youth

Youth; Heart of Darkness; The End of the Tether (Classic, 20th-Century, Penguin)
$10.00
The three long stories in this volume include two of Joseph Conrad's most familiar - Youth & Heart of Darkness - which have been detached anthologized and assigned to high school lit classes ad nauseam, but in fact the three were published together in 1902 under the title "Youth: a Narrative, and Two Other Stories." Conrad scholars maintain that the author originally intended "Lord Jim" to be the third of three tales told in the voice of Captain Marlow, but that Lord Jim got too massive on its own account, necessitating the substitution of "The End of the Tether," a classic third person narration. "Youth" marked Marlow's debut as a narrator within a narration, relating his own first great adventure to a small circle of friends, one of whom is the nameless author, presumably Conrad himself; thus we get a first-person framework around an extended quotation of a first-person yarn. One has to wonder if readers in 1902 were daunted. If so, they had NO idea how involuted Conrad's narrative structures would become, beginning with Heart of Darkness, and reaching an apogee in the later novel "Chance." The barest explanation for Conrad's increasingly indirect style of narration is that he couldn't accept his own authorial omniscience, that he needed a kind of vivid uncertainty and contingency in order to portray the reality of human existence as he felt it. Even the straightforward narrative of The End of the Tether requires the artful withholding of a key piece of information until the story is three-quarters told. (Warning: Do NOT read the intro, or any other reviews, or even the blurb on the back cover before reading The End of the Tether!)

Despite the absence of Marlow from the third and longest story, nonetheless, this collection has important qualities of structural unity. 1. All three stories are set on steam ships. 2. The first and the last report horrendous accidents in which the ships sink. 3. Most important, the three stories represent the three stages of an adult man's life: youth, midlife, and old age. You can translate those three stages into the language of psychologist Erik Erikson, as "confidence vs avoidance", "certainty vs confusion", and "serenity vs despair." More or less, anyway; Conrad is anything but reductionist.

"Youth" is a gripping tale of the testing of a young man's mettle, a headlong rush of a story that shouldn't need any analysis, but critics have tormented every line of it for hidden meanings and fracture lines. Marlow's occasional interruptions of his narration, to say "Pass the bottle," have been teased into post-modernist assaults on Conrad's latent discomfort with his surrogate's sentimentality. Huh? "Pass the bottle" is Conrad's translation of the old Viking toast: SKULL! Any son of the baltic Sea would take it as such. And believe you me, "Youth" is Conrad's purest Viking saga!

"Heart of Darkness" could just as easily be titled "Heart of Obscurity." It is obscure as well as dark, a tale of insanity and brutality with no heroic redemptive margins. It begins with Marlow once again yarning to his friends, aboard a ship on the Thames, about an ordeal -- to call it an adventure would be misleading -- as the captain of a river steamer in the Belgian Congo. Marlow's reminiscences are stimulated by his thoughts of the impression the Thames would have made on the first Romans who invaded Britain as civilizers. That brief revery sets ups Conrad's agonizing descriptions of the corruption of modern colonialism, specifically in Africa. "Mr. Kurtz" is only one of the civilizing monsters in this story, though his figure has received the most critical scrutiny. There are also the odious company agent and his nephew, the ragamuffin Russian 'explorer' who idolizes Kurtz, and Marlow himself. And there's a cast of "African masks" - semi-naked savages so incomprehensible that they seem more like carved idols than actual humans. Last, least, but urgently significant, there are two women ostensibly attached to Kurtz, one white and one black. Teachers! Please! Don't assign this story to your classes! Let the students find it for themselves! I know it's a powerhouse, a veritable treasure cairn of ambiguity, but it's too intimidating. The reader should need a special chauffeur's license before driving in that darkness.

It must have come as a relief to the readers of 1902 to confront the reassuring virtues and dignity of Captain Whalley, the intrepid but superannuated hero -- yes, Hero! -- of The End of the Tether. A famous seaman in the days of sailing ships, Whalley has come upon poverty and irrelevance in his later years. His single remaining purpose is to provide for his only child, a daughter married to a fool and cripple in Australia, whom he hasn't seen in years. To do so, he enters a bizarre partnership with a despicable half-crazy engineer who happens to own a rust-bucket steamer. But Captain Whalley has a secret.... (and that's why you shouldn't read any spoilers; this is surely the only Conrad story that depends on the reader's surprise for its effect.)

I have just a few more Conrad novels to read or re-read and review now, after a year or so of exchanging thoughts about this Titan of literature with other readers, particularly H. Schneider, via amazon. I'll be sorry to finish. Conrad is unique.

Etnies Boys 8-20 Camper Youth Basic Tee, White, Small
$16.95

Youth Culture 101 (Youth Specialties)
$19.99
Muller's heart is in the right place, unfortunately this book contains just as much wrong information, or perhaps even more incorrect information, than good useful information. I am currently studying human development, families, and addiction in college, and I am also a 21 year old youth minister. I can speak with authority when I make this claim. I do not mean to sound arrogant, but much of the research Muller points to is both biased, and 10 or more years out of date. His anecdotal evidence is very extreme in many cases, and is not representative of youth culture as a whole. Also, the book is very long, repetitive, and overwritten. But my biggest problem with the book was his discussion of the effects of media and advertising on adolescents. Yes, it does have an effect, more than I am comfortable with, but Muller gives the uninformed reader the impression that teenagers do not have brains, and they mindlessly soak in and believe everything they see, read, and hear. Though we may jest, this is simply false. However, even with these criticisms, the book does have a few redeeming qualities. First, the information on self-harm (cutting and related behaviors) is very accurate and useful. Also, the discussion on sexuality is mostly accurate and is also very useful. Third, and perhaps most importantly, I believe that this text would be very helpful for anyone who has been disengaged from youth culture for a long period of time. It carries a valuable shock value that would be helpful to many uninformed parents, church members, and even some youth workers. I might recommend the book to this group, but only small parts of the 442 page tome would be helpful to knowledgeable youth workers, or people like me who are young enough to remember what it was like to be an adolescent just a few years ago. Read with discernment, and use the extensive source information and index that is provided to check his facts.

Youth: Scenes from Provincial Life II
$14.00
Youth is the second in Coetzee's fictionalized autobigraphical series. I read it right after reading Boyhood. Though it is a continuation, it is not necessary to read Boyhood first.

In Youth, John Coetzee meanders aimlessly in Capetown while completing university. All the while, he dreams of the excitement of being young angst ridden artist in London. Paris would be his preference but he figures that lack of fluency in French would be an impossible hurdle. He is convinced that South Africa will self destruct and he needs to get out.

When he lands in London, it is not what he expects. He ultimately settles into what is, for him, a drudgerous life working as a programmer at IBM. He does have affairs but largely remains unfulfilled and an outsider. Though IBM is passable in some ways, he still longs to be an artist.

This is a study in a young foreign outsider in London in the 1960s. He is slightly embarassed to be from South Africa and never seems to fit in.

As usual, Coetzee's prose is flawless and his description of the inner thoughts of the main character rings with authenticity.

It is uncertain how much is fiction and how much Coetzee's real experience but it's definitely an interesting read.

While it is not one of Coetzee's most important works, it's still very good.

I recommend it as I do pretty much everything by Coetzee. To me, he is clearly one of the greatest writers of our time.