October 10, 2008

still reading about conrad & the heart of darkness

more cross references have emerged:

Jonah Raskin
Imperialism: Conrad’s Heart of Darkness
Journal of Contemporary History
Volume 2, Number 2, April 1967, 118

when looking up this article i came across: Orwell's Patriotism

Stephen Lutman
Orwell's Patriotism
Journal of Contemporary History
Vol. 2, No. 2, Literature and Society (Apr., 1967), pp. 149-158

October 7, 2008

a tale of Henry Morton Stanley and his supposed quest to rescue Emin Pasha

The Last Expedition: Stanley's Fatal Journey Through the Congo
By Daniel Liebowitz, Charlie Pearson
Published by Portrait, 2005
ISBN 0749950862, 9780749950866
368 pages

VPL 916.7 S78L

of things that could go wrong, they certainly did

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have been watching Generation Kill (HBO show) - scary how many lives are lost to those that don't care; where is the humanity? how do people become things?

provides me quotes such as "doctrine is the last refuge of the unimaginative"

October 6, 2008

doing an article search using keywords: conrad & modernity

came up with:

Pathologies of the Imperial Metropolis: Impressionism as Traumatic Afterimage in Conrad and Ford.Preview By: Britzolakis, Christina. Journal of Modern Literature, Fall2005, Vol. 29 Issue 1, p1-20, 20p

October 3, 2008

working my through...

N. Jessica Reifer. Hannah Arendt and Joseph Conrad: Memory, History and the Development of Totalitarian Evil in the Belgian Congo. 2007

which discusses "the role of nineteenth century imperialism on the emergence and development of totalitarian evil"

why you may ask? i think that when one tries to understand the present one needs to have a grasp of what has passed

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Reifer (p. 6)
In Conrad’s novel, we encounter glimpses of the genocides, mass murders, and ethnic conflicts that will become prevalent in the twentieth century -- atrocities committed by “civilized” European adventurers in “backward” countries like the Belgian Congo, colonial domination, native de-humanization, subordination, and extermination -- bringing not only serious abuses of human rights, but simultaneously new possibilities for evil.

we sleep peaceably in our beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on our behalf - quotation by George Orwell?

September 28, 2008

Gene M. Moore. Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, A Casebook. 2004.

Introduction speaks of Chinua Achebe's essay on Conrad, calling Conrad a "bloody racist."

However, introduction also notes that the words racist and racism did not exist in Conrad's life time - first instances recorded in the OED date from the 1930s and even their predecessor, racialism, was not use until 1907. So Conrad may well have been a racist but not aware of his actions as Achebe's insinuates.

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Achebe, Chinua. "An Image of Africa." In Joseph Conrad: Third World Perspectives, edited by Robert Hamner, 1990.

September 26, 2008

Have been reading a book called Exterminate All the Brutes by Sven Lindqvist - explores genocide and questions if what happened in Germany was a unique case or just another episode along the continuum of European events.

Anyhow, I have a habit of looking at endnotes and came across some other items that may be of interest. Also, cross-referenced databases looking up Conrad & Kafka and came across some other books that piqued my interest.

Gene M. Moore
Heart of Darkness: A Casebook
PR6005 O4 H476 2004

William Randolph Mueller
Celebration of Life
PN3503 M76 1972
- series of essays including one on Conrad & Kafka

Edward Engelberg
The Unknown Distance: From Consciousness to Conscience, Goethe to Camus
PN56 S46 E5 1972

oppenheimer and the bomb

today i read about oppenheimer and the bomb, well at least an article about it

James A. Hijiya
The "Gita" of J. Robert Oppenheimer
Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. 144, No. 2. (Jun., 2000), pp. 123-167.