I reember feeling bad after killing enemies in the first Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. The character design and animations were better and more realistic than in the previous games, and after playing of r a while i felt like the worst person in the world.

Not to mention they were no longer Nazis.

I like other Conrad’s novels, especially “Nostromo”, but I find this one impenetrable. The language is beautiful, but Conrad uses many characters and events as metaphors of countries and attitudes, and I have the feeling I’m not understanding half of it. I guess it would have been different for contemporary readers, but…

For instance, the “harlequin” Marlowe meets at Kurtz’s camp is Russian because Russia did not have African colonies at the time. That and his rags are supposed to tell us he’s a metaphor for the international community, but I failed to grasp that. And likely so many other things.

The narrator in “American Psycho” seems an obivous choice. He violently reacts to any trace of homosexuality, real or perceived, and never seems to obtain any pleasure from his numerous straight thrists. They look a lot like posturing.

Also, I’ve read several times that critics consider Ripley (from “The talented Mr. Ripley” and book sequels) to be a closeted gay. It was made explicit in the Matt Damon film, but in the books it’s more subtle.

“Bonfire of the vanities” and “American Psycho”. They’re both satires of yuppie culture, and as an homage of sorts both main characters work for the same company.

It’s not meant to be an easy read. It was written by a Polish writer who had English as his third language (the second one was French) and who wanted to be as cryptic as he could. Also, it’s what is known as a roman à clef or novel in code, where many characters, dialogues and events are not meant to be taken verbatim, but as allusions to countries and philosophies. My take is that “Heart of Darkness” was inteligible when it was first released, but not now.

Some people might consider “Apocalypse now” hard to follow, especially the last section at Kurtz’s compound, but that’s actually much easier to understand than the novel it adapted.

But please don’t take my “criticism” of “Heart of Darkness” as a an attack towards Joseph Conrad. The man was a hell of a writer, probably on of the best ever to write in English. I just happen to find some of his other work, such as “Typhoon” or “Nostromo” much more fun.