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Heart of Darkness (Norton Critical Editions) | 
 enlarge | Author: Joseph Conrad
Creator: Paul B. Armstrong
Publisher: W. W. Norton
Category: Book
List Price: $11.90
Buy Used: $8.25
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Rating:  13 reviews
Sales Rank: 2318
Media: Paperback
Edition: 4th
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 514
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 8.4 x 5.1 x 1.1
ISBN: 0393926362
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.912
EAN: 9780393926361
ASIN: 0393926362
Publication Date: November 1, 2005
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Condition: some shelf wear on cover and edges, some pages may contain highlighting, writing, and/or markings, tight binding, 4th edition, barcode sticker on back cover
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Product Description
The Fourth Edition is again based on Robert Kimbrough's meticulously re-edited text. Missing words have been restored and the entire novel has been repunctuated in accordance with Conrad's style. The result is the first published version of Heart of Darkness that allows readers to hear Marlow's voice as Conrad heard it when he wrote the story.
"Backgrounds and Contexts" provides readers with a generous collection of maps and photographs that bring the Belgian Congo to life. Textual materials, topically arranged, address nineteenth-century views of imperialism and racism and include autobiographical writings by Conrad on his life in the Congo. New to the Fourth Edition is an excerpt from Adam Hochschild's recent book, King Leopold's Ghost, as well as writings on race by Hegel, Darwin, and Galton.
"Criticism" includes a wealth of new materials, including nine contemporary reviews and assessments of Conrad and Heart of Darkness and twelve recent essays by Chinua Achebe, Peter Brooks, Daphne Erdinast-Vulcan, Edward Said, and Paul B. Armstrong, among others. Also new to this edition is a section of writings on the connections between Heart of Darkness and the film Apocalypse Now by Louis K. Greiff, Margot Norris, and Lynda J. Dryden.
A Chronology and Selected Bibliography are also included.
About the Series: No other series of classic texts equals the caliber of the Norton Critical Editions. Each volume combines the most authoritative text available with the comprehensive pedagogical apparatus necessary to appreciate the work fully. Careful editing, first-rate translation, and thorough explanatory annotations allow each text to meet the highest literary standards while remaining accessible to students. Each edition is printed on acid-free paper and every text in the series remains in print. Norton Critical Editions are the choice for excellence in scholarship for students at more than 2,000 universities worldwide.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 8 more reviews...
"Mistah Kurtz - he dead" November 24, 2008
"Heart of Darkness" - referring to the Congo in the middle of Africa, a primordial place of mists, rivers and forests; a man's heart as a place of darkness and violence, of disillusionment and emptiness? Left alone, apart from "civilization," apart from friends, family and colleagues, what do we become? Mr. Kurtz is one of the most mysterious characters in literature, though he is barely sketched in the "Heart of Darkness."
During the last quarter or so of the 19th century, the Powers (Great Britain, France and Germany) were committed to bring the three "Cs" to Africa - Commerce, Christianity and Civilization. They were committed to ending the terrible slave trading and pagan superstitions of the natives. Of course, human nature being what it is, greed took over. Kurtz was probably one of these idealistic types, who started out with good intentions. But once settled in the Congo, away from all civilizing restraints, he either became mad or gave in entirely to greed, power and violence.
Joseph Conrad's style is quite dense and allusive, and his syntax does take some getting used to. But it's worth it. Read this short novel slowly, taking time to note the recurring symbols of mist, river, forest, darkness. Marlow, the narrator, followed Kurtz into the heart of darkness but, unlike Kurtz, was fortunate enough to return and tell his story.
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
T.S. Eliot, "The Hollow Men"
Book Review July 27, 2008
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
Very pleased! The book was in great condition and purchased for a great price! The delivery was expedient! Overall, it was definitely a worthwhile experience where the savings were beaucoup! Thanks!!!
Norton Critical strikes again May 16, 2008
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
I'll be honest - "Heart of Darkness" is a great, great work of literature, but I don't love the writing style, and it is not a pleasure to read (for me at any rate).
But it is not quite as hard as its reputation, and it is every bit as important. If there is one, "Heart of Darkness" is the definitive statement on European colonialism, especially in Africa. The symbolic meaning of the story is powerful and unanswerable.
The Norton Critical Edition of any book is usually the best - (not always: with Shakespeare I generally prefer the Signet Classics, and for "Pride and Prejudice" at least the Longman Cultural Edition is the best) - and "Heart of Darkness" is no exception. Like so many other books, you haven't understood this until you've understood what has been said about it. The NCE gives the best collection of critical essays available for someone new to the book.
Let me recommend a couple of easier reads for people interested in the genre of literature about colonialism. First is Burmese Days, which is one of Orwell's better books. It is a much more literal, tangible look at the realities of colonialism, and should probably be read before "Heart of Darkness." The other is The Quiet American (Viking Critical Library), which is less critical of colonialism, but still a very good look at the motivations of various people involved. I am very critical of "The Quiet American," but it is still among the first books that anyone interested in the literature of colonialism ought to read.
After all these years, ... February 8, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
... I reread Heart of Darkness because my "guys" reading group included two who had not ever read it. The story stands up far, far better than I would have guessed. Conrad is really superb, and this shortish novel could well persuade new readers that "literary" stuff is worth their while. I had forgotten how subtle, how grown-up Conrad's expectations of his reader are. Truly quite marvelous.
With trepidation, I splurged on the Norton edition, even though I am pretty hostile to English-Professor post-modern posturing and nonsense. I am glad I got it, however. The wealth of historical documents help make the then-contemporary setting come real. The big surprise for me was Chinua Achebe's fine essay. While "bloody racist" is still over the top, Achebe has a case of some importance, and argues it well. It is even a comfort to find that the knee-jerk responses by assorted literature professors are indeed just as much postie poo as I had expected. (It's always a pleasure to find that one's unexamined prejudices are warranted after all.)
A particular pleasure for me was talking about the book with my daughter, who has taught it to her honors high school English class. She has developed views, and I learned really quite a lot from listening to her. Book, $11.90; my time, $free; finding out your daughter has deep insight and can teach you, PRICELESS.
In short, wonderful story and useful edition.
"Mistah Kurtz--he dead." An influential work on five 20th century seminal works October 20, 2007
11 out of 14 found this review helpful
I read this book for a graduate Humanities course. Buy this edition, it is the best with great critical essays. Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, written in 1899 is a seminal work about the ills of colonialism, as well as a postmodern look at the subject of mankind. Conrad's book had a crucial influence on five important works of the twentieth century: J. G. Frazier's book The Golden Bough. Jessie L. Weston's book From Ritual to Romance, T. S. Elliott's poem the Waste Land, Joseph Campbell's Hero with a Thousand Faces, and Francis Ford Coppolla's movie Apocalypse Now, screenplay by John Milius, was based on Conrad's book. Another interesting fact is that this work was read by Orson Welle's Mercury Theater Players on the radio and was to be his first movie. After doing some work on it he abandoned the project to do Citizen Kane! I would have loved to of seen what Welles could have done with this story. Conrad's story is so riveting in part, because he himself served as a riverboat captain. High school teachers and college professors who have discussed this book in thousands of classrooms over the years tend to do so in terms of Freud, Jung, and Nietzsche; of classical myth, Victorian innocence, and original sin; of postmodernism, postcolonialism, and poststructuralism.
Just a taste of the plot reels you in! Marlow, the narrator of Heart of Darkness and Conrad's alter ego, is hired by an ivory-trading company to sail a steamboat up an unnamed river whose shape on the map resembles "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" (8). His destination is a post where the company's brilliant, ambitious star agent, Mr. Kurtz, is stationed. Kurtz has collected legendary quantities of ivory, but, Marlow learns along the way, is also rumored to have sunk into unspecified savagery. Marlow's steamer survives an attack by blacks and picks up a load of ivory and the ill Kurtz; Kurtz, talking of his grandiose plans, dies on board as they travel, downstream.
Sketched with only a few bold strokes, Kurtz's image has nonetheless remained in the memories of millions of readers: the lone white agent far up the great river, with his dreams of grandeur,his great store of precious ivory, and his fiefdom carved out of the African jungle. Perhaps more than anything, we remember Marlow, on the steamboat, looking through binoculars at what he thinks are ornamental knobs atop the fence posts in front of Kurtz's house and then finding that each is "black, dried, sunken, with closed eyelids-a head that seemed to sleep at the top of that pole, and with the shrunken dry lips showing a narrow white line of the teeth" (57).
I especially became interested in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness from the movie Apocalypse Now. There is a scene in the movie that shows Colonel Kurtz's nightstand in his cave. T. S. Elliott's poem the Waste Land is one of three books on the nightstand. The other two are Jessie L. Weston's book From Ritual to Romance, and J. G. Frazier's book The Golden Bough. Anyone wanting to understand the movie Apocalypse Now, especially the character of Colonel Kurtz, and what Milius and Copolla are trying to tell their audience need to read these three books as well as Conrad's Heart of Darkness!
As a graduate student reading in philosophy and history I recommend this book for anyone interested in literature, myth, history, philosophy, religion and fans of Apocalypse Now.
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