Heart of Darkness and Henderson The Rain King – Kurtz and Dahfu

The title of this post is a bit of a misnomer; it’s really about voices that have a powerful effect on people, but my inquiry, I guess, is based off these two characters. In chapter 15 of Henderson, I’ve folded the pages so much it looks like I’m practicing origami. Here is the core of the discussion about the truth that Henderson is seeking, a truth that may have eluded him so far because, as Dahfu says, “as to truth, a person may be unready to receive except what he has anticipated as true.” This is after he has referred to Henderson as “somatically,” “monumental.”

What I find most interesting about this chapter is that I realized at some point that everything I was folding was Saul Bellow’s idea, not Dahfu’s or Henderson’s. I kept folding everywhere I perceived an expression of truth, or a truth I know beautifully expressed. People praise the hell out of Conrad, but he never gave us the conversation Marlow had with Kurtz. And why not? Were the words beyond him at that moment that he was, in his words, writing a story “for the sake of the shekels.” What Conrad’s narrator keeps a secret Bellow’s dialogues about and reflects upon. Interestingly, this conversation, so thoughtful in its elucidation of some truth, follows the rain ceremony in which Bellow used imagery straight out of Conrad to depict the “savagery” of the scene.

But this discussion of the book is taking me away from what I was trying to get at: namely, where do these authors go to find characters who can be so intensely affected by words? In HoD, I have always accepted that a type like Marlow exists, but if I were to meet a man so easily moved by eloquence I’m not sure I’d think highly of him. Henderson is a more earnest seeker, and more open about what he needs to hear (though to what end, to what course of action he’ll apply the words, I’m not sure). Anyway, Dostoevsky talks about character types in the critical essay embedded in the beginning of Part IV of The Idiot, and the fact that this type repeats itself in these two books (how present might it be in all the books I haven’t read?), tells me that this dude must exist in real life.

So it got me thinking about my own experience. I can remember a few years ago sitting with Tim O’Toole at Starbucks in Rye and listening to him talk about his Allied Effort project, a plan for identifying personal beliefs and aligning them with goals for personal and professional development. I remember feeling uplifted, thinking that here is a guy who can make you do things you don’t think you can do simply by through the force of his will. You can listen to him speak and be ready to run through a wall.

Tim was a college basketball coach, and had been an assistant under Boeheim and Krzyzewski, so he knew a little about inspiration. I get the feeling from listening to him that there’s something in our nature that wants to be contacted, that some people are capable of using the power of language to tap into another’s desire for accomplishment. Once that desire is brought to the surface, a person is receptive to another’s energy. This, I suppose, is the biggest benefit of being a student-athlete at a place where you’re mentored by a teacher-coach. You learn the truly lifelong lessons about leadership; you learn to internalize the idea that a confluence of belief, desires and action is essential to success.

After that meeting, I worked with Tim to adapt the language for different questions and prompts so that the questionnaire could exist independently in different niches across different age groups. And what I found is that it changed the way I approach my life and my work. Right now, for example, I could be facing a difficult decision: do I coach basketball for one more year as I’ve planned (until Emma reaches middle school) or do I acquiesce if my daughters want to swim year-round and give up coaching this year? But truth be told, I don’t have any angst about decision-making like that because of the questionnaire. When you can prioritize, you have a basis for decision-making. Family first. End of story. No drama.

It can be very fulfilling to just listen to the O’Tooles of the world who give you the opportunity to imagine everything that’s possible, to lose yourself for moments in what the world could be before you return to the world that is and then do what you have to do to make it, or at least your part of it, more closely resemble that possibility. As Bono sang, “I can’t change the world, but I can change the world in me, if I rejoice.” (the idea being that rejoicing is a choice, as opposed to having your mood respond to whichever wind is blowing in a moment)

I’m guessing that these very literary types are more likely to engage in deep and meaningful conversation than the rest of us who are unencumbered by things other than words. You hear about things like the Algonguin Round Table or Greenwich’s White Horse Tavern, or the Bloomsbury Group, and you realize that where conversation is an art, people will necessarily innovate on existing thinking or existing ways of using language simply for social survival. At the same time, the participants must take a great deal of pleasure in the listening, and a novelist can’t really be a novelist if he doesn’t have a great facility for listening.

Back to Henderson, what probably makes this elucidation of Truth in chapter 15 so enjoyable is that it is delivered through the English of an African king, which has a certain grace even where it lacks a certain correctness. Of course, there’s more to the Truth than just these words, and it looks like Dahfu is going to take Henderson on another little literal journey toward truth.