HARDY FORUM ARCHIVE H01038 3/3/01 "MARCH 2001 NOTES AND QUERIES" =================================================================== From: "Dave Sands" Subject: Re: Hardy Country sound files. Date: Sat, 3 Mar 2001 15:13:30 -0000 Dear Betty I am pleased to say that the sound files on my pages have aroused a great deal of interest, but I have had a number of e-mails from people like yourself who cannot open the files. I went to the local library and tested them myself on the machine there and they worked perfectly. It looks like these people who cannot receive the sound files may not have the appropriate software. The software required is 'Microsoft Media Player', this can be downloaded free from the Microsoft site on the web. Usually if the machine does not have this software a free download will be offered when an attempt is made to open sound files. Some of you may have Macintosh machines and I do not know how these machines handle sound files. I will look further into this problem, if any of you have any suggestions please let me know. Dave Sands ========== Date: Mon, 5 Mar 2001 07:31:45 -0500 From: jgould@andover.edu (John Gould) Subject: Convergences Last week I assigned to a group of 10th-grade students a paper discussing the title of Flannery O'Connor's "Everything That Rises Must Converge." In that story, you'll recall, a well-meaning but condescending white woman offers a penny to a young black boy riding with his large and truculent mother on a bus in the South in 1961. The two women are wearing identical (ugly) hats. The proffered gift results in the black woman's bopping the white woman with a purse that seemed to be "filled with stones." The white woman sinks to the ground, apparently the victim of some sort of stroke. To get the students going as they considered risings and convergings in the story, I referred them to "The Convergence of the Twain." Although initially amused at my own wit (for me a far too common failing), as I got going with the poem, I began to think more about the aptness of the comparison. O'Connor seems quite comfortable with the idea of an Immanent Will, for one thing. The hats make the two women "twin halves on one august evening." The collision between the twain in her story is almost enough to "jar two hemispheres." (Indeed, when we consider the course of racial integration in the last 40 years, perhaps it has.) I think Hardy would have enjoyed O'Connor thoroughly. I wonder if anyone has ever seen any writing that put them together. How familiar was O'Connor with Hardy, and did she know "The Convergence of the Twain"? John Gould ========== Date: Fri, 09 Mar 2001 11:40:08 -0400 From: Richard Nemesvari Organization: St. Francis Xavier University Subject: Jim Gibson review Hi Bill, I forgot to you ask you something in my last message, so here I am again. In your email to Rosemarie below you mention a review-essay by Jim Gibson on Hardy biography, and particularly on the Seymour-Smith tome. I've got a few corker reviews tucked into my copy of the book too (Samuel Hynes, Keith Wilson, William Keith), but I blush to say that I don't have Jim's. Could you tell me where to find it? Since I'm in the transition of taking over the LIFE page, I was thinking about including reviews on the site (copyright willing), or if/when possible linking to them, and obviously this would be a good one to include. Thanks for your help. Take care. Richard Bill Morgan wrote: > Hi, RM-- > > I have a pristine copy of Seymour-Smith's Hardy that I'll be happy to > contribute to this cause. I admit, however, that I am a little reluctant, > since the book is so unreliable on many points. What I propose to do is to > include a photocopy of Jim Gibson's cautionary review-essay on Hardy > biography in general and on Seymour-Smith in particular. I'd hate for some > unsuspecting Romanian scholar without access to other biographies to think > that Seymour-Smith was to be trusted as authoritative. > > Anyhow, the book is here, complete with Jim Gibson's admonitory essay; > where do I send it? > > Caught my first bonefish on the fly rod! Didn't score on the larger > tarpon, however, though I caught one small one (about 17 inches). No score > on the other of the fly-fishing triumvirate, the Permit: never even saw one. > > Hope you're well. I'm starting work tomorrow on the TTHA report for the > THJournal. Simon will have it in good time. > > cheers, > > Bill ========== Date: Fri, 09 Mar 2001 09:58:58 -0600 From: Bill Morgan Subject: Re: Jim Gibson review Morning, Richard-- It's James Gibson, "Hardy--Biography--and Seymour-Smith's Hardy," The Thomas Hardy Journal, X:2 (May 1994): 29-37. It's rhetorically splashy, but I think it makes a good case about the weaknesses in Seymour-Smith's book. I did manage to work your accession to the leadership of the Life page into my TTHA report. Again, welcome. And now, off on a brisk walk--gotta keep moving, or I fall over. best, Bill ========== Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2001 08:55:53 -0500 From: Robert Schweik Subject: Noyes on Hardy's Funeral I recently came across a comment on Hardy's funeral by Alfred Noyes that included such a striking quip that I thought I'd post it to the TTHA Forum. Noyes wrote: It would be merely conventional to pretend that his burial was anything but what Thomas Hardy's own family affirmed it to be. And it had something of the effect that might have been produced by the burial of Gibbon in the Holy Sepulchre with Voltaire as one of the pall-bearers. A fuller quotation of Noyes' comments--rich with a sense of some of the ironies of the funeral--are available at *The Guardian* web site at this URL: http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/classics/story/0,6000,109735,00.html Bob Schweik Robert Schweik Distinguished Teaching Professor, Emeritus schweik@fredonia.edu rschweik@localnet.com =========== From: RPKOAK@aol.com Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2001 15:17:57 EST Subject: 'woman's prescriptive infirmity' Greetings from Wisconsin, Such honorable people that their eros will over time become agape? Right, if all are in agreement 'it could happen'. and an anthropologist here would inquire to understand the environment and learn how such a view, among others, is meaningful, there, for individuals and community at the present time and conditions. we might 'interview' Hardy as to his view of women to learn how that is meaningful for him and even to the community. ( of rural folks expressing a common morality in contrast to the scientific materialism of 'profit and loss... and contracts' ...'from the chartered streets and by the chartered Thames', yet, from which they, the,rural folk, could learn , through the universities, valuable liberating understandings). But it seems all Hardy's women characters he shows to have been kept from learning by their 'religious devotions' and paternal mentors. Although they are rebellious they cannot escape due prescriptive emotional, sexual, social, political devices of their mentors (religious.. (Hardy would like to see such able individuals become understanding of their parents ,mentors and informed liberated members more fully members of the changing society,there, and also happier women for parenting of sons-- and daughters. ) So Hardy shows with each female persona the 'prescriptive infirmity' there which are numerous and cause for each personna's rebellious, autocratic and sometimes false behaviors. thank you, rkn =========== From: "Patrick Roper" Subject: Julia Roberts Date: Sat, 31 Mar 2001 18:40:59 +0100 Subscribers might be interested in the following from a profile of actress Julia Roperts that appeared in the UK 'Observer' Sunday newspaper. It is by Edward Helmore (March 25, 2001): "Through it all she has remained a distant figure and managed to retain an air of mystery despite the relentless attention. Her screen roles tend to deploy her as the quintessential girl-next-door, all sun and light, but there is also an appealing streak of darkness and tragedy. It is perhaps no surprise that Roberts often cites Thomas Hardy as her favourite author and she tends toward parts in which she is somehow misunderstood and alone, a solitary figure battling against the world." Patrick Roper ==========