Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, perhaps one of the most ambivalent novels about race of all time. Chinua Achebe famously said that it should be removed from the canon because it silenced Africans and portrayed them as "savages." The book certainly does the former, but as for the latter it is arguably less clear- I understand Achebe's reading but I think ultimately Conrad leaves it up to the reader to decide. Additionally the novel was written in 1899-1900, a time when much more overt racism was the norm. All of those possibly mitigating factors notwithstanding, this is still a novel about the supposed downfall of Europe and civilized man. For that reason it's an invaluable read, because it demonstrates the logic and affect of reactionary narratives about the alleged decline of hegemonic groups--- it is my conviction that combating racism demands understanding very clearly how racism is expressed, including in literature.

Thomas Mann's Death in Venice, yet another novel about the supposed decline or downfall of Europe. This time it's told through Gustav von Aschenbach (a 50 year or older) author of significant fame who becomes enthralled with a 14 year old Polish boy named Tadzio while on vacation in Venice. Gustav's desire is framed much more in the sense of classical Greek pederasty, namely as some sort of intellectual exercise, than as a sexual desire in the sense of contemporary pedophilia [Note- I'm not justifying either model of the paraphilia directed towards children, just differentiating their historical iterations]. Gustav's desire for Tadzio manifests itself as staring at the boy on the beach, and this desire is so strong that Gustav neglects to warn the boy's family of a plague outbreak in the city. Gustav, a man of chronically weak health, ultimately falls victim to the disease and dies on the beach while watching Tadzio. Whereas Conrad portrays Europe's decline in terms of race and darkness, Mann portrays it instead as a matter of an older man confronting his mortality in the face of a younger man- a younger man who is linked to light, frivolity, and bourgeois decadence. In this sense, if you can get past the content of a man desiring an adolescent, Mann's book is a much easier read than Conrad's because it is actually far less ambivalent. It seems clear to me that Mann is mocking this bourgeois notion of downfall, in which desire destroys the person unwilling or unable to go beyond themselves and do the moral thing (namely, save Tadzio). This same kind of lesson is certainly clear in Heart of Darkness but unfortunately for current readers it is mired in an ambivalence towards race which in my opinion does amount to a complicity in racist narratives of the day.