his other novels, it looks like much of the same, more stories about Indians wallowing in the gutter's filth of their lives.  For that they gave him a Nobel Prize!  A bit like the Best Picture Oscar nearly always going to the gimp entry.  I'll take cyberpunk any day.
2889285
This short novel begins with a 1764 setting in the forests of central Ohio (near present-day Coshocton, Ohio) at the junction of the Muskingum, the Tuscarawas, and the Waldhoning Rivers. The book presents a somewhat  romanticized picture of the American Indian at that time. The central  character is John Cameron Butler, known as True Son in the Delaware tribe  with which he has lived since he was four years old. He is now fifteen and  his life is being uprooted once again. The Indians have signed a treaty in  which they have to return all white captives to their original families,  even those who don't wish to go. All John knows is his life as an Indian  and now he has to return to the family (in Paxton, Pennsylvania, on the  Susquehanna River) he hasn't seen for eleven years. But, he doesn't fit in  there and he finds himself caught between two cultures. Although very well  written, it appears that Richter is suggesting that Indian/colonists  interactions were doomed from the very beginning. One culture had to win  and one had to lose. He presents the case where neither culture appeared  willing to tolerate nor to understand the other. And, in more general  terms, in my opinion Richter seems to hint that all such cultural conflicts  are fated to fail. This is a rather sad commentary on man. I certainly hope  it is not true and that there are good chances for Serb/Albanian,  Irish/English, Indian/Pakistani, etc., interactions. This book is often  used in reading assignments for students ranging from ages eleven through  fourteen. I find it also a depressing thought that such a dark vision of  man's capacity for tolerance and understanding is being presented to young,  impressionable minds. I would have hoped that teachers in the 1990s would  have found literary sources with a less negative outlook. It would appear  that some of the negative reviews provided by earlier, and much younger,  readers have some validity.
4767016
This book's "classic" label must have come from its rich, descriptive imagery that conveyed such vivid darkness and heaviness. It is purported to convey the shock of the awful experience the author himself had when he was in the Belgian Congo in 1890. Indeed, in reading it, I felt the heat, insects, violence, fear, and threat experienced by the narrator as he rode down a river deeper and deeper into the heart of Africa. Encounters with white brutality of the natives is not just moralizing about that specific situation, but hints at the human capacity for depravity that lurks in us all.

The language seemed dated to me, however...somehow stiff or formal in the same way the the language in the Jules Verne books do. I found myself wanting to hurry it along. I was reminded that this story is the source of the oft quoted dying words of the character Mr. Kurtz, "The horror! The horror!"

The sad story of the Congo's history is, in my opinion, better told elsewhere (e.g., BLOOD RIVER, LEOPOLD'S GHOST), but this small novella is an interesting and important part of the body of literature on this topic.
4707028
In the Middle Ages Bruges was a bustling and sumptuous international trading city; today it is a tourist centre, with fake medieval banners fluttering brightly from lamp-posts.  But in 1475 the river Zwijn which had connected it with the North Sea dried up as the latter suddenly receded; the town's prosperity died away; its quais were deserted; all so much so that by the 1890s it was known as Bruges-la-Morte.  It had - so at least Rodenbach perceived it in 1892 - become a sleepy, pious city under mournful grey skies, with the dominant colours being the black robes of the clergy, the white head-dresses of the nuns who live in the `mystic enclosure' of the Beguinage, and the white swans on the canals.

When Hugues Viane, the chief character in the novel, lost his beloved young wife, he decided to settle and shut himself away in Bruges because the dead town corresponded to his dead wife and because its atmosphere matched his inconsolable grief.  Then one day, just as he was beginning to have difficulties in recalling his wife's features, he sees a woman in the street who is so much the absolute image of his dead wife that he pursues her.  He rents a house in which he instals Jane as his mistress without at first feeling that he was being unfaithful to the cherished memory of his wife.  After a while, it all goes horribly wrong as Jane's coarse nature diverges more and more from that of his wife;  but by that time he cannot free himself from the erotic (and now experienced as the sinful) thrall into which he has fallen; and the end is terrible.

It is quite a powerful novella.  It is told poetically against the pervasive atmosphere of the town which itself is a character in the story.

When the book first appeared, it was illustrated by 35 half-tone photographs of Bruges.  This edition has new black-and-white photographs, but since none of them was taken in sunlight, they have the grey look which goes well with the text to which they refer.
2377076
Conrad who is pro-colonization of Africa, as most Europeans are, are swept by the irony of the Africans, who are "uncivilized" in all shapes and forms.  In this novel it can be seen that a large theme is  self-control, and the Africans actually exhibit more of that than the  Europeans.
On the trip upriver Marlow enlists a crew of about 30  cannibals to do the boat's manual labor.  In contrast to the idiotic  pilgrims, Conrad portrays the cannibals with dignity.  They grow  increasingly hungry on board, especially after the pilgrims throw their  provision of stinking hippo meat overboard and the manager refuses to stop  to trade for food on shore.  Marlow tries to imagine why they don't eat him  and the pilgrim, and the only answer he can offer is the restraint he  values so highly in civilized people:  "Restraint!  I would just as  soon have expected restraint from a hyena prowling amongst the corpses of a  battlefield.  But there was the fact facing me" (Chapter II). Marlow  respects them:  "They were men one could work with, and I am grateful  to them." Work is one of Marlow's highest values, and the pilgrims, we  know, are terrible workers.  In fact, the pilgrims are always behaving on a  level beneath what you would expect of civilized men, while the cannibals  keep acting on a level above what you would expect of savages.
Conrad's  style is original, perplexing and filled with imagery and symbolism.
4496385
If I had to choose between reading the book Heart of Darkness and jumping off a ledge into a pit of very hungry caterpillars, I would definitely choose the latter option.  However, if the choice was between reading the book and watching the movie, I would pick the second alternative.  The novel Heart of Darkness was more put together than the film, and the sequences made more sense to the reader.  In the movie, the random flashbacks that may have seemed artistic to the director really just caused the viewer massive confusion.  If I hadn't read the book, the movie would have made even less sense, and I would have spaced out even earlier than I did.  Watching the film was a complete and utter waste of time.  After all, watching a movie that almost entirely differs from the story it was based on seems pointless, because it just makes it hard to distinguish the facts that change from one source to the other.

  I appreciate the novel, and I feel like it was really well-written.  Joseph Conrad's subtle mocking of the hypocrisies of his time period added a bit of humor and mystery to the story, but it was still a little less action-packed than I would have preferred it to be.  The pages and pages of intense descriptions of the characters, settings, and any other random pieces of information seemed unnecessary. It just drew out a story that could have been finished in about a third of the space.  In short, while many benefited from and were inspired by the works of Joseph Conrad, the world would have been a happier place without the making of the film Of Heart of Darkness.
1946395
A hyper realism that brimmed with stink and nastiness almost stopped me in the first few pages. Fortunately the novel smoothed out enough to provide entry to a more human plot that a reader could follow.  I have read Melville, Conrad, and O'Brian so many details seemed to be allusions to those authors and were notable but not terribly important. This large story, which could easily have been told by one of Conrad's characters, holds together through epic events and twists, and introduces us to the most evil villain I can recall. In fact this devil himself determined the destiny of the ship inspite of a competent captain. Then the powerful man escapes disaster so evil finds a way to survive. Our hero, young doctor, changes  as a character confronting this evil so it can easily be said that there is important character development in the process of this novel.  I think that regardless of plot precedents which may be seen in the setting of shipping stories, The North Water...offers rich detail and some great writing
2096876
Well written prose, but as the author admits in the book, the multitude of concurrent events makes a coherent and linear narrative very difficult, and I'm afraid that the problem was very evident in this book. As for the explorers themselves, for my money they were nothing but egotistically driven obsessives and animal abusers (of their dogs) of the first rank. The dogs that they worked to the point of collapse and then killed and ate are the real heroes here.
776422
Re-review on JUNE 2016

I wrote a review on the Audio CD, but then I deleted it in favor of a newer review. I have the 2001 paperback reprint of the 1997 edition. REBECCA is a good book, but I am afraid that this book centers on the rich class, so the readers might have trouble relating themselves to the important characters. Most of the characters are very isolated, especially the servants, including the housemaid who dresses in black and has icy, ghoulish countenance. Nevertheless, the fall of the rich class is symbolized and would intrigue the readers.

The narrator of the story, albeit nameless, is poor at the beginning of her life, but then she marries a widowed rich, sophisticated, elegant gentleman named Maxim de Winter. Then the pair heads to the manor named Manderlay. There, they have a lot of servants and a lot of food. The servants, especially the same housemaid named Ms Danvers, cannot take the second Mrs de Winter seriously due to her poor background. Instead, they favor the previous late Mrs Rebecca de Winter. Also, Maxim's peers look down on her. Worse, the narrator feels inferior about herself because she hasn't done or possessed anything that Rebecca did, like activities, sports, charm, elegance, beauty, etc.

Near the end, the faade of Rebecca is exposed, enabling the narrator to overcome her insecurities and to be in charge of the manor and to gain social status. Unfortunately, Maxim murdered Rebecca and admits it to the narrator. Ironically, the narrator decides to stay by his side, and Maxim is able to get away with murder. Consequently, Manderlay burns down.

Rereading the novel makes the mystery tone draggy and pointless to readers. However, that should not affect the quality of the novel itself. A reader would be good for analyses on characters, but most of analyses center on the titular character herself. While the narrator herself might not intrigue readers much, the narrator can be seen as interesting. The narrator starts out as young, nave and weak-willed; in the end, she becomes mature, worldly and courageous. Maxim has been always an angry man throughout, but he presents himself as kind, quiet, poised, and helpful. He is helpful AND reliable because he rescues some diver from the waters and he speaks other languages.

Troubling with the novel is the possible escapism from real-world events. REBECCA was published at the time when Europe was threatened by the expansion of Nazi Germany and when the United Kingdom's then-King Edward VIII abdicated, leading to George VI's accession. Also, REBECCA was told in flashbacks throughout the 94.44% of the novel. The novel starts with the narrator's dreams of Manderlay and then the couple trying to survive tragedy that struck upon them. However, I'm startled by Maxim and the narrator's unknown current location. Europe would no longer be safe when the threat of war was upcoming. One wonders whether they are in America, but the novel says that they are staying in a not-too-shabby hotel somewhere outside England. Maybe Wales or Scotland? Where else?

Of course, REBECCA is about Rebecca, eh? No need to tell readers about European politics. But at least readers would enjoy this by re-readings.
2045148
Julien Sorel devotes his life to self-advancement in this classic novel of French Restoration society. Stendhal's thought-by-thought analysis of human motivations invites comparison to Henry James, but the comparison is not very favorable, as James' prose is miles beyond Gard's translation of Stendhal (although admittedly the latter is much easier reading).  Overall, this book about a basically bad man who comes to a bad end is not very satisfying, compared to a true masterpiece like Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, for example.  Which is not to say it's a bad book, or even a poor one; but it's neither particularly enjoyable nor the great moving revelation that one looks for in a classic.  Book One, which focuses on Julien's relationship with Mme de Renal, is much pleasanter reading than Book Two, which is more scattered, and gets bogged down by the disdainful Mathilde.  In particular, the political sub-plot seems hopelessly out of place.

In sum, the hopelessly self-centered Julien is not a nice man, Madame de Renal is perhaps not very bright and too easily succumbs to her feelings, while Mathilde's emotional transformations defy credulity.  How many of these people will get what they deserve?  Ultimately, this reviewer didn't find any of these characters appealing enough to care.  Frequently slow-moving and dry, this is a fine example of why so many people don't read the classics.  Recommended only to the most resolute devotees of serious literature.  For the more casual reader, there are hundreds of classics out there that are both more enjoyable and more significant.
3043333
Joseph Conrad's ''The Secret Agent,'' focuses on an anarchist plot to blow up the Royal Observatory at Greenwich, designed by the eponymous secret agent to incite a government backlash, a precursor to contemporary conspiracy theories. Conrad's villain, the Professor, is always armed with explosive devices strapped to his person suggesting the book may have been an inspiration to Yasser Arafat's disciples.

Even so, Conrad's characterisation of The Professor was not an innovation in Edwardian fiction, but rooted in the tradition of Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot. Instead, there is a satirical aspect to the work, concerning British and European attitudes toward terrorism and counterterrorism. Several of the characters are ridiculously typical, including the too shrewd Russian Mr. Vladimir, the bumbling policeman, Chief Inspector Heat, the anachronistically named, and unready British aristocrat Sir Ethelred. The intended crime is risibly based on a failed attempt  to blow up the Royal Observatory in 1894, mismanaged, as in the novel, by foreign saboteurs. The ineptness of the terrorists only serves to demonstrate that the countermeasures of the authorities are both pointless and draconian.

There is a motive provided for the intended crime, being Vladimir's hatred of science, or at least a sense of inadequacy that it evokes in the mind of the Russian diplomat, whom Conrad describes as an employee of an embassy from a foreign country. Vladimir is a caricature who orchestrates a crime he presumes the anarchists would favour, whom he wants his secret agent, Verloc, to pretend to be. Despite being violent, maladroit lunatics, the anarchists believe they are  rational agents of right in a world of deluded madmen. Ironically, Conrad mocks the diplomat, yet still endorses his view that unquestioning faith in science that typifies secular British society, is just as absurd as any other sacrosanct fetish.

Conrad wrote his novel when there was a rash of political assassinations in the late 19th century, causing the western governments to behave more like autocratic, czarist Russia than enlightened democracies that looked down on the excesses of Eastern Europe, including Conrad's native Poland.  ''The Secret Agent'' provides a perspective from a writer who is more familiar with the effects of successful terrorists, and the brutal reprisals their anarchic crimes provoke.
583646
Prof Amy Chua's 'World on Fire' is an alarming and depressing read. She lists the intra-ethnic barbarisms that have arisen over the past century or so, from the Holocaust to Rwanda to Serbia, taking in Indonesia's anti-Chinese riots and the Los Angeles anti-Korean riots, and highlighting the common features they share: an aggrieved majority, stirred up to hatred by demogagues against a market-dominant minority. In many countries, some of the minority (Jews in Russia, Chinese in SE Asia, Asians in Kenya, Lebanese in Sierra Leone) have disproportionately benefited from crony capitalism, supporting corrupt political leaders who enable them to become rich while the majority of the populace remains in poverty - until there is a violent explosion. Prof Chua points out that the US' enthusiasm for encouraging unfettered 19th century capitalism in these evolving and unstable countries with no social safety-nets while simultaneously promoting democracy is a recipe for instability. (Her thesis helps to explain the current argument in Iraq between the majority Shia who seek immediate direct elections, and the market-dominant Iraqi exiles and Kurds, who prefer a more gradual transition to raw democracy.)
More alarmingly, she encourages us to see the USA as the market-dominant minority in the world, infinitely richer than most of its citizens, and increasingly seen by many as the reason for their poverty and humiliation. Her prescription for the market-dominent majority in unstable nations is that they should make conspicuous contributions to the well-being of the majority in order to stave-off violence. Considering the current US administration's tendency to unilateralism, protectionism, and its low level of international humanitarian aid, advice to apply the same prescription to the US may be timely.
1444479
I must confess that, although it is very well-written, I did not much enjoy this second instalment of John DeFilippiss saga which began in The Quest of the Thirteen. The previous book was much more upbeat as we followed the thirteen in their dangerous quest and, of course, it ended on a high, with the fulfilment of the quest and the accession to the throne of Grobius. We got to like and admire most of the thirteen participants and I was eagerly awaiting the next part of their story. Unfortunately this book is concerned with a willing sacrifice (in the Christian tradition) and the downfall of most of Grobiuss twelve followers. Human nature is shown at its most base and self-serving; the message for the earth and humankind is bleak.
3631419
This novel is a vision of the future - and a cold and depressing one it is, with severe overcrowding, a war with China, economic hardships, racial and religious intolerance, etc.  However, it is engrossing and parts are absolutely brilliant (i.e. those parts with the Chad Mulligan character).  You are drawn into the imagery - immersed in Brunner's vision of the future.
However..... Am I the only one that thinks this novel is severely dated?  It is a product of Cold War hysteria. One of the main plot lines involves a "backwards" country announcing a new scientific (genetic) breakthrough that sends the western world into a panic of rioting, suicides, etc.  This seems highly unlikely to me - such a breakthrough would rather be met with skepticism ("How could such a country do something we couldn't"), or impatience for western scientists to figure out how they did it.  But widepread dispair?  I think not.  There are other reflections of this Cold War inferiority complex.
The highlight of this book is its ability to immerse you in the world of the future.  Unfortunately, it means that in the first 300 pages or so, little happens.  This would not be irritating if it wasn't so repetitious and random.  I was so frustrated that I almost put it down without finishing (something I've only ever done once before).  The final 300 pages are quite a bit better, but is mostly following standard-type plotlines, and so cannot make up for the repitition and irritation of the first half.
Finally, a pet peeve.  What possesses writers to automatically equate "Christianity" with "Roman Catholicism"?  In a book that is so careful to talk about different religions, this is very irritating.  And what possesses science fiction writers (Brunner included) to consider Christianity inherently evil but all other religions noble and uplifting?
To sum up - I can see why some people in the '60s would have thought this was an important work (I was born in the '70s, so perhaps I have not appreciated the subtleties).  However, the human race has not followed Brunner's path and now this book is just dreary, depressing, and out of date.