/lit/ - Literature

>>8408411
>>"In Joseph Conrad's novel "The Secret Agent," a brilliant but mad professor abandons academia in disgust for the isolation of a tiny room, his "hermitage." There, clad in ragged, soiled clothes, he fashions a bomb used in an attempt to destroy an observatory derisively referred to as "that idol of science." [...] Federal authorities believe Theodore J. Kaczynski, the former mathematics professor who loved Conrad's works well enough to read them about a dozen times, may have drawn upon the 1907 novel. Even before identifying Kaczynski as a suspect in the Unabomber case, FBI agents noted the parallels between Conrad's theme of science as a false icon and the Unabomber's targeting of scientists and technological experts and his condemnation of technology in letters to news organizations."

Leave it to the author to twist things so as to fit the narrative. There isn't any theme of science being a false icon in The Secret Agent, the Greenwich Observatory is chosen as a target for a bomb because it will cause moral outrage and is too absurd of a target for the act to be justified by anyone, this is literally said in the first part of the book. Not to mention that the character of The Professor doesnt have anything to do with the actual bomb explosion, he just supplies the bomb and doesnt even know what its for, and thats the point - he doesnt give a shit. Again, his motivation is not an attack against science and technology, its far more abstract and is more closer to that of the National Socialists in Germany. This is really silly