{"id":6981,"date":"2010-12-12T22:04:24","date_gmt":"2010-12-13T06:04:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/teensleuth.com\/hauntedlibrary\/?p=6981"},"modified":"2010-12-12T22:04:24","modified_gmt":"2010-12-13T06:04:24","slug":"heart-of-darkness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/teensleuth.com\/hauntedlibrary\/?p=6981","title":{"rendered":"Heart of Darkness."},"content":{"rendered":"

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No, not Dick Cheney! Although if he had read the book maybe he would have identified in himself the paternalistic arrogance of imperialism and would have understood how 20th century leaders with visions of creating new models for humans through misplaced idealism putrefied into savagery and madness were usually disappointed by the response of those that they wanted to transform, or “save”. And<\/em> if more Americans had read the book, it may not have been so easy for the literally heartless former Vice President to invade Iraq under the guise of the absurd utopian illusion that the Iraqis wanted our blue jeans and our Hot Pockets. It is, of course, Conrad’s most enduring novella, an easy read, a slim 80 pages that reads like an endlessly re readable poem. But since it’s now available in a comic book, maybe more American readers will be able to follow along, although probably not the illiterate and sub-human Dick Cheney.<\/p>\n

The enigmatic Mr Kurtz’ dying words,”the horror, the horror”, have become the epitaph of the West’s uneasy and exploitative relationship with Africa. And everything else. Who doesn’t use this quote to add gravitas – accurately or inaccurately – to any situation? The Bush presidency, the 2009 post season, the Twilight series, etc. Besides the use, over use and misuse of that quote, the Edwardian novella’s references and influences and continuing relevance in the 108 years since it was published in all forms of media are vast, spawning radio, theatre film and television adaptations. It infected Ronan Bennett\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s The Catastrophist <\/em>and two of John le Carr\u00c3\u00a9\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s novels,\u00c2\u00a0The Constant Gardener<\/em> and The Mission Son, <\/em>Nick Davies’\u00c2\u00a0Dark Heart<\/em>, Sven Lindquist\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Exterminate All the Brutes,<\/em> Michaela Wrong\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s In the Footsteps of Mr Kurtz<\/em>, and Tim Butcher\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Blood<\/em> River. <\/em>Quoting the phrase: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Mistah Kurtz, he dead.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d <\/em>expanded TS Eliot\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s The Hollow Men’s<\/em> readership.<\/p>\n

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In 1975, Chinuah Achebe publicly denounced Conrad\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s tale as so intensely racist that he questioned how it could represent one of the most highly acclaimed short novels ever written.\u00c2\u00a0The book inspired a surprisingly non reductive puppet version and an upcoming chamber opera in one act by Tarik O’Regan. <\/em> Marlow’s story has mutated and transformed over the years thanks to failed retellings by Orson Welles (the first screenplay he ever wrote), and most famously, the grandiose epic \u00c2\u00a0Apocalypse Now<\/em> – to the extent that it is now all but impossible to write about the book without at least googling “Coppola”.\u00c2\u00a0A Simpsons episode \u00c2\u00a0is titled\u00c2\u00a0Bart of Darkness <\/em>despite the fact that the story is not\u00c2\u00a0an interpretation of the book at all.\u00c2\u00a0Recent offensive popular cultures homages include the horrible television show “Lost” (“The horror, the horror”).<\/p>\n

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But if you missed all that, you can read the comic book! Sorry, the graphic novel<\/em>. The Eye Classics series \u00c2\u00a0– an imprint of Self Made Hero, an independent graphic novel publisher based in London just released the title next month.<\/p>\n

David Zane Mairowitz and Swedish\/Kenyan illustrator Catherine Anyango provide the artwork in monochrome pages, dark and rich and fizzing with meaning,\u00c2\u00a0full of ambiguous language and brutally nightmarish images. The first page of the graphic adaptation begins at the end \u00e2\u20ac\u201c with the strange abstract sight of what Marlow sees in the The Thames Essex Marshes, \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcan overcast sky\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 that \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcseemed to lead into the heart of an immense darkness\u00e2\u20ac\u2122. \u00c2\u00a0It goes on to provide, through richly intricate pencil drawings, a deeply atmospheric interpretation of Conrad’s dense style.\u00c2\u00a0The duotone illustrations bleed onto the edges of the page, not leaving any blank space. Even the narrative captions appear as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153engraved\u00e2\u20ac\u009d on the very fabric of the textual darkness, and the speech balloons are translucent, like dreamy, spectral echoes of voices.\u00c2\u00a0The detailed drawings disintegrate to abstraction as Marlow travels further towards the dying Kurtz and into the heart of darkness\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6..<\/em>(dramatic music sting).<\/em><\/p>\n

Anyango and Mairowitz reinforce the geographical and historical immediacy of Conrad’s tale by interspersing excerpts from The Congo Diary \u00e2\u20ac\u201c the journal Conrad kept of his 1890 voyage up the river.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153The mind of man is capable of anything \u00e2\u20ac\u201c because everything is in it, all the past as well as all the future. What was there after all? Joy, fear, sorrow, devotion, valour, rage \u00e2\u20ac\u201c who can tell? \u00e2\u20ac\u201c but truth \u00e2\u20ac\u201c truth stripped of its cloak of time. Let the fool gape and shudder \u00e2\u20ac\u201d the man knows, and can look on without a wink.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Publisher: TURNAROUND PUBLISHER SERVICES \u00c2\u00a0RRP: \u00c2\u00a312.99 \u00c2\u00a0Publication Date : 15\/09\/2010\u00c2\u00a0ISBN: 9781906838096<\/p>\n

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No, not Dick Cheney! Although if he had read the book maybe he would have identified in himself the paternalistic arrogance of imperialism and would have understood how 20th century leaders with visions of creating new models for humans through … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[359,360,421,427,428,440,587,588,673,757,771],"class_list":["post-6981","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comics","tag-heart-of-darkness","tag-heart-of-darkness-graphic-novel","tag-john-le-carre-the-heart-of-darkness","tag-joseph-conrad","tag-joseph-conrad-heart-of-darkness","tag-kurtz","tag-nick-davie-dark-heart","tag-nick-davies-the-heart-of-darkness","tag-roman-bennett-the-heart-of-darkness","tag-the-congo-diary-marlow","tag-the-horror"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/teensleuth.com\/hauntedlibrary\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6981","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/teensleuth.com\/hauntedlibrary\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/teensleuth.com\/hauntedlibrary\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teensleuth.com\/hauntedlibrary\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teensleuth.com\/hauntedlibrary\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6981"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/teensleuth.com\/hauntedlibrary\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6981\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/teensleuth.com\/hauntedlibrary\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teensleuth.com\/hauntedlibrary\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teensleuth.com\/hauntedlibrary\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}