Robert Stone and Paul Theroux imperialists? What do black Africans think of Conrad, Bellow, Updike and Edgar Rice Burroughs? Why don't the white guys look for the heart of darkness in their own bathrooms?" - Meaning and context.">
"The Heroine: A Contraption of Attitudes", The New York Times (21 March 1982)
“

Do you suppose Latin American writers, trying to mix literary modernism with revolutionary politics, resent our blue-eyed exploitation of their continent as a sort of compost heap of the libidinal and the symbolic? Aren't D. H. Lawrence, Graham Greene, Robert Stone and Paul Theroux imperialists? What do black Africans think of Conrad, Bellow, Updike and Edgar Rice Burroughs? Why don't the white guys look for the heart of darkness in their own bathrooms?

— John Leonard (critic)

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "Do you suppose Latin American writers, trying to mix literary modernism with revolutionary politics, resent our blue-eyed exploitation of their continent as a sort of compost heap of the libidinal and the symbolic? Aren't D. H. Lawrence, Graham Greene, Robert Stone and Paul Theroux imperialists? What do black Africans think of Conrad, Bellow, Updike and Edgar Rice Burroughs? Why don't the white guys look for the heart of darkness in their own bathrooms?" in the context of ""The Heroine: A Contraption of Attitudes", The New York Times (21 March 1982)" to mean that wisdom is timeless.

Quote Image
Source: Wikiquote: "John Leonard (critic)" (Quotes) The 'What it means' explanation text was generated by Google Gemini Flash (accessed January 18, 2026). https://gemini.google.com/app
John Leonard (critic)

About John Leonard (critic)

John Leonard (February 25 1939 – November 5 2008) was an American literary, TV, film and cultural critic.