Tuesday, May 19, 2020

Heart of Darkness



Heart of Darkness (1899) is a novella by Polish-English novelist Joseph Conrad about a narrated voyage up the Congo River into the Congo Free State in the Heart of AfricaCharles Marlow, the narrator, tells his story to friends aboard a boat anchored on the River Thames. This setting provides the frame for Marlow's story of his obsession with the successful ivory trader Kurtz. Conrad offers parallels between London ("the greatest town on earth") and Africa as places of darkness.
Central to Conrad's work is the idea that there is little difference between "civilised people" and those described as "savages." Heart of Darkness implicitly comments on imperialism and racism.
Originally issued as a three-part serial story in Blackwood's Magazine to celebrate the thousandth edition of the magazine, Heart of Darkness has been widely re-published and translated into many languages. It provided the inspiration for Francis Ford Coppola's 1979 film Apocalypse Now. In 1998, the Modern Library ranked Heart of Darkness 67th on their list of the 100 best novels in English of the twentieth century.

Composition and publication


Joseph Conrad based Heart of Darkness on his own experiences in the Congo.
In 1890, at the age of 32, Conrad was appointed by a Belgian trading company to serve on one of its steamers. While sailing up the Congo River from one station to another, the captain became ill and Conrad assumed command. He guided the ship up the tributary Lualaba River to the trading company's innermost station, Kindu, in Eastern Kongo; Marlow has similar experiences to the author.
When Conrad began to write the novella, eight years after returning from Africa, he drew inspiration from his travel journals. He described Heart of Darkness as "a wild story" of a journalist who becomes manager of a station in the (African) interior and makes himself worshipped by a tribe of savages. The tale was first published as a three-part serial, in February, March and April 1899, in Blackwood's Magazine (February 1899 was the magazine's 1000th issue: special edition). In 1902 Heart of Darkness was included in the book Youth: a Narrative, and Two Other Stories, published on 13 November 1902 by William Blackwood.
The volume consisted of Youth: a NarrativeHeart of Darkness and The End of the Tether in that order. In 1917, for future editions of the book, Conrad wrote an "Author's Note" where he, after denying any "unity of artistic purpose" underlying the collection, discusses each of the three stories and makes light commentary on Marlow, the narrator of the tales within the first two stories. He said Marlow first appeared in Youth.
On 31 May 1902, in a letter to William Blackwood, Conrad remarked,
I call your own kind self to witness ... the last pages of Heart of Darkness where the interview of the man and the girl locks in—as it were—the whole 30000 words of narrative description into one suggestive view of a whole phase of life and makes of that story something quite on another plane than an anecdote of a man who went mad in the Centre of Africa.
There have been many proposed sources for the character of the antagonist, Kurtz. Georges-Antoine Klein, an agent who became ill and died aboard Conrad's steamer, is proposed by scholars and literary critics as a basis for Kurtz. The principal figures involved in the disastrous "rear column" of the Emin Pasha Relief Expedition have also been identified as likely sources, including column leader Edmund Musgrave Barttelot, slave trader Tippu Tip and the expedition leader, Welsh explorer Henry Morton Stanley. Conrad's biographer Norman Sherry judged that Arthur Hodister (1847–1892), a Belgian solitary but successful trader, who spoke three Congolese languages and was venerated by the Congolese villagers among whom he worked to the point of deification, served as the main model, while later scholars have refuted this hypothesis. Adam Hochschild, in King Leopold's Ghost, believes that the Belgian soldier Léon Rom influenced the character. Peter Firchow mentions the possibility that Kurtz is a composite, modelled on various figures present in the Congo Free State at the time as well as on Conrad's imagining of what they might have had in common.

Plot summary

Aboard the Nellie, anchored in the River Thames near Gravesend, Charles Marlow tells his fellow sailors how he became captain of a river steamboat for an ivory trading company. As a child, Marlow had been fascinated by "the blank spaces" on maps, particularly by the biggest, which by the time he had grown up was no longer blank but turned into "a place of darkness". Yet there remained a big river, "resembling an immense snake uncoiled, with its head in the sea, its body at rest curving afar over a vast country and its tail lost in the depths of the land". The image of this river on the map fascinated Marlow "as a snake would a bird". Feeling as though "instead of going to the centre of a continent I were about to set off for the centre of the earth", Marlow takes passage on a French steamer bound for the African coast and then into the interior. After more than thirty days the ship anchors off the seat of government near the mouth of the big river. Marlow, with 200 mi (320 km) to go yet, takes passage on a little sea-going steamer captained by a Swede. He departs some 30 mi (48 km) up the river where his company's station is. Work on the railway is going on, involving removal of rocks with explosives. Marlow enters a narrow ravine to stroll in the shade under the trees, and finds himself in "the gloomy circle of some Inferno": the place is full of diseased Africans who worked on the railroad and now lay sick and gaunt, awaiting death. Marlow witnesses the scene "horror-struck."
Marlow must wait for ten days in the company's Outer Station. He sleeps in a hut. At this station, which strikes Marlow as a scene of devastation, he meets the company's impeccably dressed chief accountant who tells him of a Mr. Kurtz, who is in charge of a very important trading-post, and a widely respected, first-class agent, a "'very remarkable person'" who "'Sends in as much ivory as all the others put together'". The agent predicts that Kurtz will go very far: "'He will be a somebody in the Administration before long. They, above—the Council in Europe, you know—mean him to be'".

Belgian river station on the Congo River, 1889
Marlow departs with a caravan of sixty men to travel on foot about 200 miles (320 km) into the wilderness to the Central Station, where the steamboat that he is to captain is based. On the fifteenth day of his march, he arrives at the station, which has some twenty employees and is shocked to learn from a fellow European that his steamboat has been wrecked in an accident two days earlier. He meets the general manager, who informs him that he could wait no longer for Marlow to arrive, because the up-river stations had to be relieved and tells him of a rumour that one important station is in jeopardy because its chief, the exceptional Mr. Kurtz, is ill. "Hang Kurtz", Marlow thinks, irritated. He fishes his boat out of the river and is occupied with its repair for some months, during which a sudden fire destroys a grass shed full of materials used to trade with the natives. While one of the natives is tortured for allegedly causing the fire, Marlow is invited in the room of the station's brick-maker, a man who spent a year waiting for material to make bricks. Marlow gets the impression the man wants to pump him and is curious to know what kind of information he is after. Hanging on the wall is "a small sketch in oils, on a panel, representing a woman draped and blindfolded carrying a lighted torch". Marlow is fascinated with the sinister effect of the torchlight upon the woman's face, and is informed that Mr. Kurtz made the painting in the station a year ago. The brick-maker calls Kurtz "'a prodigy'" and "'an emissary of pity, and science, and progress'", and feels Kurtz represents the "'higher intelligence, wide sympathies, a singleness of purpose'" needed for the cause Europe entrusts the Company with. The man predicts Kurtz will rise in the hierarchy within two years and then makes the connection to Marlow: "'The same people who sent him specially also recommended you'".
Marlow is frustrated by the months it takes to perform the repairs, delayed by the lack of proper tools and replacement parts at the station. He learns that Kurtz is not admired but rather resented by the manager. Once underway, the journey up-river to Kurtz's station takes two months. The steamboat stops briefly near an abandoned hut on the riverbank, where Marlow finds a pile of wood and a note indicating that the wood is for them and that they should proceed quickly but with caution as they near the Inner Station.

The Roi des Belges ("King of the Belgians"—French), the Belgian riverboat Conrad commanded on the upper Congo, 1889
The journey pauses for the night about 8 miles (13 km) below the Inner Station. In the morning the crew awakens to find that the boat is enveloped by a thick white fog. From the riverbank they hear a very loud cry, followed by a discordant clamour. A few hours later, as safe navigation becomes increasingly difficult, the steamboat is attacked with a barrage of small arrows from the forest. The helmsman is impaled by a spear and falls at Marlow's feet. Marlow sounds the steam whistle repeatedly, frightening the attackers and causing the shower of arrows to cease. Marlow and a pilgrim (Marlow's word for the European hangers-on in the steamer) watch the helmsman die. In a flash forward, Marlow notes that the International Society for the Suppression of Savage Customs had commissioned Kurtz to write a report, which he did eloquently. A handwritten postscript, apparently added later by Kurtz, reads "Exterminate all the brutes!"
At Kurtz's station Marlow sees a man on the riverbank waving his arm, urging them to land. The pilgrims, heavily armed, escort the manager on to the shore to retrieve Mr. Kurtz. The man from the bank boards the steamboat and turns out to be a Russian wanderer who had happened to stray into Kurtz's camp. He explains that he had left the wood and the note at the abandoned hut. Through conversation Marlow discovers just how wanton Kurtz can be; how the natives worship him; and how very ill he has been of late. The Russian admires Kurtz for his intellect and his insights into love, life and justice and suggests that he is a poet. He tells of how Kurtz opened his mind and seems to admire him even for his power—and for his willingness to use it. Marlow, on the other hand, suggests that Kurtz has gone mad.
From the steamboat, Marlow observes the station in detail and is surprised to see near the station house a row of posts topped with the severed heads of natives. Around the corner of the house, the manager appears with the pilgrims, bearing a gaunt and ghost-like Kurtz on an improvised stretcher. The area fills with natives, apparently ready for battle but Kurtz shouts something from the stretcher and the natives retreat into the forest. The pilgrims carry Kurtz to the steamer and lay him in one of the cabins, where he and the manager have a private conversation. Marlow watches a beautiful native woman walk in measured steps along the shore and stop next to the steamer; literary commentators say she is Kurtz's mistress. When the manager exits the cabin he pulls Marlow aside and tells him that Kurtz has harmed the company's business in the region, that his methods are "unsound". Later, the Russian reveals that Kurtz believes the company wants to remove him from the station and kill him and Marlow confirms that hangings had been discussed.

Arthur Hodister (1847-1892), who Conrad's biographer Norman Sherry has argued served as one of the sources of inspiration for Kurtz
After midnight, Marlow discovers that Kurtz has left his cabin on the steamer and returned to shore. He goes ashore and finds a very weak Kurtz crawling his way back to the station house, though not too weak to call to the natives for help. Marlow threatens to harm Kurtz if he raises an alarm but Kurtz only laments that he had not accomplished more in the region. The next day they prepare for their journey back down the river. The natives, including the ornately dressed woman, once again assemble on shore and begin to shout unintelligibly. Noticing the pilgrims readying their rifles, Marlow sounds the steam whistle repeatedly to scatter the crowd of natives. Only the woman remains unmoved, with outstretched arms. The pilgrims open fire as the current carries them swiftly downstream.
Kurtz's health worsens on the return trip and Marlow becomes increasingly ill. The steamboat breaks down and while it is stopped for repairs, Kurtz gives Marlow a packet of papers, including his commissioned report and a photograph, telling him to keep them away from the manager. When Marlow next speaks with him, Kurtz is near death; Marlow hears him weakly whisper "The horror! The horror!". A short while later, the "manager's boy" announces to the rest of the crew, "Mistah Kurtz—he dead" . The next day Marlow pays little attention to the pilgrims as they bury "something" in a muddy hole. He falls very ill, himself near death.
Upon his return to Europe, Marlow is embittered and contemptuous of the "civilised" world. Several callers come to retrieve the papers Kurtz had entrusted to him, but Marlow withholds them or offers papers he knows they have no interest in. He then gives Kurtz's report to a journalist, for publication if he sees fit. Finally Marlow is left with some personal letters and a photograph of Kurtz's fiancée, whom Kurtz referred to as "My Intended". When Marlow visits her, she is dressed in black and still deep in mourning, although it has been more than a year since Kurtz's death. She presses Marlow for information, asking him to repeat Kurtz's final words. Uncomfortably, Marlow lies and tells her that Kurtz's final word was her name.
Source: Wikipedia

Movie the book inspired: Apocalypse Now (we'll watch full movie Saturday)




ASSIGNMENT: Write about a dark trip full of foreboding, 50 to 200 words. Or translate a paragraph like in the excerpt link. Or narrate a 30 second video of a river boat heading up river.

Monday, May 18, 2020

JAZZ, BIG BAND & SWING

check out Big Band & Swing Playlist on youtube

Search Results

Featured snippet from the web

The term “Big Band”, referring to Jazz, is vague but popular. The term generally refers to the swing era starting around 1935 but there was no one event that kicked off a new form of music in 1935. It had evolved naturally from the blues and jazz of New Orleans, Chicago and Kansas City.
                The Andrews Sisters - Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy from Company B
                                                         Jitterbug Dance-Off
Scatting was also a feature of early Jazz
                                           Cab Calloway - Minnie the Moocher

Jazz is a kind of music in which improvisation is typically an important part. In most jazz performances, players play solos which they make up on the spot, which requires considerable skill. There is tremendous variety in jazz, but most jazz is very rhythmic, has a forward momentum called "swing,"

                       Sing Sing Sing - Benny Goodman


 and uses "bent" or "blue" notes.



 You can often hear "call--and--response" patterns in jazz, in which one instrument, voice, or part of the band answers another. (You can hear Ella Fitzgerald and Roy Eldridge do "call and response" in Ella's Singing Class.
Ray Charles - What I'd Say
Ray Charles - Mess Around

Jazz can express many different emotions, from pain...

 to sheer joy. 
                                     Glenn Miller and his Orchestra - In the Mood
In jazz, you may hear the sounds of freedom-for the music has been a powerful voice for people suffering unfair treatment because of the color of the skin, or because they lived in a country run by a cruel dictator.

THE NATURE OF JAZZ

Jazz musicians place a high value on finding their own sound and style, and that means, for example, that trumpeter Miles Davis sounds very different than trumpeter Louis Armstrong (whose sound you can hear in Louis's Music Class.) 

                                 Louie Armstrong - When the Saints Go Marching in

Miles Davis - So What

Jazz musicians like to play their songs in their own distinct styles, and so you might listen to a dozen different jazz recordings of the same song, but each will sound different. The musicians' playing styles make each version different, and so do the improvised solos. Jazz is about making something familiar--a familiar song--into something fresh. And about making something shared--a tune that everyone knows--into something personal. Those are just some of the reasons that jazz is a great art form, and why some people consider it "America's classical music."

So where does Jazz come from? In my estimation it's from Classical Music...

                       Freddy Martin and his orchestra - Piano Concerto In B Flat - 1941

Traditional African Music....



And Folk...



                                             The Bill Smith Quartet - Folk Jazz

THE GROWTH OF JAZZ

Jazz developed in the United States in the very early part of the 20th century. New Orleans, near the mouth of the Mississippi River, played a key role in this development. The city's population was more diverse than anywhere else in the South, and people of African, French, Caribbean, Italian, German, Mexican, and American Indian,

 As well as English, descent interacted with one another. African-American musical traditions mixed with others and gradually jazz emerged from a blend of ragtime,

 marches,

 blues, 

Tin Pan Alley,


and other kinds of music. At first jazz was mostly for dancing. (In later years, people would sit and listen to it.) After the first recordings of jazz were made in 1917,

Their 1918 hit 'Tiger Rag'


The competition: Creole Jazz Band



 the music spread widely and developed rapidly. The evolution of jazz was led by a series of brilliant musicians such as Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington (listen to Ellington in Duke's Music Class),



 Charlie Parker, 

and Miles Davis. Jazz developed a series of different styles including traditional jazz, swing (listen, for example, to Benny Carter, who got his start in swing music, in Benny's Music Class) bebop,
Charlie Parker - Bebop



                            Dizzy Gillespie - Bebop
 cool jazz,

 and jazz rock, or in this case, Psychedelic Jazz Rock Fusion...


The list goes on and on. At the same time, jazz spread from the United States to many parts of the world, and today jazz musicians--and jazz festivals--can be found in dozens of nations. Jazz is one of the United States's greatest exports to the world.
Other notables...

Chaotic/Discordant Jazz

Dave Brubeck' Take 5 (biggest selling jazz single of all time)



Nicholas Brothers



Time to make our own Jazz band:

Thursday, May 14, 2020

Confederacy of Dunces





A Confederacy of Dunces is a picaresque novel by American novelist John Kennedy Toole which reached publication in 1980, eleven years after Toole's suicide. Published through the efforts of writer Walker Percy (who also contributed a foreword) and Toole's mother, Thelma, the book became first a cult classic, then a mainstream success; it earned Toole a posthumous Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1981, and is now considered a canonical work of modern literature of the Southern United States.
The book's title refers to an epigram from Jonathan Swift's essay, Thoughts on Various Subjects, Moral and Diverting: "When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him." Its central character, Ignatius J. Reilly, is an educated but slothful 30-year-old man living with his mother in the Uptown neighborhood of early-1960s New Orleans who, in his quest for employment, has various adventures with colorful French Quarter characters. Toole wrote the novel in 1963 during his last few months in Puerto Rico.

Major characters

Ignatius J. Reilly

Ignatius Jacques Reilly is something of a modern Don Quixote—eccentric, idealistic, and creative, sometimes to the point of delusion. In his foreword to the book, Walker Percy describes Ignatius as a "slob extraordinary, a mad Oliver Hardy, a fat Don Quixote, a perverse Thomas Aquinas rolled into one". He disdains modernity, particularly pop culture. The disdain becomes his obsession: he goes to movies in order to mock their perversity and express his outrage with the contemporary world's lack of "theology and geometry". He prefers the scholastic philosophy of the Middle Ages, and the Early Medieval philosopher Boethius in particular. However, he also enjoys many modern comforts and conveniences and is given to claiming that the rednecks of rural Louisiana hate all modern technology, which they associate with unwanted change. The workings of his pyloric valve play an important role in his life, reacting strongly to incidents in a fashion that he likens to Cassandra in terms of prophetic significance.
Ignatius is of the mindset that he does not belong in the world and that his numerous failings are the work of some higher power. He continually refers to the goddess Fortuna as having spun him downwards on her wheel of fortune. Ignatius loves to eat, and his masturbatory fantasies lead in strange directions. His mockery of obscene images is portrayed as a defensive posture to hide their titillating effect on him. Although considering himself to have an expansive and learned worldview, Ignatius has an aversion to ever leaving the town of his birth, and frequently bores friends and strangers with the story of his sole, abortive journey out of New Orleans, a trip to Baton Rouge on a Greyhound Scenicruiser bus, which Ignatius recounts as a traumatic ordeal of extreme horror.

Myrna Minkoff

Myrna Minkoff, referred to by Ignatius as "that minx", is a Jewish beatnik from New York City, whom
Ignatius met while she was in college in New Orleans. Though their political, social, religious, and personal orientations could hardly be more different, Myrna and Ignatius fascinate one another. The novel repeatedly refers to Myrna and Ignatius having engaged in tag-team attacks on the teachings of their college professors. For most of the novel, she is seen only in the regular correspondence which the two sustain since her return to New York, a correspondence heavily weighted with sexual analysis on the part of Myrna and contempt for her apparent sacrilegious activity by Ignatius. Officially, they both deplore everything the other stands for. Though neither of them will admit it, their correspondence indicates that, separated though they are by half a continent, many of their actions are meant to impress one another.

Irene Reilly

Mrs. Irene Reilly is the mother of Ignatius. She has been widowed for 21 years. At first, she allows Ignatius his space and drives him where he needs to go, but throughout the course of the novel she learns to stand up for herself. She also has a drinking problem, most frequently indulging in muscatel, although Ignatius exaggerates that she is a raving, abusive drunk.
She falls for Claude Robichaux, a fairly well-off man with a railroad pension and rental properties. At the end of the novel, she decides she will marry Claude. But first, she agrees with Santa Battaglia (who has not only recently become Mrs. Reilly's new best friend, but also harbors an intense dislike for Ignatius) that Ignatius is insane and arranges to have him sent to a mental hospital.


Others

  • Santa Battaglia, a "grammaw" who is friends with Mrs. Reilly, and has a marked disdain for Ignatius
  • Claude Robichaux, an old man constantly on the lookout for any "communiss" who might infiltrate America; he takes an interest in protecting Irene
  • Angelo Mancuso, an inept police officer, the nephew of Santa Battaglia, who, after an abortive attempt to arrest Ignatius as a “suspicious character,” features prominently in the novel as Ignatius's self-perceived nemesis
  • Lana Lee, a pornographic model who runs the "Night Of Joy," a downscale French Quarter strip club
  • George, Lana's distributor who sells photographs of her to high-school children of his age
  • Darlene, a goodhearted but none-too-bright girl, who aspires to be a "Night Of Joy" stripper, with a pet cockatoo
  • Burma Jones, a black janitor for the "Night Of Joy" who holds on to his below-minimum wage job only to avoid being arrested for vagrancy
  • Mr. Clyde, the frustrated owner of Paradise Vendors, a hot dog vendor business, who inadvisably employs Ignatius as a vendor
  • Gus Levy, the reluctant, mostly absentee owner of Levy Pants, an inherited family business in the Bywater neighborhood where Ignatius briefly works
  • Mrs. Levy, Gus's wife, who attempts to psychoanalyze her husband and Miss Trixie despite being completely unqualified to do so
  • Miss Trixie, an aged clerk at Levy Pants who suffers from dementia and compulsive hoarding
  • Mr. Gonzalez, the meek office manager at Levy Pants
  • Dorian Greene, a flamboyant French Quarter homosexual who puts on elaborate parties
  • Frieda Club, Betty Bumper, and Liz Steele, a trio of aggressive lesbians who run afoul of Ignatius
  • Dr. Talc, a mediocre professor at Tulane who had the misfortune of teaching Myrna and Ignatius
  • Miss Annie, the disgruntled neighbor of the Reillys who professes an addiction to headache medicine


Confederacy of Dunces and New Orleans
The book is famous for its rich depiction of New Orleans and the city's dialects, including Yat. Many locals and writers think that it is the best and most accurate depiction of the city in a work of fiction.
A bronze statue of Ignatius J. Reilly can be found under the clock on the down-river side of the 800 block of Canal Street, New Orleans, the former site of the D. H. Holmes Department Store, now the Hyatt French Quarter Hotel. The statue mimics the opening scene: Ignatius waits for his mother under the D.H. Holmes clock, clutching a Werlein's shopping bag, dressed in a hunting cap, flannel shirt, baggy pants and scarf, 'studying the crowd of people for signs of bad taste.' The statue is modeled on New Orleans actor John "Spud" McConnell, who portrayed Ignatius in a stage version of the novel.
Various local businesses are mentioned in addition to D. H. Holmes, including Werlein's Music Store and local cinemas such as the Prytania Theater. Some readers from elsewhere assume Ignatius's favorite soft drink, Dr. Nut, to be fictitious, but it was an actual local soft drink brand of the era. The "Paradise Hot Dogs" vending carts are an easily recognized satire of those actually branded "Lucky Dogs".

Structure

The structure of A Confederacy of Dunces reflects the structure of Ignatius's favorite book, Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy. Like Boethius' book, A Confederacy of Dunces is divided into chapters that are further divided into a varying number of subchapters. Key parts of some chapters are outside of the main narrative. In Consolation, sections of narrative prose alternate with metrical verse. In Confederacy, such narrative interludes vary more widely in form and include light verse, journal entries by Ignatius, and also letters between himself and Myrna. A copy of the Consolation of Philosophy within the narrative itself also becomes an explicit plot device in several ways.

The difficult path to publication

As outlined in the introduction to a later revised edition, the book would never have been published if Toole's mother had not found a smeared carbon copy of the manuscript left in the house following Toole's 1969 suicide, at 31. She was persistent and tried several different publishers, to no avail.
Thelma repeatedly called Walker Percy, an author and college instructor at Loyola University New Orleans, to demand for him to read it. He initially resisted; however, as he recounts in the book's foreword:
...the lady was persistent, and it somehow came to pass that she stood in my office handing me the hefty manuscript. There was no getting out of it; only one hope remained—that I could read a few pages and that they would be bad enough for me, in good conscience, to read no farther. Usually I can do just that. Indeed the first paragraph often suffices. My only fear was that this one might not be bad enough, or might be just good enough, so that I would have to keep reading. In this case I read on. And on. First with the sinking feeling that it was not bad enough to quit, then with a prickle of interest, then a growing excitement, and finally an incredulity: surely it was not possible that it was so good.
The book was published by LSU Press in 1980. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1981. In 2005, Blackstone Audio released an unabridged audiobook of the novel, read by Barrett Whitener.
While Tulane University in New Orleans retains a collection of Toole's papers, and some early drafts have been found, the location of the original manuscript is unknown.



Together we'll read chapter four

I like the character of Ignatius J. Reilly so much that I have often written letters to the editors of local newspapers as this character...

text from Wikipedia