GRGR Re: Achebe on Conrad

[Terrance F. Flaherty]

> Kevin, jbor wrote:
> 
> A great amount of _HoD_'s tensions are
> > driven by perspective, and it is worthwhile to criticize it from
> > perspectives not found in the book.
> 
> This is, again, extremely well put. Thank you.

Sorry for being so stupid again, but I really have no idea
what this statement about perspective means. I do remember
reading this statement before, maybe here, maybe not, but I
still don't know what it means. 


Dave Monroe wrote:
> 
> I agree as well.   I've probably had to read, starting in high school,
> Conrad's Heart of Darkness in, for a classroom setting more than any
> other work, strangely enough, and I was at first surprised by comments
> on Conrad's colonialism or whatever.  Did indeed seem a step up from
> Kipling, for starters, and, certainly, from representations in most
> other media (cinema, television, fiction [historical and/or science,
> much of which can indeed be read as historical, ethnographic, even,
> litearture by other means ...],and so forth).  An indictment of sorts,
> even.

That's one ginat step for man, one great leap into Modernity
for mankind. 


An indictment of sorts? 

Could it be that Achebe Inc. are  dead wrong? 


> 
> Reminds me of a favorite case, that of Jane Austen, troubling all those
> Victorian class, gender, power, even, relationships, generally, in the
> end, reasserting the Vivtorian line (via class-appropriate marriages,
> non-marriages, largely) nonetheless, and yet, those questions had been
> raised, those relationships had been troubled, one need not necessarily
> accept a text's conclusion, conclusions, whilst working through its
> prolems, problematics (and one must wonder, to what extent did Austen
> intend, expect anyone to?  To what extent COULD she have, even?  Effects
> beyond intentions, in any case ...).  All texts are ineviatably of their
> contexts, albeit in a dynamic, rather than determinate, relationship
> with them.  Iinteresting question here is, how so with those of Thomas
> Pynchon?

Perspective and Tension? What would adding another
perspective do to this tension in HoD? It's center could not
hold, it would fall apart. Perhaps it has. 

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in
possession of a large fortune must be in want of a wife.
However little known the feelings or views of such a man may
be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so
well
fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is
considered the rightful property of someone or other of
their
daughters.

Here there is that definite authorial voice, the presence of
Jane, her ironic formaility and her exaggerated and fixed
phrases.  That universality always reminds me of Aristotle.
And Joyce too. What is that saying about great minds?  But
anyway, this is what we get from Jane, she has assumed a
comic stance here and we go along with her becuase the
author makes those with narrow and selfish views rediculous.
She manages this with such grace and fluidity that we hardly
notice that the priciple upon which action is universally
acknowledged as true, is in fact folly. So when we read Jane
here we join her in relishing the follies of the rest of
mankind. There is a bit of that in Conrad too, but there are
dark secrets, dark secrets we share with the rest of
mankind. Well, us guilty bastards anyway.