I read
The Secret Sharer a couple of years ago for the first time since I read it in high school. I had a number of Conrad’s works to read in short order in high school; I hated the volume of the work that I had to do at the time; I did not understand what Conrad was talking about; and so I ended up refusing to read Conrad thereafter --- until recently! In this story, the narrator, a straight-laced conservative guy, discovers his walk-on-the-wild-side personality as a result of hiding “the secret sharer” in his cabin, and he is changed as a person as a result of the brief encounter. Now what the hell
could I have known about such schizoid personality dynamics when I was seventeen years old? I was having a hard enough time trying to develop a mainstream persona that would keep me from getting into trouble with repressive authority figures. How could I possibly have imagined at the time that such a mainstream persona, once I would create it over the next couple of years or so, would turn out to be a lethal danger to my soul
if I took it too seriously? And yet I had to read “The Secret Sharer” when I was in high school! I wish that I were back there now, just for a moment. I would grill that smart-ass English teacher that I had at the time over the story --- a guy who thought that he was so cool and so sophisticated but who actually did not know squat about anything in life! As Paul Simon once wrote in a song, “When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school, it’s a wonder I can think at all!” Ah, so true!
Island-in-the-Sea, if you have not already done so, I would highly recommend that you read “Heart of Darkness,” just as great a story as “The Secret Sharer.” Just make sure that you do so when you have rented a copy of Francis Ford Coppola’s
Apocalypse Now from your local video store to watch just as soon as you have finished the story. Coppola has brilliantly updated the story from the Belgian Congo region around 1900 to the Mekong Delta right in the heart of the Vietnam War! A great job, and probably a film that could not be made today --- because, unfortunately, most people don’t read any more!
I love talking about literature, Island-in-the-Sea, and I would like to do so here. But I am not entirely sure just how much freedom I might have to do so here within this particular forum. I am not entirely unfamiliar with the genre of
gay literature, but to be honest with you, I am not sure just how seriously I can take most of it. Yes, one of my very favorite novelists is the gay novelist E. M. Forster, but while I like
Maurice very much, it is far from being my favorite novel by him. I must admit that Annie Proulx’s “Brokeback Mountain” absolutely stunned me, precisely because it bulldozes every single gay stereotype that you could possibly imagine. (Ditto for the brilliant, memorable, epochal film that was made from it and that brought me to this wonderful forum!) But so much “gay literature” strikes me as being either pornographic and/or polemical --- to the detriment of being truly artistic! Please don’t get me wrong, Island-in-the-Sea, I can be just as raunchy as the next guy
when I consciously choose to be so, and I myself am intensely political in my consciousness
almost at all times. But when I am in the mood for art, I am not really into either one of those two things, and I don’t like to see them slipped under the radar scope without my conscious knowledge. So I do have problems with “gay literature” as a genre at the present time, and I am not sure just how far I can stray from that genre in this particular forum without upsetting the overall tone here.
But to get back to my original recommendation. Read “Heart of Darkness,” if you have not already done so, and then follow it up
immediately with Coppola’s
Apocalypse Now. I guarantee that it will be a strong aesthetic experience for you, Island-in-the-Sea!
