I found Thomas Hardy a difficult author when I last read his books. The very first few start off as rural idylls, but each successive work is bleaker than its predecessor. Until you get to ‘Tess’ and ‘Jude’, which are so dark.
Hardy was a great writer, his prose was unmatched, but I found the unremitting darkness soul-destroying in the end, and I no longer go near his books. Give me Dickens or Evelyn Waugh, or Irvine Welsh or Christopher Brookmyre from the current generation of Scottish writers.
I’ve got Claire Tomalin’s biography of him somewhere. It’s subtitled ‘A Time-Torn Man’. It might be a way back for you. Basically he wrote about the transition (as we would say today) from an agrarian society to an industrial one.
The way he sets up the choices one faces appeals to me. For instance in Jude, Arabella the lusty farm girl attracts Jude, but so too does modern girl Sue Brideshead, from the city.
Though I’m not an English scholar, I have a feeling that he might have been the Irvine Welsh of his day, a bright country boy who became a celeb through his writing, eventually hobnobbing with royalty and London society, and with a house in Paddington as well as ‘Casterbridge’.
Anyway, a highly recommended biog for anyone interested.
Thank you, Christopher. I have heard good things of Claire Tomalin’s Hardy biography, but I don’t think that anything could help me readjust to the bleakness of Hardy’s imagined world.
If I want to experience dark things, I think that I’m better getting them from Solti’s masterful ‘Ring’ recording!
I’m about half way through this and it’s just ok. I was hoping for more details about his collaboration with Elton and insights into so many of the famous tunes they wrote together but it’s not here. Rather, it’s about a lot of the celebs he has met, the drinking, partying etc. Some stories are interesting, others less so. The advertising blurb is a bit misleading - I don’t know what some of the celebs were on when they read this!
He is on Graham Norton on Friday night - I hope that’s a bit more interesting.
I wrote a colllege paper comparing Hardy (Tess) to Lawrence (The Rainbow I think). Overall, I’ve read 4 of the big 5. Someday I’ll get around to Far From the Madding Crowd, but you’re right. I’ll have to be in the mood.
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