Review: HEART OF DARKNESS by Joseph Conrad

This one has been on my To Be Read list since I saw the movie Apocalypse Now back in the 1970s. I had not realized that the book is actually a collection of three short stories, the second of which was the subject of the movie. The first, "Youth,"  is the story of a ship on fire at sea, narrated in the first person by the seaman Marlow. He reappears as narrator of  "Heart of Darkness," a wild story set in the Belgian Congo concerning a journalist (Marlon Brando in the movie version) who becomes manager of a station in the interior and makes himself worshiped by a tribe of savages. The third story, "The End of the Tether," is the rather sentimental tale of an old captain. All are adventure stories inflected by very careful judgments: social, political and, above all, psychological. They are notable for their descriptive power and artful structuring: intimate with character and loyal to detail while still comfortable with great ideas. Well worth reading!