Heart of Darkness (1899) By Joseph Conrad -- Illustrated edition (2013) By Matt Kish

The publication of this edition of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness is different than previous print runs of the novel in that it is/was an artistic release – it’s illustrated. And it’s not just illustrated, its every-other-page is a full color illustration, a visual rendering of the text on the facing page. All in all, artist Matt Kish’s treatment of the book is a fascinating, and successful, endeavor.

At first thought one might think the novel – a telling of an early-European exploration of the Congo River – is an odd topic for illustration. Conrad’s book isn’t a travelogue, it’s an intense psychological study of the mind of Marlow, the expedition leader, and of the mindset of colonialism. Yet, that is exactly why the illustrated-treatment of the story works. When Conrad’s book was written in 1899, Africa was "the dark continent" – nothing but imagination. No one (a.k.a. Europeans) knew what lay beyond the coastal areas of Africa. As a result of this lack of information, they created fantasy nightmares of the interior. These “white-man fears” (some real, some not) lend themselves quite well to illustration. 

I picked up this book because it relates to two of my recent reads: Into Africa by Martin Dugard, and a later Conrad book, the Secret Agent, written in 1907.

Dugard’s book is a telling of the Stanley & Livingstone story. In his epilogue, Dugard credits Heart of Darkness as the “first” telling of that story, a claim that proved debatable when I repeated it -- having now read it, I think I side with those who question that claim. Yes, Livingstone once explored the Congo, but that was before he got “lost.” And, while Livingstone studied the vast cultural difference (vis-à-vis Europeans and Africans), he did so as an explorer. In Conrad’s book, Kurtz (the so-called Livingstone character) was an advance guard of exploiters, not explorers; and Marlow (the Stanley counterpart) was a professional sailor, not an international journalist.

Comparing Heart of Darkness with The Secret Agent is another issue. These are two vastly different storylines, yet both are told with Conrad’s exhaustive/exhausting writing style. The author is enamored with compound sentences that often come across as run-ons, endless run-ons. Yet, when one is telling the story of a living nightmare, a fast-paced endless run-on works.

Recommendation: Interesting from two standpoints, its illustrated treatment of a classic; and as documentation on the western mindset about Africa – in this case negative (contrasting sharply with the Tarzan treatment a few years later).  

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Dubliners (1904-1907) By James Joyce

On several occasions I have attempted to read James Joyce’s classic Ulysses, considered one of the greatest literary works of the 20th century. Each time I’ve tried, I have given up long before page 100.  It has been just too dense, leaving me drowning in its stream of consciousness. But, sometime before I die, I intend to successfully read Ulysses. Reading Dubliners is a stepping-stone toward that goal.

Dubliners, is a collection of 15 short stories written by Joyce early in his career.  They were first published in 1914.  Colum McCann, who wrote the Foreword to the centennial edition of the book, acknowledges the difficulty of Joyce’s writing.  He refers to Dubliners as the “laboratory” used to begin Joyce’s body of work.  Many of the character studies in the stories, he says, will appear again in Ulysses.  So, my plan is to begin, at the beginning.

The short story selection includes some literary scenes that remain recognizable over 100 years later. 

For Chicago readers the story Ivy Day in the Committee Room should be particularly familiar.  It covers get-out-the-vote conversations between election workers.  The “committee room” is what we would call the ward offices of Chicago’s still powerful Irish-dominated Democratic Machine, home to such names as Daley, Madigan, Cullerton and Hines – Irish clans that span generations and continue to control much (all?) that goes on in Chicago, Cook County, and Illinois.  They didn’t write the book on elections, but they definitely read it, offered edits, and added chapters.

Another story, Eveline, is short and powerful.  It tells of a young woman who has been swept off her feet by a fast-talking young man.  She is about to run away to Argentina with him when she considers everything that makes her so willing to do so; which in the end are the same things that hold her in Dublin.  It is followed immediately by After the Race, a revealing story about class.

The collection ends with what was my favorite, despite its name: The Dead.  The story takes place the day and night of an annual dinner party.  In very many ways it reminds me of Virginia Wolfe’s book Mrs. Dalloway, which was written a generation later.  As the dinner party is coming to a close, one of the guests begins to sing a song The Lass of Aughrim that reminds a married woman of her first real love in life – someone who died before she ever met her husband. 

Next up on my James Joyce list:  The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

The Fire of His Genius (2001) By Kirkpatrick Sale

This’ truly the season (presidential election season) to scrap the standard way of telling history. Let's forget Washington, Jefferson, King David, Napoleon, Justinian, Caesar, Laozi, Voltaire, and the Greats: Alexander, Catherine and Peter.  People are tiresome, and they die.  Maybe we should give primacy in history to inventions:  the wheel, the abacus, the computer, flight, vaccines, and the steamboat.  Okay, maybe we keep the multi-dimensional Ben Franklin and his kite.

This re-ordering of history telling seems to be the plot of Kirkpatrick Sales’ biography of Robert Fulton The Fire of His Genius.  And, he has a point.  Fulton, the namesake of numerous locales in the United States (including Fulton, Kentucky, a.k.a. “the banana capital of the world,” the cause of my review of Peter Chapman’s Bananas), is all but forgotten to modern times.  Yet, he perfected the all but forgotten but exceedingly historically significant steamboat, and proved it could be a commercial success.

Let’s see, without the steamboat:  no Manifest Destiny, no Hudson River Line, no upstream Mississippi River traffic, no Show Boat nor Old Man River; and alas, no backdrop for Huckleberry Finn or Tom Sawyer.  And to jump industries, without his financial success running a steamboat line, Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt would have never had the capital necessary to give us the New York Central Rail Road, or the Biltmore for that matter.

As is often the case with a genius, focus was always a problem for Fulton.  His work on steamboats more times than not was delayed, much to the irritation of his business partner, by Fulton’s dalliance with naval warfare.  He was fascinated with and did much of the earlier engineering work on submarines, torpedoes and water mines – all three of which would make their mark, for better or worse, on world history (and this interest was strictly as an engineer, not as a patriot, he serially and sometimes simultaneously tried to sell these ideas to the French, British, and American governments while they warred with each other).

Oh, and then there is Fulton’s personal life (1765 – 1815), which would raise a few eyebrows even today.

Sales’ book is interesting, his research is exhaustive – his writing is dull.  Yet, The Fire of His Genius is still a worthy read, helping to connect the historical dots of many of those dead people.

A Sand County Almanac (1949) By Aldo Leopold

At age 63, I keep telling friends my retirement plans involve moving to a rural environment and becoming a hermit. They question my ability to do so, not to mention my very sanity. I follow-up with a question of my own: have you read Aldo Leopold’s Sand County Almanac?

Their questions address a legitimate concern, and I confess I share it. I’ve spent 40-some years living in urban environments -- Chicago, New York, and DC -- and mostly in high-rises. I can tell you in minute detail how the city comes alive in the morning. As the sun just begins to peek at Chicago from across the lake, the garbage trucks shift into gear, the El trains increase their schedules, and the birds begin to chirp (yes, cities have birds other than pigeons). By the time the rising sun starts to reflect off the glass towers, the coffee baristas and maintenance crews start arriving for work, joggers head for the lakefront, and the celebrants from the night have stumbled home. These raw urban scenes have their own beauty, and hold many memories – I have loved the city.

This contrasts sharply with Aldo Leopold’s description of sun rises on his farm in Sand County, Wisconsin.

Leopold is a founder of what we call the environmental movement. He’s credited with the philosophy of Land Ethic – viewing the natural habitat not as a commodity to be harvested, but as a community that we are a part of. The Almanac is about his farm from January through December. It is beautifully written, in a calming, folksy way.

It is interesting to note that John Muir, who is considered the “founder” of Yosemite National Park, was raised on a farm in Portage, Wisconsin, not far from Leopold's. This area, known as the Wisconsin Dells to most Chicagoans, can arguably lay claim to being the birthplace of the American environmental movement.

Members of my family will recognize that an interest in nature, botany and environmental issues is not new to me – though it has been an interest largely neglected most of my adult life because of a need to live in a big city. Throughout my Northwest Indiana childhood the big local debate was environmental: did we want “progress” defined as Bethlehem Steel, or “tree-hugging” defined as the creation of the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore. The grand compromise won out – we got them both -- and for the most part it has worked out well, the exception to the rule on similar compromises.

So the question remains, when I retire in a few years, what do I want to wake up to: coffee in a garden, or coffee on a balcony?  I’m leaning heavily toward the garden.

The Taxidermist's Daughter (2014) By Kate Mosse

I am not a particularly fast reader, yet I sped through The Taxidermist’s Daughter by Kate Mosse in only two sittings.  It’s a rather compelling and fun blending of several British literary genres save one, it spares readers any lead characters from the self-absorbed aristocracy.  Oh, and it includes nursery rhymes.

The book is equal parts Sherlock Holmes, Oliver Twist, and Macbeth; stirred into the cauldron with a sampling of British women mystery writers from Agatha Christie forward, and then adding a bit of American Edgar Allan Poe for spice.

The main character is named Connie, and as one can guess from the title, she is the daughter of a taxidermist, a once respectable occupation that has fallen out of fashion to the point that its mere mention frightens people.  She lives with her widowed father in Blackthorn House near the coast of England, an area heavily impacted by tidewaters and summer storms.  Her aging father is losing his faculties, and Connie, in her twenties, is still trying to piece together her past, she had some kind of accident when she was young, resulting in amnesia.  Her father has not been helpful in providing information about what happened, and she suspects that what little she has been told has been fabricated. 

Without a spoiler alert, I can go no further, but you should. 

Recommendation:  great summer read.

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007) By Sherman Alexie

My first exposure to author Sherman Alexie was through the Chicago Gay & Lesbian Film Festival many years ago.  I went to see his movie The Business of FancyDancing.  It was multi-cultural at its strongest.  The main character grew-up on a reservation, but “abandoned” the tribe by taking school seriously and winning a scholarship to college.  In college, he comes out as a gay man, and ends up in a relationship with a white man.  The book covers his return to the reservation for the funeral of a friend.  Based on the book, I started being a regular at the annual pow-wows that are held in Chicago – fascinating events when you take them more seriously than as a mere tourist attraction.

Alexie would go on to become quite the independent film director, prominent poet, and novelist.  His credits include the movie SmokeSignals & book The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, and the autobiographical book The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.

The Absolutely True Diary tells of his childhood on the Spokane reservation in the northeastern corner of Washington State.  He, as were the other kids on the “rez,” was culturally raised to expect nothing out of life.  When he independently decides that he is going to the high school in Reardon, an entirely white school 22 miles from the reservation, it changes his childhood and life.  He is accused of abandoning his tribe, and becoming a white-lover … an “apple,” red on the outside, but white on the inside.  Yet, at Reardon High School, he’s the Indian kid that shouldn’t be there.  RHS’s school mascot of course is the “Redskins.”  He’s caught in-between two cultures, which will become a running theme in Alexie’s body of work.

The trials and tribulations that he faces as a kid were endless – teenage angst, coupled with unquestioned and often internalized racism.  To tell the story, Alexie uses comedy to make it bearable.  (See my review of A Backpack, a Bear, and Eight Crates of Vodka to see how this formula plays in a different cultural setting).

Arnold, the Alexie character in the novel, turns out to be extremely good at comedy.  Arnold draws cartoons, and they are sad, hilarious and on-target.  The book has enough cartoons to qualify as a comic book, and needs them.

It would be easy for me to relate this book to so many “other” of America’s ills – not the least of which is the subject of what society does to psyche of people raised on the reservation, or in the inner center “ghetto,” or in the “white-trash” trailer park.  Hope is destroyed.  One of my favorite passages in political literature is Harvey Milk’s “Hope Speech.”  The crux of the speech is that you must give people hope, because “without hope, life is not worth living.”  Sociologists point to this need whenever discussing alcoholism or drug abuse, or suicide.  Part-Time Indian puts this in personal terms.

Recommendation:  Absolutely.

Click on the movie trailer for The Business of FancyDancing and watch an interview of Alexie by Bill Moyers.

Into Africa: The Epic Adventures of Stanley & Livingstone (2003) By Martin Dugard

For my long Fourth of July weekend I was looking for something relaxing to read, something in my usual lines of interest, only as far removed from the year 2016 as possible.  I found it with Into Africa: The Epic Adventures of Stanley & Livingstone. by Martin Dugard.

For those of you living in the modern day equivalent of “the heart of Africa,” Dr. David Livingstone, a Brit from back when Great Britain was at its greatest (the Victorian Age) is one of the world’s most renowned explorers, ranking with the likes of Captain Cook, and Charles Darwin.   The ultimate and final exploration of his career was to be determining the source of the Nile River. While on that quest, he went missing. Henry Morton Stanley, a Welsh born American and journalist, was secretly tasked by the publisher of the New York Herald to find Livingstone.  The rest, as they say, is history, not to mention one of the best quotes of all recorded time: “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?”

The book is a fictionalized history of the story that kept government administrators, the science community, and everyday newspaper readers throughout the British Empire, the rest of Europe, and the United States on edge in the 1870s.  It’s not the first fictionalized version of the Stanley & Livingstone story – that distinction, as explained by the author in the epilogue, belongs to Joseph Conrad’s book The Heart of Darkness.  

Dugard’s Into Africa excels as an adventure story – despite the fact that most readers know the ending before turning the first page.  It covers a range of topics: empire building, the slave trade, the American civil war, the height of newspaper wars, cultural racism, the coming colonialism, the inner working of the British Geological Society, Gladstone & Disraeli; and serves as an incredible geography lesson for readers (with maps).  I’ll quote one paragraph to show the book’s period setting and topic range:

“It was October 31 when Stanley traveled onward again.  In America, Cochise and his Apache warriors were being hunted in the Arizona Territory, Chicago had just been destroyed by fire, and President Grant was about to issue a proclamation making the Ku Klux Klan illegal.  In England, Darwin’s The Descent of Man was just days away from publication.  In Paris, the first exhibition of impressionist painting was about to get under way.  If Stanley were back in the world, he would likely have been covering one of those events for the Herald with great gusto and self-importance.”

Dugard’s telling of this story never lost my interest.   And as it turns out, he is quite the eclectic author.  While his body of work includes Farther than Any Man: The Rise and Fall of Captain James Cook and other books about explorers, it also includes a book about running, a book about sailing, and a series of “Killing” books he co-authored (ghost wrote?) will Bill O’Reilly:  Killing Kennedy, Killing Jesus, Killing … fill in the blank.  When he’s not writing, he’s a track & field coach at a high school in California.  

Recommendation:  a great summer read.

Click on Amazon to purchase this book.