This popular book really disappointed me...

[Karnos]

"The Da Vinci" code, should I say more?

You know, I actually wasted money in buying a used copy of that book. I said to myself "Well, let's give it a try. Perhaps there might be something of worth here"

Couldn't get past the first fifty pages or so.

[unknown]

I've been recommended Jude the Obscure a number of times, so I guess Mr Hardy will get a second chance

[Bleak&Icy]

On the subject of Thomas Hardy: he is one of the anomalies of world literature. At the age of fifty or thereabouts, having written many successful novels, he renounced fiction and devoted himself exclusively to poetry. Unlike his Victorian contemporaries, Hardy preferred harsh poetic rhythms and unsentimental subject matter: he examined the wasted, the lonely, the ruined, the bereft, the lives of those devoid of hope. To experience a refreshing upsurge of icy bleakness, I would recommend reading the poems of Hardy. Here is an example:

In Tenebris

Wintertime nighs:
But my breavement-pain
It cannot bring again:
Twice no one dies.

Flower-petals flee;
But, since it once hath been,
No more that severing scene
Can harrow me.

Birds faint in dread:
I shall not lose old strength
In the lone frost's black length:
Strength long since fled!

Leaves freeze to dun;
But friends can not turn cold
This season as of old
For him with none.

Tempests may scath;
But love can not make smart
Again this year his heart
Who no heart hath.

Black is night's cope;
But death will not appal
One who, past doubtings all,
Waits in unhope.

The jagged, halting, torturous prosody! Hardy was fond of inventing ugly words when the pretty ones readily available at hand would not do the job. How harsh and uncompromising it is: "Twice no one dies." Unhope is a word that should sound a familiar bell to many Ligottians!

I can rarely enjoy poetry unless it is on the TV, being read bythe author, over ghostly black and white footage of the author biking through desolate dock yards and graveyards and dock/graveyards.

And it has to be crackly and you have to have just dunked your fifth bourbon cream biscuit of the day.

And it is still melting in your teeth.

(read that and look at my avatar. Now you got me)

[gveranon]

Coincidentally, I was recently reading some of Hardy's poetry for the first time. I still haven't read any of his novels. I found a great horror-of-Christmas poem, and was planning to wait and post it here next Christmas. But I guess posting it now would be appropriate. Besides, I wouldn't want to ruin anyone's Christmas, would I? (I won't answer that!)

A Nightmare, and the Next Thing

On this decline of Christmas Day
The empty street is fogged and blurred:
The house-fronts all seem backwise turned
As if the outer world were spurned:
Voices and songs within are heard,
Whence red rays gleam when fires are stirred,
Upon this nightmare Christmas Day.

The lamps, just lit, begin to outloom
Like dandelion-globes in the gloom
The stonework, shop-signs, doors, look bald;
Curious crude details seem installed,
And show themselves in their degrees
As they were personalities
Never discerned when the street was bustling
With vehicles, and farmers hustling.

Three clammy casuals wend their way
To the Union House. I hear one say:
'Jimmy, this is a treat! Hay-hay!'

Six laughing mouths, six rows of teeth,
Six radiant pairs of eyes beneath
Six yellow hats, looking out the back
Of a waggonette on its slowed-down track
Up the steep street to some gay dance,
Suddenly interrupt my glance.

They do not see a gray nightmare
Astride the day, or anywhere.

[G. S. Carnivals]

Oh, my. What a fine poem, but... Since I am fairly adept at math, Mr. Hardy's line should read "Six laughing mouths, twelve rows of teeth," as normal humans have upper and lower rows of teeth. albie's apparent preoccupation with our dentiform structures (such as they are) is curious. See how everything fits together?

Not gumming my food yet as I roll the clown dice,
Phil

[gveranon]

GSC, maybe Hardy's math was better than you think. There is an obvious joke here about British dentition, which I am too weak not to point out. I am a terrible, terrible person.

[Bleak&Icy]

Being a transplanted Brit living in Australia I can only can confirm that British dentition has never been a source of national pride. As my grandmother used to say, "I still got 'alf me good teeth!"

And gveranon, yes, you are a terrible terrible person But thanks for contributing the Hardy poem.

[G. S. Carnivals]

Mr. Hardy wins! (I didn't want to bring up the rumored British toothbrush census.)

[Bleak&Icy]

At the moment I'm reading a book called Night Visitors: The Rise and Fall of the English Ghost Story by Julia Briggs (Faber and Faber, 1977). The final chapter of the book is entitled "Ghosts and Poets," and examines the supernatural elements in the poetry of Hardy, Yeats and Eliot. She mentions a poem by Hardy which I have never encountered before, and I simply must share the delightfully Lovecraftian title:

"Voices from Things Growing in the Churchyard"

The poem contains the refrain:

All day cheerily,
All night eerily.