Ken’s Comments (group member since Jan 21, 2020)

Ken’s comments from the The Obscure Reading Group group.

It's 7:10 on the right coast (Down East Edition) , and I just wanted to say, "Welcome, Jan!"

Your post reminded me of myself in my teaching days (which ended but six months ago). Ever the insomniac, I found myself up at the thin hours when for some reason I did my best thinking.

Anyway, it will be interesting trading thoughts with you and others on the Obscure One. I am in the early going now, but will have Parts One and Parts Two read by Feb. 7th, when I will open the thread a day early (by my lights) so people who get a jump-start on the 8th (Singapore, Dublin) can jump in the water if they want to.

Looking forward to it!

-- Another Guy in Transition

I know I technically don't have to start reading until Feb. 1st, but being a slow reader (esp. of rich language, as you'd expect of a late 19th-century book), I'll probably begin to mosey on into the novel this coming week.

I see from TH's preface that this came out in serial form, month by month in Harper's Magazine.

It reminds me of Chuck Dickens, paid the same way (by the word) and published in the same manner (by the month). We don't know how lucky we are these days to be able to stay up all night every once and a while and read a book we just can't put down.

Back then, you had no choice but to cool your jets while Little Nell took her time about dying or not.

Hope everyone is able to chase down a copy by next ready-set-Saturday!

Hi, Yvonne. I cannot speak to Kindle editions (though I think Carol is going to go with one, so maybe she'll jump in with some advice), but no matter what edition, you don't have to worry about pages because we are reading two parts each week. Those "Parts" are Hardy's divisions, as seen in the book's Table of Contents (and in this group's READING & DISCUSSION SCHEDULE link seen below).

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

As for warm temps, I'm happy to say the southern coast of Maine is up to 46 F today. My wife and I just got back from walking the lonely beach, in fact.

Me, I prefer the winter beach to the summer one. More gulls, fewer people.

Cathleen... just a few years back, I spent a luxurious day at Walden Pond and environs. Still remember it fondly. Not too crowded with tourists, either!

And what a bio I read of the man a few years back:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Just searched for and found Angela's blog post on Ms. Not-Jane Austen. Nicely done! Here it is:

https://hashtagretired.com/2018/03/02...

Her poetry collection, Paradise of the World, is out of print. She spelled her name Deborah Austin, by the looks of that sadly out-of-print amazon page.

Finally, regarding invitations, you are all free to invite any GR friends you have if you think they are big Brit Lit or Hardy fans. There are still six days before we start reading (though I will start reading as soon as I finish Night Boat to Tangier).

The reading schedule works out to about 125 pp. per week, depending on the book version you have, of course, and its font size, so Feb. 1-7 is reading of the first two parts and then the first round of discussion begins as we simultaneously delve into Parts 3 and 4.

Hi, Cathleen. North Shore, is it? When we moved and downsized last summer, we actually looked at Ipswich and environs. Used the Crane Estate B&B as a home base, but there wasn't a lot available and what WAS available was pricey, so we opted for the ultimate north shore --- Maine.

I'm impressed with how many of you read JUDE in HS or college. And I remember, too, university lectures where the professor droned on and on as the only one enchanted with the sound of his own voice.

I did take a Dickens seminar, which was foolhardy (heh... little Hardy plug there) because reading six GIANT books in four months is ridiculous as I found out.

Great to see you here, Angela. I didn't know you had Maine / Mass. roots. For those who don't know, Maine itself has Mass. roots. Until 1820, it was actually part of Mass. (or, as I fondly call it, "North Massachusetts). This year Maine is celebrating its bicentennial. (And how well I remember when the seemingly-sane and still united USA celebrated its bicentennial in 1976!)

You had an English professor named Miss Austen??? First name wasn't Jane, I assume.

Small world. And upside-down world at all times, with the seasons flipped on either side of the equator.

We're in the dog days of winter here. This morning, though, it is a balmy 18 degrees Fahrenheit (Negative 8 Celsius). On Tuesday morning it was 5 degrees (Neg. 15).

In the words of the prophet, though, this too shall pass.

Welcome, Laysee! I think you're our first group member from Singapore! Now that's long-distance participation! We look forward to your thoughts as you reread it. For me, it will be the first time.

Welcome, Kathleen. Good to have a complete Hardy newbie on board!

I think I can identify with "dark." I tend to write dark myself. Maybe I'm a Hardy avatar or something. Anyway, I'm interested in meeting this Jude dude myself.

Good grounding is right! Three cheers for the conservatives on that count.

And I suppose it better explains your Hardy experience and my lack thereof, a schooling in Ontario vs. a schooling in New England. We got Shakespeare, all right: first Julius Caesar and The Merchant of Venice (now considered politically-incorrect), and then Hamlet and Macbeth.

But no Hardy.

Junior year in HS was American Lit. Senior year was British Lit., showing you that the Brits were considered "tougher." Weird how little I remember of the titles we read senior year, though. I was already "drifting," I think, toward college.

Sandy: Back in the day, most all teens were beholden to Holden. These days? Not so much. I found out when I taught the book in high school and hit rough sailing.

Carol, those pictures (I clicked amazon's "Sneak Peak") are purdy, as they say. Very Olde English (note superfluous "e" in "Olde").

Great to see you here, Diane! The notice we gave people was admittedly short, so its gratifying to see that you and a few others can actually join in.

Moving! I just did that last July, from Mass. to Maine, so I know how how chaotic things can get. If I don't see another packing box or packing tape or packing paper for the rest of my life, I'll be a happy man.

(And funny, certain boxes always seem to find their way unopened either up in the attic or down in the cellar. It's a natural migration, like with salmon. At some point, though, you'll be unable to find something important and forced to revisit some of these boxes.)

Good luck with the move and with Savannah (which always wakes me up when Amtrak stops there).

Carol, the Kindle option is fine. I purposely based the reading schedule on Hardy's six "Parts" so we wouldn't have to worry about pages, just parts. So cool that you're here!

Bill, it so happens that The Mayor of Casterbridge was the last Hardy I read, only (he says) twenty years ago. The rest I read in a rush more like forty years ago. All except Jude, which somehow escaped my enthusiastic Hardy phase.

The first one I read? The Return of the Native. Reason? Holden Caulfield recommends it in The Catcher in the Rye. He loved that Eustacia Vye!

Fergus, glad you're here and giving it a second look. As I said to Carol, any edition works. I have the Signet Classic paperback from the library. It has an introduction by Jay Parini that I started reading, but then stopped once I realized he was giving away a lot of the plot. WHY DO INTRODUCTIONS DO THIS? They should be AFTERWORDS, not intros (sigh).

Sue, all best on that surgery and if you get here, great. If not, understood. Jude or no Jude, we just want you to get better! (BTW, you and Fergus read some good stuff in school. When I was in school, Hardy was never on the table.)

Hi, Sandy. Not sure I recall this as being one of your favorites. Hope it holds up! You know how rereading favorites from our younger days can be hazardous. We are different people now, after all. But sometimes, we love them just as much!

OK, I’ll start by noting a seemingly insignificant scene in the first dozen pages that obviously was put there for a reason. I’m speaking of the episode where Jude, still a child, is hired by Farmer Troutham to sound a clacker and scare off rooks feeding in the farmer’s fields.

The boy is described as friendless, ill-treated even by the aunt whom fate has selected to raise him. He feels pity for the birds, even calling them friends. Hardy works in a little descriptive magic here:

“At each clack the rooks left off pecking, and rose and went away on their leisurely wings, burnished like tassets of mail, afterwards wheeling back and regarding him warily, and descending to feed at a more respectful distance…

“‘Poor little dears!’ said Jude, aloud. ‘You shall have some dinner—you shall. There is enough for us all. Farmer Troutham can afford to let you have some. Eat, then, my dear little birdies, and make a good meal!’

“They stayed and ate, inky spots on the nut-brown soil, and Jude enjoyed their appetite. A magic thread of fellowship feeling united his own life with theirs. Puny and sorry as those lives were, they much resembled his own.”

Of course, Farmer Troutham shows up, witnessing little Jude’s largesse, and beats the hell out of the kid. The astonished Jude tries to explain that he was only letting them eat a little, and that there seemed to be enough for all, but such explanations only serve to enrage Troutham all the more.

Then comes mention of workers building the new church nearby, an echoing sound “from the brand-new church tower just behind the mist, towards the building of which structure the farmer had largely subscribed, to testify his love for God and man.”

Hoo, boy! I thought, reading that. Some irony there! And not a little statement about Jude’s character, too, as Hardy purposely wins readers’ sympathy for the little guy.

To me, though, it signals one of Hardy’s intentions in this novel. Although it doesn’t come on strong in Parts One and Two, criticism of the Church of England seems a safe bet, judging by this scene where a supposedly good citizen and Godly man is seen thrashing an innocent who was just trying to share with the equivalent of the poor—birds following nothing but their own instinct.

The scene impressed me, then, for three reasons: its characterization, its irony, and its foreshadowing. As I dive into Parts 3 and 4, I’ll continue to look for more and more about statements about religion from Hardy via his characters.

Did this brief episode catch anyone else’s attention?

The first fifty or so posts here are people introducing themselves for our initial discussion of Jude the Obscure, but now that we have evolved into a three-times-a-year reading club called (in honor of poor old Jude) "The Obscure Reading Group," newcomers are welcome to read our introductions, then add their own.

Welcome!