What a man’s book! I thought I was just being oversensitive but it seems the critics generally agree–Conrad doesn’t get chicks, man. His female characters live like this:

“It’s queer how out of touch with truth women are. They live in a world of their own, and there has never been anything like it, and never can be. It is too beautiful altogether, and if they were to set it up it would go to pieces before the first sunset. Some confounded fact we men have been living contentedly with ever since the day of creation would start up and knock the whole thing over.”

There was one passage I thought expressed something I’ve been trying to express for some while, though. It probably spoke to me more clearly than any other bit of the book:

“…Do you see him? Do you see the story? Do you see anything? It seems to me I am trying to tell you ya dream–making a vain attempt, because no relation of a dream can convey the dream-sensation, that commingling of absurdity, surprise, and bewilderment in a tremor of struggling revolt, that notion of being captured by the incredible which is of the very essence of dreams. . . .”

He was silent for a while.

“. . . No, it is impossible; it is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given epoch of one’s existence–that which makes its truth, its meaning–its subtle and penetrating essence. It is impossible. We live, as we dream–alone. . . .”

Heart of Darkness felt more like something I had to read, not something I wanted to.

I’ll give it ***.

Oh, and it’s the 12th book I’ve read since September 1, if you’re keeping track. I know I am.