hultquis@unc.UUCP (Jeffrey P. Hultquist) (02/01/85)
Hey folks! All of you who have been complaining about
the pornography debate (and I am not too crazy about it myself),
how about tossing in a book title and a few comments about
the thing?
For instance ...
I am about halfway through Thomas Hardy's *Jude the Obscure*,
and I am already prepared to recommend it to everyone. Even if
it suddenly becomes as dull as a phone book, the first hundred
pages ... wow! It is about a young laborer who dreams of going
to divinity school (BTW we are in England around 1800 (?)), but
whose dreams are never achieved because society will not allow
him to escape the caste in which it has placed him. Very
depressing, but still (or maybe *therefore*) a very enjoyable
story.
Now ... will someone who thinks Hardy was a twit please
respond to this?
Many thanks,
Jeff Hultquist
UNC chapel hill
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"Space is a dandy arena, actually." --- DoD scientist, 1977psal@othervax.UUCP (02/07/85)
==== < FOR THE LINE EATER > ==== Yes, Jeff. I don't think Hardy was exactly a twit, but I find him vastly overrated and awfully heavyhanded. For example, in Tess of the d'U's. the good guy appears in a nimbus of light and the bad guy amid flames with his hair twisted into horns, actually carrying a pitchfork. Being this obvious is a great help when trying to explain symbolism to vocational-school types who grew up without a book in their houses, but to most people seem to find it a little unsubtle. I vaguely recall a short story by Ellery Queen in which the names of the suspects were anagrams of their roles. The killer was named Kit Heller, etc. There is an individualaesthetic value judgement called for here, and I think that I could make a good case for subtle pleasures being superior to or at least more satisfying than gross ones. Puritan values aside, a work of art at which one has to work does more than one in which everything is laid out for the reader because it involves him in the creative act. This is why reading is so much more satisfying than watching T.V. while your brains liquify and run out your nostrils. A haunted house in a book will always be more terrifying than one on screen because it contains the horrors supplied by YOUR OWN IMAGINATION, which no director can know. the cartoon version of 'Lord of the Rings' flopped partly because the characters didn't match, and coldn't match, the ones dreamt of by the mind's eye of every reader, and so the readers were disappointed. It's the part hat the reader brings to the book that adds the most pleasure; the author is at best a guide for the reader's imaginative faculties. In music, a C&W song is completely understood by a brain-damaged drunkin a bar, mind and soul numbed or dead, but it takes effort to understand a Bach fugue, to follow the theme and countertheme, transposed, reversed, inverted... The more often one listens, the more one hears. But it's THERE, to be heard, whether it's there in the work itself, or in the soul of the listener and masterfully evoked BY the work. There is, I submit, more pleasure, more fufillment, perhaps even more value in the one that doesn't come easily. Hardy plops everything down in front of you: its all done in advance. It's like a mystery novel where you are shown the killer during the comission of the crime: it becomes just a cop story, a police procedural. The subtlety, the demand for the readers involvement isn't there. -C.Thomas Weinbaum von Waldenthal
rogers@reed.UUCP (Michael Rogers) (02/12/85)
I don't think that Hardy is twit though I have heard a few people express such sentiments. I read JUDE THE OBSCURE about four years ago and found it an excellent (but depressing) novel. Another good one by Hardy is FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD which, like JUDE, is about a young man struggling to live within the outdated Victorian social structure. "Madding" is an outdated contraction of "maddening." JUDE THE OBSCURE was Hardy's last novel (1895), and the best among the 3-4 that I have read. The immediate response of the critics was outrage. A bishop burned his copy (which Hardy in a later postscript to the book said was in lieu of the author himself). This response prompted Hardy to quit writing novels and to compose soley poetry. -mike rogers tektronix!reed!rogers
chris@byucsa.UUCP (Chris J. Grevstad) (02/14/85)
> .... > a few people express such sentiments. I read JUDE THE OBSCURE > about four years ago and found it an excellent (but > depressing) novel. Another good one by Hardy is > .... > > -mike rogers > tektronix!reed!rogers Absolutely! I loved 'Jude the Obscure'! It was very depressing but really fascinating. -- Chris Grevstad {ihnp4,noao,mcnc,utah-cs}!arizona!byucsa!chris If things don't change they will probably remain the same.