The book of job, man, this job!

There’s ‘The horror! The horror!’ Kurtz’s final words in Joseph Conrad’s 1899 novella Heart of Darkness. And there’s ‘This job, man, this job!’ the words uttered by BBC correspondent Dan Johnson last Sunday while covering the situation in Afghanistan from Delhi. Unlike Conrad’s central character in Congo, the Beeb’s exasperated man was in literal darkness briefly in a Delhi hotel when the power had momentarily gone off, leaving the video phone link with the studio in London disconnected. But while the power and the glory (the name of another novel set in another heart of darkness, this one by Conrad fanboy Graham Greene set in Mexico) returned, Johnson was in the throes of his Kurtzian moment, innocent that the studio link was up again, and his existential crie de coeur being heard by anchor, viewers et al.

But we understand you, Colonel Johnson. While he may not be Marlon Brando as the mad, bad and dangerous Col Kurtz in Apocalypse Now, Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 film based on Conrad’s book, we can relate to his performance. All of us cry out, ‘This job, man, this job!’ — much like Christ’s ‘Eli Eli Lama Sabachthani?’ (My god, my god, why have you forsaken me?’) — at different moments of our working life. Whether one succumbs to the Devil in HR, in BBC or any other acronymised workplace, is another matter. Be strong, Dan Johnson.