Paul Edwards

Have we finished with Conrad and racialism yet? ‘The disdainful pout of Comrade Ossipon’s thick lips accentuated the negro type of his face.’ Conrad accepts the racial stereotypes of the ‘scientists’ of his time, but in some ways he certainly attempts to undermine them too. Heart of Darkness shows that ‘civilised’ whites are as prone to savagery and superstition as the ‘uncivilised...

SIR: I wondered, before I started it, how far I would be able to read into John Bayley’s review of the Tolstoys’ Diaries (LRB, 5 December 1985) before his argument would become too refined for me to understand. It happened even earlier than usual: in the second paragraph, when I reached the sentence ‘Solipsism is an index of immortality.’ I tried the sentence the other way round – ‘Immortality...