2025 Readings 78

 Recently I listened to the Why Evil Exist Great Course, for, seriously, probably the fourth time. And even when I'm no longer teaching my Nature of Evil class I suspect I'll continue to come back to this Great Course for a long time. Professor Mathewes clearly has a serious academic man crush on Joseph Conrad,  which inspired me to go back and reread Heart of Darkness. Unbelievably, I don't think I've read Heart of Darkness since before the first time I saw Apocalypse Now, which means it's going on something like fifty years (which is, obviously, another shameful admission on my part in a lifetime of shameful admissions). It really is a great now - and I may have to go back and listen to Professor Mathewes's talk on Conrad and Heart of Darkness and The Secret Agent (which I'm listening to right now, and, even more shamefully, it's the first time that I've tackle The Secret Agent (more on that shortly). Here's an all-time "duh" statement, but Heart of Darkness if wonderful. It's powerful but also more than a bit maddingly oblique, and purposely so. So, after re-listening to the lecture on Conrad I suspect I'll dive back into Heart of Darkness again (but don't worry, I won't count it). Truthfully, it's better than I remember it being, although I'm sure I was in no emotional shape to make sense of it as a teenager. "The horror, the horror."