I'm exactly the same. I should definitely read more; I'm incredibly under-read. No excuse, really, since when I'm reading I feel very balanced out and logical.

Saying that, earlier this week I read Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, for the second time in total and the first time in ages.


It inspires me so much. A lot of my flatmates had to read it too, for our English unit, and it was their first time reading it. The general consensus is that everybody was waiting for it to begin then suddenly it was over.

That's why I love it; to me it's the entire point. Marlow gets to the core of the jungle, the mystery of the entire book, the heart of the darkness, and what we get are two words, each said twice, which kind of engulfs everything before and after it in a completely devastating, nihilistic disgust. It's as if writing for Conrad was a way of purging himself of his own burdens, and in doing so has passed the disease onto us.

It's a fascinating read, primarily because of its form, its narrative, its multi-layering of events, its bringing together of fragments of different stories of the same man, and accumulating a myth so profound, so extraordinary, so God-like, that when we find he's a human being dying of death, we don't pity him at all but feel incredibly disappointed. How selfish we are as readers. How selfish the Company was to expect of Kurtz anything less than conformism.

As a brief, slightly reductive comparison, the only real point in Apocalypse Now that really captures the intensity of Kurtz's enigma is when Brando first steps out of the shadows and his eyes stare into the camera, his face half in shadow... and there are numerous moments in the narration where Willard makes direct reference to the man up the river, the goal ahead, reminding us why we're even experiencing the film in the first place... having been momentarily distracted by napalm and surfing.