At any given moment,
I usually have four or five books on the go. My bedside book for the last several days has been Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness”.
Coppola did the story a disservice, I think. The original as was would have been a good way to do it, and it would have probably made more sense, but then he wouldn’t have been able to send his all important messages about Vietnam.
if you’ve never read the original, if the only version of it you know is “Apocalypse now” I reccomend you read the original- it’s free for kindle. And it’s well worth the time to read it.
I read it a few years ago, outstanding book. You could see the shadow of the story in Apocalypse Now, but only the shadow. That’s what happens when you make a movie where the political message is more important than the story (don’t we call that propaganda?).
Honestly, Coppola COULD have told the story based in Viet Nam just to make it more “relevant” to the audience, without losing the story. Of course to do that he’s have had to give Brando a script to follow (I’ve heard Brando’s whole part was ad-libbed because the script wasn’t ready and he didn’t want to wait for it).
Read it for the first time a few months ago, & was suitably impressed.
I keep trying to read it, and I keep getting bogged down and depressed before I finished the first chapter. I keep it around in the hope that I’ll finish it. Don’t know if I ever will.
The bit at the very beginning, about how every center of civilization was once at the edge, really stuck with me.
Its a fucking tour de force. Conrad is ranked as one of the greatest prose writers in English. Pretty impressive for an autodidact whose English was his THIRD language after Polish and German, IIRC. Coppola and his no talent nephew can kiss my hairy Hunkie Ass, by the way.
OK, so that’s what I read on vacation next week. Thanks.