The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886)

This will be the last time i ever read Thomas Hardy.

In the last month I’ve also read/listened to Far from the Madding Crowd and Tess of the D’urbervilles.

That’s enough of Hardy’s pessimism and miserabilism.

I did Jude the Obscure at A level; the turgid analysis we did in that boring evening class – with a lifeless Miss, and a dozen or so hapless clerks and nurses – killed off my interest in Hardy completely. Well, nearly.

But i decided to give him another go now to see if he could bring Wessex/Dorset to life for me.

He did. This book made the “rare old market town” of Dorchester feel comfortingly nostalgic.

I see bees (or “dumbledores“) and butterflies right now flying down Dorchester High St the way he imagined (even tho they won’t be – but I’ll be on the look out)

He uses lots of dialect; words like “twanking” (whining)….”She was wambling about” (think i might add “wambling” to my personal lexicon)…. “the pinking in of the day” (the 15 minutes before dusk)…..

He’s a good evoker of places and scenes “back then”, vividly poetic. But I did find a lot of his prose style a bore to drudge thro; these “classic” novels are so long-windedly verbose; it’s like you have to translate their antiquated circumlocutions into simpler, plainer, moderner English – bring them up to date, up to speed. So i found myself skipping thro often, side-stepping the obstacles of his clunky language, impatient to get on.

Maybe impatient also to get the gloom and doom that hangs over the narrative over and done with too. Cus things always get worse in Hardy novels. You are inexorably moving towards the next “blow of fate” the whole time. You can’t escape the crush of misery, the next crash of misfortune that lies ahead for the characters. You’re waiting, as trapped as they are, as helpless. You feel yourself as sunk by their suffering – their fate – as they are.

The irony of blind fate, of chance and co-incidence – that’s what determines how life turns out in Hardy World. In this book there is far too much co-incidence going on; I don’t like overdetermined plotting (i especially don’t like it in films) and here, the dependency on coincidence becomes overly conspicuous; so much so that the machinations of the plot rob the narrative of plausibility, making it feel artificial, staged, too contrived.

I got to lose interest in it towards the end, started skipping and flipping thro.

I don’t know if Hardy will be read much in the future. Ok, he’s one of the “Great” novelists i suppose. The BBC will always do another Sunday night “frocks and smocks” adaptation to give people their fix of Classical-Literature. I mean, I remember the version they did back in 1976 with Alan Bates: “Alright tho hey!“; he did a lot of bewhiskered “Hey!” and “Arrr” – and it seemed affecting at the time (maybe now it”ll be more like affected) I had the memory of him doing his mannered Mayor of Casterbridge impersonation while I read; and it didn’t quite fit; I don’t remember Alan Bates becoming a pitiable wretch, somebody depressed, demeaned, and defeated by Tragic Suffering. Maybe Batesy had a bit too much charm and charisma for the role; too likeable – not enough angst and earnst.

So that’s me done with Hardy. I might read a few of his poems. But i don’t think I’ll be inflicting any more of his particular brand of suffering on myself again.

Here’s a great line to take with me tho;

“Henchard (the Mayor) lived a lifetime the moment he saw it.”

I like that.

And the more “moments” (epiphanies i guess they are) you get to see, to be there for, the more Life could become really Alive, be lighting you up.

I’ll treasure that little illumination.

Probably be quoting that line at somebody in the weeks ahead (Lol)