I Fell Asleep Three Times Reading Heart of Darkness
So I'm reading Heart of Darkness for the first time. On Wednesday, I fell asleep at page forty and woke up about ten hours later. On Thursday, I slipped into a three hour nap at about page fifty. Last night, I passed out TWO pages away from the end.
I think I get it. Colonialism is bad. Imperialists used words like "trade" and "civilize," but what they really did was rob and kill. People suck. Brilliant. I don't deny that's a theme I can get behind.
Maybe the story is just too familiar at this point. Like a ton of other people who haven't read it, I could've summarized it. I've seen Apocalypse Now. Unfortunately, the movie bored me, too. Except for the Duvall scenes. They were sweet.
At least I finished it. I've failed on so many others. War and Peace. Ulysses three times. The Shipping News. In fact, I actually finish maybe one in five I pick up. And this is coming from someone who did his senior seminar on William Faulkner. I actually read Soldier's Pay and Sanctuary. But yeah, that was for a grade.
What classics stonewalled you? When you complete a particularly challenging one, do you feel that the endeavor was worth it?
Looking for comments.
October 19th, 2009 at 11:14 am
I haven't read "Heart of Darkness" either. No "War and Peace," no "Ulysses," no "Moby Dick." If it's by a dead, white male in the English literary canon, I probably haven't read it.
I took advantage of my college's very liberal program to read all the "cool, alternative" books; if there was an option to take non-standard that met the requirement, I did, so I was never assigned a lot of the "classics." I don't feel I've missed out, though, since I got to read fantastic books like Chinua Achebe's "Things Fall Apart" and Keri Hulme's "The Bone People."
The worst thing I ever had to slog through was "Vanity Fair" by William Thackaray. I'm down with the whole satire of society thing, but it just went on and on and on and on...I think I fell asleep about 5 times. --dts
October 19th, 2009 at 11:40 am
.... wow, you guys must hate Dickens then.
That man could take up 45 pages just to describe a banana. Or Ray Bradbury, who could come up with a thousand ways to subtly rephrase the word "death".
Emerson, Thoreau... Ayn Rand is pretty long winded too. But the Fountainhead kicks butt, so does Ulysses and Moby Dick!
Maybe you have to be conditioned to read the classics? Like running a marathon.
October 19th, 2009 at 12:38 pm
Dickens is a mixed bag for me...liked "Great Expectations" a lot, hated "Tale of Two Cities." I really like "The Mystery of Edwin Drood," at least, the part Dickens finished before dying! (It really bugged me that the professor assigned us a book that had no end!) We were also assigned "The Moonstone" by Wilkie Collins -- fun stuff! --dts
October 19th, 2009 at 12:44 pm
Speaking of bananas...it took me three tries to finish "Gravity's Rainbow." But maybe that falls in the "cool, alternative" group. I, too, haven't read any of the long classics. Is our literacy hopelessly deficient? Is it really necessary to read these books?
October 19th, 2009 at 1:29 pm
I think there's a great wealth of fantastic literature out there that's not considered "classic." So while it's nice for us to all have a "common language" of titles, I don't think it's totally necessary for us to read all of them. I like to think I haven't suffered too much for not having read "War and Peace"!
The Harry Potter books are now considered "new" children's classics, but when they came out, some folks thought, "Geez, our kids are only reading about wizards and this Quidditch thing? What are we coming to?" Who cares?! They're reading! It's a great bonus, though, that they happen to be well-written.
Anything that inspires readers, young & old, to want to read more and maybe do some writing themselves is worthy! --dts
October 19th, 2009 at 1:42 pm
I can't seem to finish anything by Charles Dickens. Not even his Christmas stories, which I really wanted to love.
Coincidentally, I was thinking of reading Heart of Darkness because I'm in the middle of The Ghost of King Leopold. I did get stonewalled reading The Shipping News, but I persevered on the third attempt and finished it. I ended up loving it. I was also stonewalled by Wuthering Heights in high school, only to realize that I had purchased the Old World English version (the cover was nicer, I bet). Once I bought the contemporary English version that everyone in my class was reading, it went swimmingly.
October 20th, 2009 at 2:02 am
"Anything that inspires readers, young & old, to want to read more and maybe do some writing themselves is worthy!"
Much agreed!
I do think that some classics ought to be read. But ultimately you're right, encouraging kids to read a variety of books, like eating a variety of vegetables, is important.
October 20th, 2009 at 3:59 pm
I love the classics and I love the way Dickens describes things in his writing (am I the long winded type?). Classics are labelled classics for a reason, and I usually find I glean some gem of an insight from them. HOWEVER, that said, Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged gave me a black eye. That book hit my face so many times while reading it in bed, I stopped for fear of getting a concussion. It's like the pages were laced with knock-out gas or some other insidious sleep drug. Yet some think Rand is the greatest author ever! Whatever!
October 20th, 2009 at 5:42 pm
Everyone has their favorite author . . . and anyone's favorite author is sure to put someone else to sleep (or make them retch). But, hey, DTS, I'll get a copy of "The Bone People" and read it, if you will get a copy of "The Whale Rider" and read it. And then, if you haven't already, get a copy of the movie. It is wonderful ! Oh, yeah, with Keisha Castle-Hughes, youngest person ever nominated for Best Actress.
I got off-topic. Here's a classic, "Winnie the Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner". Yes, it puts me to sleep. And my grandkids too when I read to them.
October 21st, 2009 at 11:38 am
Michael, I haven't yet read "The Whale Rider," but did see the movie -- it was FANTASTIC! Castle-Hughes was phenomenal. I'll definitely put it on my "to read" pile.
A "modern classic" I've been trying to read for 10 years (I make a stab at it every 3-4 years): "The Satanic Verses." Thought I'd like it (I'm a fan of the whole magical realism thing), but I feel like I'm reading Charlie Brown's teacher...mwah, mwah, mwah...
And speaking of falling asleep while reading, anyone here a "Felicity" fan? Remember Sean's Lucite overhead table, so you could read while lying on your back and not have your arms get tired or the book fall on your face if you fell asleep? --dts
October 21st, 2009 at 5:03 pm
Keep slugging on, McKinney, Conrad's book is worth the effort. Mikey Herr worked on the film script for "Appocalypse Now" a sort of modernized take on the Conrad story. (Herr wrote the Vietnam-era best-seller "Dispatches" and was a neighbor.) Keep going...and you'll appreciate how cleverly Brandon portrayed the nut case in the book you're having trouble reading. I'm a Conrad-Brandon-Herr fan and urge you to "persevere"---maybe play "The Ride of the Valkyries" to help you focus.
Corragio,
J. Arthur Rath, Hawaii reader who reads you well.
October 21st, 2009 at 5:17 pm
Per my earlier post:
I Anglicized Brando's name to "Brandon" after the God Father series...personal aberration; preferring to think of him as he used to be. I think he was on the cusp as a Conrad character in "Apocalypse Now," from which he adapted his new identity. Mr. McKinney, hope you'll try "Lord Jim," best taken with brandy.
J. Arthur Rath, local reader and film buff
October 21st, 2009 at 5:31 pm
Cheers for Misty:
All you say is true, and only Dickens defied convention to use both past and present tense in a novel. (Bleak House). Huzzah, huzzah, for the olde-tyme innovators.
J. Arthur Rath, local reader
October 21st, 2009 at 10:02 pm
Thanks Arthur for the reminder that music and books do go together. I spent one lonely summer reading Kafka and listening to Rachmaninoff. Could not have done one without the other!
October 22nd, 2009 at 8:48 am
Makana, I enjoy reading to music, as well as writing to music. Often the music is so much better than what I'm writing, and sometimes I simply have nothing to say, and the muse is snoozing (again!), and I close my eyes to imagine a sparkling sentence or two, and ... zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz ...
October 22nd, 2009 at 8:50 am
Of course I fell asleep three times rereading my last post.
October 22nd, 2009 at 11:50 am
"What classics stonewalled you?" Initially, James Joyce's "Ulyssess"...until we were stoned instead of walled. Every few years or so when a bar invited readers to start at the beginning of the book and stay until it was ended. Folks took turns until the book was done--the beer lasted all the way through the marathon.
Should you think Joyce is idiosyncratic and multilingual, you need to experience the flourish smashed readers add with ports and portmanteau. Being "stoned" removed any walls of misunderstanding. The longer we listed the more lucid it seemed--as if something we dreamed. Heads hurt the next day from so much knowledge.
J. Arthur Rath, local reader
October 23rd, 2009 at 7:30 am
J. Arthur,
Haha! Hmm, it sadly seems this practice has fallen out of fashion. Perhaps more classics would be read and enjoyed, dare I say, even devoured if it weren't. Although it wasn't just "classics" at the time I'm sure- from the generation that brought us buttons that say "Bilbo lives!"
Sounds like a bit of fun! Maybe worth a revisit... as long as it's a short story because I don't think I could stay up that long even with generous spirits. And I'm not patient enough, as I once was, in dealing with morning after... knowledge.
October 23rd, 2009 at 9:37 am
J. Arthur, This sounds like so much more fun than a library book reading, or even a coffee shop. Could this tradition be revived today?
October 23rd, 2009 at 2:01 pm
Makana: Think so, best ask UH Professor Craig Howes to do it, he's a star of stage literature dreams and UH Bio Center's maven. Lots of actors used to read on at our gatherings--"An audience, an audience, my kingdom for an audience..."unlike Sartre who described "Hell" as being other people."
A read-in would be right on, albeit impromptu and improper. Come to think of it, "A Round Table" would be nice.
Arthur, local reader
December 1st, 2009 at 3:06 pm
Did you know that Joseph Conrad was influenced by Stevenson's Jekyll and Hyde?
Personally, a 19th century book that really gripped me is Moby Dick. No kidding. I read it for the first time about a year and a half ago because writers I admire (specifically John Gardner and EM Forster) raved about it. But I fully expected to be bored.
Nevertheless, I was charmed from the first. Melville is so funny and has some truly transcendent moments that elevate you to a new consciousness and leave you wondering (if you write) how in the world did he just do that???