Hello and welcome back to Hardcore Literature. Today we're discussing one of my personal favourite books

of all time, Thomas Hardy's mature masterpiece, the 1891 Tess of the Derbavilles. And what a perfect time to do so.

It's a cold and windy December day in rural England and I have recently finished

multiple rereads of this great novel. I first read Tess when I was very young just before I went up to

Oxford and I can easily say that I didn't get almost anything out of it. It did not resonate

with me nearly as much as it should have. This is a very powerful novel, but the themes it deals with

are incredibly mature and demand a lot of the reader. Now, after many, many rereads and a lot of lived experience,

I find this book to be immensely and intensely painful.

And though I reread it and have reread it endlessly,

it's a very bitter experience because this is not a happy novel.

Indeed, many who have read Thomas Hardy have said this before. Many have abandoned not only Thomas Hardy,

but novels entirely after reading not only Tess, but due to the obscure. Both of these books have a bit of a reputation

for putting readers of literature for a while. And if you've read it, and indeed you should have,

if you're listening to this show, if you've read it, it's not hard to see why. I reread this

recently. I went to a cabin in the woods and I reread it very swiftly

over the course of perhaps a week, a little less, which is rather swift for me. And then I immediately

reread it and reread it. And I have just reread it now before this show. And I made no notes, did no marginalia, underlined nothing,

dog-eared nothing. I just immersed myself in the world for the reread, which is very strange for me.

So what you are getting now is my impression upon multiple fast, immersive rereads of this

great story. And now I'm going to talk to you with a focus on Hardy's

fate free will arguments okay because everything trickles down from there in this novel we have

the idea of the sins of the father being visited upon the sons to the fourth or fifth generation.

...