Thread: Thomas Hardy

Any fans of Thomas Hardy here?
He's definitely my favorite European author after Emile Zola and Graham Greene...
Great English writer of novels of sad and tragic characters, doomed by their fate to misery...I love his books, and I've literally read every single novel of his (And Greene's and Zola's ), except one, I think (Desperate Remedies).
And he was also a brilliant poet as well...great writer indeed...

I can't really pick my favorites of his, although Tess, The Mayor of Casterbridge, Jude the Obscure, Far From the Maddening Crowd and The Return of the Native would be at the top, maybe Casterbridge or Tess being the greatest...
I highly recommend him, as well as Zola and Greene, for those unfamiliar with them.

You read the entire Zola series - It's 3o something tedious books about Frace leading up to the revolution. Well done!
I'm more of a Dickens fan myself, PG Wodehouse too... Not that I don't like Hardy, he's good.

But Zola is into that entire TOTALISING scene that I never could get into. North and South, War and Peace, Crime and Punishment...yadayadayada... The Damned - there was a novel. The Trial. The works of Borges, of Proust, of Nabokov!
If you must be all Euro-Nov lit. class then give me The scarlet and the black.

Oh and Satre - please. Just because the French were miserable after the war and took to sitting around cafe's reading Nausea. Give me Henry Bergson anyday - Creative Evolution, posivitism!

There is far too much moping and wearing black in philosophy departments these days. It's like Go-Go gadget wardrobe I swear....