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| "AMERICA'S FUNNIEST HUMOR"TM
SHOWCASE
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December 2006 / January 2007 Contest Results |
An Open
Letter To Joseph Conrad
By Jessica Holmes,
Kansas
Dear Mr. Uber-Goth,
I don’t pretend to understand the intricacies within the mind of any
literary genius, but I’ve got to let it out — your endless pessimism is
bringing me down.
Now, as a studious geek, future English major, highly
dorky bookworm, I don’t mind admitting that in the beginning, I found
Heart of Darkness quite good. But I am over one hundred pages in now,
and you have used the word 'brooding' exactly seven million, four
hundred and twenty thousand, six hundred and four times.
If you call me
an exaggerator, I will call you a hypocrite: There is a darkness in the
air. There is a darkness in the wilderness. There’s a darkness in you.
There’s a darkness in me. There’s a darkness in ALL of us…
Joseph,
buddy, we get it. The world is encapsulated in a giant, brooding
darkness. Or maybe your mind just is.
It’s not the wordiness. Honestly, give me Dickens any day. In fact your
writing is quite beautiful. It’s just that I have been brooding over the
grove of death that is your book for a week now, and I have been filling
out the gloomy and confusing jungle that is our Honors
English symbolism chart the whole time, and I would simply like you to
enlighten us, Mr. Conrad, as to exactly what, in the name of the
Almighty Uber-Goth, is this darkness? Racism? Nightmares? The human
psyche? Sifting through pages and pages of impenetrable symbolism? For
the love of God, Joseph, spit it out.
Your book is not only tiresome and repetitive — it is downright
depressing and I’m sick of it. Why don’t you go for an afternoon walk
in the sunshine? Buy an ice cream, for Christ’s sake. Or if you can’t do
that, go exploring through the African jungle, and with a bit of luck
you’ll become one with the interminable miles of silence that it
apparently takes you twelve pages to talk about.
Alright, I’m bordering on harsh. There’s some sort of brooding darkness
in your heart, and I ought to show a little empathy, or at least provide
some constructive criticism. Fine, here are a few ideas, just food for
thought:
1. Stop reading Dickens. You’ll never be wordier than him, so don’t even
try.
2. Buy a thesaurus and look up the following words: dark, impenetrable,
brooding.
3. Stop referring to people’s faces as “masks of death.” There’s a
reason you have no friends.
4. Don’t spend fifty pages trying to get us to fathom an “unfathomable
enigma.” It’s an enigma. And it’s unfathomable. You said so yourself.
5. Don’t capitalize 'Shadow.' You’re not Wordsworth, and you’re not
romantic.
And if none of that helps, try a little opium. It worked for Coleridge.
Happy Brooding.
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