Journal

Genius

Weekend over, and I just popped by to say that I’ve been thinking about Heart of Darkness, partly for class, partly for my essay, and also partly for myself. It’s a brilliant work, and Conrad certainly doesn’t seem nearly as straightforward as I used to think he was on the basis of Heart of Darkness. Of course, I had no reason to suspect so in the first place, so I guess I was just really being stupid. I read Heart of Darkness (and a couple of other Conrad shorts) when I was a lot younger, and I reckon I just didn’t have the perceptiveness to observe what I’ve observed recently. I’m now somewhat inclined to believe my other lecturer when he tells me that if I can read Heart of Darkness properly, Texts for Nothing is… well, nothing.

I also watched Godard’s Le Mépris over the weekend. While it isn’t a compulsory text, I am doing Contempt this semester, and my love of the few Godard pictures I’ve watched (the result of my own laziness and also the fact that he’s made so many pictures) meant that there was no way I was going to leave it out of my to-do list. It’s a beautiful picture, as Godard’s films tend to be, and I have to say that I really enjoyed it. The Delerue soundtrack certainly helped too.

The last piece of genius I should tell you about today is Macedonio Fernández’s wonderful The Museum of Eterna’s Novel (The First Good Novel). It was funny and clever and moving all at once, and is the sort of thing that makes you think, If only I managed a novel/antinovel even half of this magnitude someday. Wonderful stuff.

I’m moving onto Franca Rame and Dario Fo’s monologues next. It’s one of my texts and to tell the truth I have no idea what to expect. Of course, it’s perfectly possible that this is a work of genius too, in which case my earlier statement will have to be retracted, but having not read it I’m in something of a quandary here.

And on a final and really unrelated note for today, I think I should be ordering my earphones soon. I have a feeling they’ll come in handy in the near future. I’ve delayed enough.

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