Heart of Darkness

[Sonny]

Has anyone else read it?
I just did and I was quite unimpressed. Really can't see why it's considered a classic. The start is really boring and common place, I almost didn't continue reading. I guess Kurtz is an interesting character but we never really get any feel for him other than "he's really eloquent and smart but disturbed at the same time". It's not like that's an uncommon character. And Conrads descriptiveness I found almost annoying. We get it - the trees are dark and foreboding!!
Ok it's clever and I'm no creative writer, but a classic??

I feel like I wasted a good few hours reading that. Vent done

[Gezus]

I had to read it in high school and I felt the same way. What's so great about this shit? I'll take Apocalypse Now over that book any day.

[Kuky]

Haha it's a really thin book, and I thought it'd be a quick read, but I couldn't get through it. I didn't like it at all when I went for it (also for school). I actually preferred to take a hit on the test and BS it, than to have to finish reading it. :p

[operpido]

It's actually a really interesting book if you look at it from a narratological perspective. It's a story about being told a story by someone who could never fully tell the story. Kurtz might not feel flushed out because he's become a fantastical nightmare for Marlowe, representing a horrific double, a reflection that Marlowe doesn't want to become or let live on. The jungle is described in that way because it is the terrain of the nightmare, encompassing the nightmares of capitalism and imperialism. Obviously, everybody likes something different, so the style might not be for you, but it is definitely deserving of its classic status.

Also, the parts that make Apocalypse Now so amazing are drawn directly from the book, right down to the overlap editing and narration.

[Sonny]

Thanks for clearing that up, I fully appreciate it now :)
I agree that telling a story within a story is a nice tactic. However I sort of felt it was a cheap trick. Marlow can just tell you something was horrific or unsettling and and you're obliged to believe him... however if I was listening to him in person I think I still would have been annoyed. I would have been interrupting him and saying but hang on what happened back there, or what exactly WAS kurtz's voice like, instead of just saying "The voice, the VOICE".

[operpido]

Thanks for clearing that up, I fully appreciate it now :)
I agree that telling a story within a story is a nice tactic. However I sort of felt it was a cheap trick. Marlow can just tell you something was horrific or unsettling and and you're obliged to believe him... however if I was listening to him in person I think I still would have been annoyed. I would have been interrupting him and saying but hang on what happened back there, or what exactly WAS kurtz's voice like, instead of just saying "The voice, the VOICE".

Exactly! If you're listening to the story, which is going through 2 separate narrators - the unnamed narrator who is listening to Marlow tell the story on the boat as well as Marlow himself - it's going to change the events of the novel in a fantastical way (as in Todorov's theory of the fantastic), almost making them surreal. That's why it gets dark and metaphorically trippy, with the foreboding trees and all. In my opinion, the main focus of the book is about Marlow needing to tell this story of savage cruelty and imperialism to the people who need to hear it the most, the others on the boat (in the Thames) with him, basically upper-class people who enable the corporate destruction of the natives and the land.

Conrad does describe the voice a bit, but he likes to repeat things so they almost seem hypnotic, like the voice of Kurtz itself. The really cool thing about the book is that the voice of Kurtz, another story teller in the equation, is the one thing that Marlow can't get out of his head. Marlow wants to tell this story of horror and destruction, but he can't get around Kurtz's hypnotic false narrative, a narrative that only serves as a rationalization for all the evil around them. If he ends up repeating that story, then he has been conquered by Kurtz, by Kurtz's story, by western Europe's imperialism and greed.

Conrad's writing style can be a bit intense sometimes, though. I can see why people don't like Heart of Darkness that much, and I'm not its biggest fan, but the theory behind it is pretty interesting. I hope I'm not being too boring! I find that when I talk to people about books they become much more interesting than if I just had read them in a vacuum.