South Seas
It occurs to me somehow that I am severely remiss in what I am reading for pleasure. There is, of course, the wealth of Australian literature that I need to pursue, novels and stories and poetry that often doesn’t make much splash in the fecund output of American publishing, The Thorn Birds notwithstanding. M.’s collection will provide something to carry on the train with me for no little time yet to come, but leaving that aside, I think it’s about time I picked up Joseph Conrad again. Conrad’s been a long-time favorite of mine, but other than re-reading Nostromo about a year ago, I’ve mostly been thinking of his oeuvre as “why don’t I have a copy of Heart of Darkness anywhere?” But I do, actually, as I have in my possession the Viking Portable Conrad, which collects and arranges all his short fiction, including that novella. Although Conrad’s settings are more “out of Australia” than in it, the islands of the Pacific affording him his seafaring adventures more than the continental landmasses could, Australia is the result of English imperialism in the South Seas, so I wouldn’t wonder if Youth and Victory and such other tales won’t offer me a similar narrative point of view to that which settled this country prior to Federation but following colonization. Maybe it’s just the palm trees, although I never got this feeling in Los Angeles.