CURRENT READ

Jude the Obscure, Thomas Hardy

HOW I GOT IT: When I read Tess of the d'Urbervilles in high school, I thought it was the most artfully-told novel I had ever read. In addition to the extreme use of imagery and sensual detail, there was a strong sense of honest, quirky characters, dynamic settings and place and a dramatic flow of events.

As with Jude, there was also the controversy of it all. Not so much in the sense of pure scandal and salaciousness, but of the significance of the book in literary history (or, at least, in its placement betwixt and between the Victorian and Modern chapters in that history).

Supposedly with Jude the Obscure, the scandal is ever greater - compelling the author to abandon fiction and take solace in a prodigious career in poetry. But to some, the scandal is that there was an outcry at all. A friend of mine I had not seen in awhile proclaimed that he was reading this. Oddly enough, just a couple weeks before I had taken my own unread copy down from my parents house.

I've read a lot of books since the last time I read Hardy. I feel very close to the Victorians in my own storytelling sensibilities. We'll see how this one stacks up.