CapitalistImperialistPig

My latest read is V.S. Naipaul's A Bend in The River. It can be considered another lens on Africa, in this case, immediately post-colonial Africa. Naipaul is a Trinidad born writer of Indian ancestry, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, and often considered the finest writer in English currently around. India has been trading with Africa for many centuries, and the narrator is a member of an Indian community living on the East coast of Africa. Just after the end of the European colonial empires he goes to seek his fortune deep in the interior of Africa, buying a trading store at a bend in the big river, in a little town just starting to recover from post-colonial violence - a setting nearly identical in space if later in time than that of my last two novel reads - Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart . Not quite sure where the story is going yet, but I can say that the author fully lives up to his reputation. He is a terrific stylist w...

In Conrad's The Heart of Darkness , the jungle that borders the river is a wall or barrier between the river boat our narrator captains, and the darkness beyond. This barrier is both real and metaphorical - beyond are black limbs and white eyes peering out and sometimes firing arrows and spears. Chinua Achebe wrote Things Fall Apart , he says, as a response to Conrad. As a response, I find it more counterpoint than counter. It tells the story of a man in an Ibo village, with the first part coming almost entirely before any vestige of contact with whites, but the final grim conclusion impelled by the coming of missionaries and soldiers. Obviously Achebe lived many years after Conrad, but I suspect we can trust his depiction of village life. The life he depicts is neither idyllic nor squalid, but eventful, human and highly organized by principles of community and ritual. It was also sometimes violent, brutal and to our eyes terrible - twins were always murdered by abandonment, f...

I just finished the first of my "novels for 2013" - oops - it was short and I finished early. It was Conrad's The Heart of Darkness, often considered the best short English novel of African colonialism. For balance, I also read the acclaimed Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe's highly critical review. Beside's closely paralleling certain event's in Conrad's life, Heart of Darkness was also the inspiration and pattern for Apocalypse Now , the parallelism extending to the names of the critical characters Mr. Kurtz (Conrad) and Colonel Kurtz (Coppola) and their respective last words. Conrad's narrator is a sailor named Marlow who undertakes a journey up the Congo river to relieve Mr. Kurtz, a charismatic character who's dealing seems to produce an incredible bounty of ivory. Achebe's critique of the novel charges Conrad with racism, mostly on the basis of his portrayal of Africans and Africa. It's certainly true that no African character...