Jude The Obscure: Thomas Hardy

[poliphilo]

It's not like earlier Hardy. The sensuality has gone. No more moo-cows in lush green pastures. The writing is spare, perfunctory, sometimes clumsy. At times it's as if he no longer cares. At least no longer cares about the novel as art.

The Bishop of Wakefield burned his copy (Thomas Hardy, meet Salman Rushdie) because what has the Church to do with truth?

Got any illusions- About men and women, sex, religion, education, morality? This'll scotch 'em.

It's a terrible, terrible book.

Comments

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Oh, cursed ambiguity of "terrible"!

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Yes.

Here I intend it mainly in the sense of "causing terror" but I'm happy for the other meaning to be hanging around.

[veronica-milvus.livejournal.com]

It is certainly utterly depressing. Probably inspired by real cases.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I find I can only take Hardy in small doses. He's heady stuff.

I see myself in his characters. Jude, Sue, Phillotson, even Arabella- all of them weak, well-meaning, predatory, self-centred, silly.

[athenais.livejournal.com]

That was the first and only Hardy I read. I was hugely put off by it and thought, "Why do people admire this author so much?" Desolation of the soul.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Because he tells the truth?

He was also a very fine poet.