Hardy

by Martin Seymour-Smith

Thomas Hardy has been seriously misinterpreted by his previous biographers, Robert Gittings and Michael Millgate, claims the author of this book, Martin Seymour-Smith. This biography establishes that the popular view of Thomas Hardy as a mean, snobbish, impotent pessimist who couldn't get on with women is wholly inaccurate. Hardy was in fact a shy, sensitive man who cared deeply about his fellow beings, including both his wives. The author also overturns the idea that Hardy was a naive amateur by pointing to his poetry which has been ignored by the critics since it was attacked by T.S. Eliot. Other work by the author includes "Who's Who in Twentieth-Century Literature" and the encyclopaedic four volume "Guide to Modern World Art", as well as biographies of Robert Graves and Rudyard Kipling.

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction

896 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

Reviews

[Jennifer Frasier · Rating 5 out of 5]

I believe this is a much more balanced biography of Hardy than we've seen in the past and corrects a great deal of the misinformation created to make the man seem as shocking as his writing. It's a long book and includes detailed descriptions of each of his novels in chronological order. After his final novel, the biography then goes into Hardy's poetry. Personally, I found the poetry section much less interesting and harder to get through. Still, overall, a good read and well worth the time.

[Richard Epstein · Rating 2 out of 5]

Seymour-Smith is more interested in demonstrating that all the other Hardy biographers are nitwits and nincompoops and that he knows Hardy much better than anyone else, including both of Tom's wives, than he is in putting together a manageable biograph. I suppose there is some cosmic justice in realizing that it takes about as long to read this narrative of Hardy's life as it took Hardy to live it.

[Kallie]

I'm shelving for now. I love all the detail about Hardy's life, and how this writer is trying to do his character justice. But that's not what I want to read now. Does make me want to read Hardy again though. Maybe when I do that, I'll take this HUGE tome back up again.

[Todd Stockslager · Rating 3 out of 5]

Review title: Surfin' Safari
Moore goes around the world to trace the history of surfing's athletic, economic, and cultural spread to places not normally associated with surfing culture. After a brief review of the accepted history (Hawaii to California to Australia and the other usual surfing hotspots) Moore takes off for-- Germany . . . the Gaza Strip . . . Morocco.

Yes, Germany is landlocked, and yes, there is a small "surfing culture" on the canals and rivers of Munich. But this book isn't about how big the waves are there, or how to catch them, but about how the culture got there (his question at each location: who was the first person who stood up on a board and rode a wave here?) and how it has impacted the area politically, culturally, and economically.

While the American military during and after World War II was often the carrier of the concept of surfing to these far-flung places, this isn't a book about military imperialism, but it is one that talks about cultural and economic imperialism and its influence in the least likely ways and places. For example, in the chapter on Israel and the Gaza Strip you will learn how surf boards crossed security checkpoints--only to be lost in the cultural maze of Middle Eastern politics.

The closest I've gotten to surfing is boogie boarding during family vacations, and listening to Jimmy Buffett music, but Moore's subject and style doesn't require deep surfing knowledge--partly because, in proof of on of his points, of how deeply engrained the "idea" of surfing is in the leisure lobe of the modern mind.

The other aspect of this book I hinted at in my review title is its value as a travelogue of places, some perhaps familiar, some not so, but all viewed with a different set of eyes. I was reminded Getting Stoned with Savages: A Trip Through the Islands of Fiji and Vanuatu or The Sex Lives of Cannibals: Adrift in the Equatorial Pacific; Moore shares a similar vibe with Martin Troost in those fresh looks at familiar (we assume) places.

[Eleni · Rating 3 out of 5]

I only read a couple of parts to understand the context in which Return of the Native and The Mayor of Casterbridge were written. This seems to be a biography that takes into consideration the reputation of Millgate's biography a decade before his own.

[Captain Sir Roddy, R.N. (Ret.) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Review to follow soon.