k-oink-adink
Doug Millison
millison at online-journalist.com
Fri Sep 8 15:10:58 CDT 2000
I've been reading Hardy's _Jude the Obscure_ on the recommendation
of a Pynchon Scholar Who Will Remain Unnamed, and was pleased to find
what might be considered a Pychonesque echo therein. Towards the end
of the first part of the novel, Jude and his sluttish wife Arabella
kill a pig; the scene reminded me of Slothrop's ancestor and his pigs:
"The animal's note changed its quality. It was not now rage, but the
cry of despair; long-drawn, slow and hopeless.
" 'Upon my soul! I would sooner have gone without the pig than have
this to do!" said Jude. 'A creature I have fed with my own hands.'
"[....] The dying animal's cry assumed its third and final tone, the
shriek of agony; his glazing eyes riveting themselves on Arabella
with the eloquently keen reproach of a creature recognizing at last
the treachery of those who had seemed his only friends."
At the end of the following chapter, ending part one of the novel,
Jude returns to a stone on the road to Christminster, where he dreams
of becoming a scholar and bishop, to find the inscription he had
carved some time before. It reads, "Thither J.F." with a pointing
finger illustrated in the text just as we find in GR.
--
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