/lit/ - Literature

Read Heart of Darkness, shit's great.
To hell with the anti-imperialist bullshit, Kurtz was living the dream. Bosses a whole tribe around, and gets himself an ebony queen.
Do Americans get offended by all the time Marlow says "nigger", though?

ITT: Books you are dying to read
>Heart of Darkness, Conrad

>>6350622
I just looked at it.

>Achebe described Conrad's novella as "an offensive and deplorable book" that de-humanized Africans.
>Achebe argued that Conrad, "blinkered...with xenophobia", incorrectly depicted Africa as the antithesis of Europe and civilization, ignoring the artistic accomplishments of the Fang people who lived in the Congo River basin at the time of the book’s publication.

Did he not understand the context that this book was written in, or is he purposely ignoring it? Does he think that the African storytellers of the time gave unprejudiced, sober accounts of what were to them, bizarre, exotic, violent Europeans?

>Since the book promoted and continues to promote a prejudiced image of Africa that "depersonalizes a portion of the human race," he concluded that it should not be considered a great work of art.

Fucking ridiculous, even if his premise was true, that the book dehumanized Africans, that would hardly make the novel illegitimate as a work of art. I understand this man's frustration with a widely popular and deeply ignorant portrayal of his ancestors. But for someone who is supposed to be an intellectual, it doesn't seem like he's even trying to think about the book or the circumstances surrounding it.

>>6350630
How is it possibly racist? The narrator insists on the humanity of the Africans, and describes his disgust at their exploitation and the disregard for their lives, at a time when the majority of Europeans would laugh at the suggestion that black africans shared their natural rights and/or level of consciousness.