Conrad and Naipul

This morning I finished reading A Bend in the River, a somewhat haunting novel by V. S. Naipaul. The context in which I am reading it is more-or-less as a post-colonial response / complement to Joseph Conrad's short work Heart of Darkness. There are a few things that immediately spring to mind:

- Naipaul's work isn't really derived from - though it may be influenced by - Heart of Darkness. There is a recent work, though, that serves the purpose of contextualizing Conrad's work while simultaneously addressing the (liminally) colonial/post-colonial theme: Apocalypse Now.

- There is something in the book that - perhaps surprisingly - reminds me of F. Scott Fitzgerald's quixotic novel, The Great Gatsby. There is something in the similarity of aloof wealth approaching impending doom. Is the Jazz Age a manifestation of colonialism? An interesting question.....

- I am also reminded of Morroccan novelist Abdelhak Serhane's novel of the village whore, Messaouda. The pathos of the young African Arab/Muslim caught in a world defined by others reciprocates across these works.

Conversely, (among other works) I am also reading Scott Adam's 2002 work, Dilbert and the Way of the Weasel. In a way, it seems that, if one drills down deep enough, all of these works explore similar themes. Perhaps one can see such an assertion if one imagines these works as circles intersecting in the manner of a Venn diagram. Dilbert would, of course, also represent a far different way of approaching such issues.