Heart of Darkness

Heart of Darkness. Not so much hard to put down, but hard to get down. So, great books needn’t be great reading, and this is definitely a book for which this applies. The oppressive steamy heat; the imposing and threatening jungle; the cruelty, chaos, and incompetence, and the story being told at night on the damp old Thames, leave quite an impression, and it isn’t pleasant.

So, while there is a story of the dark side of western imperialism (is there a bright side?), it wasn’t always clear to me exactly what was happening, when, and to whom. For a moment I thought I was back with Faulkner. Now this might be due to my galloping dementia, but more likely because I was struggling with my very own heart of darkness. I read the book while undertaking a 5 day fruit and vegetable juice only detox. The foul stinking underbelly of colonialism may well have been my own toxic fug – “The horror. The Horror.”

So, it’s all a bit patchy really – the arrival, the journey up the river, the attack, Marlow’s conversion, who Kirtz actually is. But, perhaps this isn’t all that important – the detail that is. The lasting impact is how I felt while reading it, which also might be the toxic shock, but I did feel sombre and think my face often looked like I was smelling something very unpleasant while reading (again, I don’t discount the effects of the pumpkin juice). Although, perhaps when a story is too big all one is left with is the feeling.

Interestingly, this novella is only about 100 pages long, but it has taken the longest to read so far. Just like pumpkin juice seems to find things I’d rather not know was hiding in nooks and crannies of my deep dark recesses, Heart of Darkness perhaps dredged up my own uncivilised capacities. Perhaps the nausea wasn’t the pumpkin juice after all. However, both were hard to swallow. But I’m glad I did it.