Who was Marlow telling?
‘Be careful with that jury rig, Marlow,’ said the captain.
Marlow’s listener is quoting Marlow quoting the nameless captain quoting Conrad speaking to us of his memories and dreams speaking to him. Other times, Marlow’s listener sits quietly, relighting a pipe, considering whether to have another glass of whiskey … just, mainly, just listening. Listening to Marlow speak of the sea, the small points on which it touches land and the large ways in which it tosses men. We sit too, masquerading to ourselves as that fine fellow that everyone else overlooked introducing. When we go back to that other tale, the tale told by Marlow’s listener, we wonder according to our natures if the listener has understood Marlow, or Marlow the experiences he related or even if Conrad meant us to understand.
Posts
- Casting off - August 22, 2021
- On the failures of planning - August 17, 2021
- Into the sear - July 26, 2021
- Unorthodox - July 16, 2021
- Subsidence - July 15, 2021
- Judgement days - July 14, 2021
- River boat gambler - July 13, 2021
- A sweet spot - July 12, 2021
- Faking it as a gateway drug - July 11, 2021
- New kid again - July 10, 2021
- Doodah - July 9, 2021
- The fog of now - July 8, 2021
- Not how the game is played - July 7, 2021
- Act I, Scene II - July 6, 2021
- Refresh your life - July 5, 2021
- Fair warning - July 4, 2021
- The day we drove old Dixie down - July 3, 2021
- It is not too much work that is driving you mad - July 2, 2021
- Fame - July 1, 2021
- What Makes a Song Coverable? - June 30, 2021
- Famous for - June 29, 2021
- Beatles, Reconsidered - June 28, 2021
- The Missing Quadrant - June 27, 2021
- Game Face - June 26, 2021
- Commercial data science: a parable of downsides of crisp deployment - June 25, 2021
- Tithonus' Dilemma - June 24, 2021
- Of federal grand juries and ham sandwiches - June 23, 2021
- Young Love - June 22, 2021
- Full Sail - June 21, 2021
- Category theory, first steps - June 20, 2021
- Thus saith the Preacher - June 19, 2021
- The Seven Pillars of Data Wisdom - June 18, 2021
- Fun with stats - June 17, 2021
- Back to the Valley - June 16, 2021
- Dick Lit - June 15, 2021
- My cat Lua - June 14, 2021
- Memories of tastes past - June 13, 2021
- Recombinant - June 12, 2021
- Hard but simple—parsing YAML files in Haskell - June 11, 2021
- Bon garçon Richard - June 10, 2021
- In defense of the IRC - June 9, 2021
- Before Reason - June 9, 2021
- 2021-06-08-o_death - June 8, 2021
- Bloodlines - June 7, 2021
- Repose of illness - June 6, 2021
- Incarcarated - June 5, 2021
- Inevitabilities - June 4, 2021
- Ponderables - June 3, 2021
- Conscript Father - June 2, 2021
- Memoir - June 1, 2021
- Captive to forgotten history - May 31, 2021
- In Hiruya - May 30, 2021
- A book barn, near Westerkerk - May 29, 2021
- Why do we have an economy? - May 16, 2021
- Murmur, memory - May 15, 2021
- 2021-05-03-island - May 3, 2021
- Pecking order - May 2, 2021
- Gerontocracy and its discontents - May 1, 2021
- Haldeman's Glance - April 15, 2021
- Inflection - April 2, 2021
- Repose of illness - April 1, 2021
- Law school, and its sequelae - September 7, 2020
- Waiting for the barbarians - September 1, 2020
- The duet in high register - August 16, 2020
- Legal education as initiation into a mystery cult - August 14, 2020
- Donnygate - August 14, 2020
- Social disclipine and its discontents - August 12, 2020
- The future - August 11, 2020
- The weight on our lives - August 10, 2020
- How the Church could come out - August 9, 2020
- The Grand Pooh-bahs were ever thus - August 8, 2020
- Organizations::Humans = Policy::Habit - August 7, 2020
- Big Kern - August 5, 2020
- Reynold's Number - August 3, 2020
- Cat skinning - August 2, 2020
- Deus ex machina - July 31, 2020
- Generation gap - July 30, 2020
- Time zones in Python - July 29, 2020
- The eternal "who" - July 28, 2020
- Thou Should Nots - July 28, 2020
- Noblesse oblige - July 27, 2020
- Magna Carta - July 26, 2020
- Nice customs curtsy to great kings - July 26, 2020
- The Domestic Tranquility Act of 2021 - July 25, 2020
- The master-servant paradigm - July 24, 2020
- Institutional memory - July 23, 2020
- Elaboration - July 22, 2020
- Calculus - July 21, 2020
- Combination of k items taken n at a time - June 22, 2020
- Queen Context - June 4, 2020
- Why Johnny won’t lend, and what to do about it - March 31, 2020
- Leaves in Autumn - October 14, 2018
- Steve and Judy - October 5, 2018
- Living off capital - July 6, 2017
- South Dakota, Ridiculous and Sublime, part the second - July 1, 2017
- South Dakota, Ridiculous and Sublime - June 29, 2017
- Flyover Up Close - June 28, 2017
- The Spring Festival of 1935 - April 24, 1935
…At anchor, the ship chandler.