Far From the Madding Crowd

Far From the Madding Crowd. Hardy, Thomas. 1876. Naples, FL: Trident Press International, 2001.

Cuter than a Wes Anderson set, this is the tale of a Victorian hottie who has to choose between three horndogs til she finds the right one—like Goldilocks and the porridge. Bathsheba Everdene has recently inherited her family farm, which in modern terms is like saying her STACKS of GREEN are so high that she can't see the HATERS. Naturally Bathsheba becomes Weatherbury's hottest commodity and the servants start gossiping about who is to take her hand (and farm and something else ifyaknowwhaimsayin).  In an interesting feminist twist, Bathsheba decides to try to run the farm herself which is entirely inappropriate for a young hardbody. Y'all saw that reality show with Paris Hilton and her friend having to work on a farm right? Farming ain't the province of beautiful ladiezzz. Bathsheba attempts to master buying and selling crops at market but realizes that she ain't cut out for that shit. What she needs is a man to manage the boring stuff while she chills in her mansion and gossips with her BFF Liddy.

At this point she has already turned down one of her suitors, the indefatigably honest shepherd Gabriel Oak, who is still getting over it. Oak ain't the most socially adept bloke in Wessex because he proposes to Bathsheba like the second time that he meets her (and before she becomes Bath$heba). Girl is freaked out for reals. But Oak is a morally upright character who, as is typical of Hardy, gets tragically fucked over by the forces of fate. His mutt goes berserk and drives his flock over a cliff leaving Oak to have to pay back the deposit on the animals. Just like credit card debt...sooner or later you gotta pay up for all those borrowed dollars/sheep, naimsayin? Oak settles with his creditors but has no green leftover for himself. But his good nature ends up getting him a job, as he proves to be adept at saving a corn harvest from a sudden fire. The locals put in a good word and Bathsheba decides to hire him even though she kinda knows that he is sooo not over her. Also Oak is a master shepherd and there's this one scene where the sheep start dying of this rapidly accelerating disease and the farmhands are powerless to stop it and Gabriel is all like EVERYBODY CHILL THE FUCK OUT I GOT THIS. Except he didn't curse like that but he has that kind of confidence about matters of sheep.

Bachelor no. 2 is Boldwood, and the first part of that portmanteau is a misnomer. Boldwood is a stick-up-his-ass...I mean stick-in-the-mud sort of fellow who has a good reputation in the community, but like Oak he isn't the type to spend his vacay in Ibiza. Boldwood takes a fancy to Bathsheba after the latter, in a totally girly move straight out of seventh grade, conspires with Liddy to send a letter to Boldwood that says "MARRY ME AND MAKE ME GO UNNNNH UNNNNH UNNNNH" (OK I made that last part of it up). Teehee. Girls can be so capricious and conniving, amirite? Bathsheba doesn't really fancy him but TOO LATE SINCE BOLDY AIN'T NEVER GONNA FORGET THAT. Girl, you don't tempt a lonely, reserved farmer like that and expect he's not gonna take it seriously! So Boldy now fancies Bathy and she's like "jk lol sry about that" and he's like "you cruel bitch...I mean you delightfully angelic creature who has acted cruelly toward me!" See, Boldy is one of those idealistic lover types and since he has fallen in love with Bathy nothing shakes him out of it. I'm talkin' Heathcliff style bitches, 'cept his love is unrequited.

But look, a challenger approaches! It's Sergeant Troy: rogueish, fit, Anglo-French, Byronic badboy with a sword. Troy is all about breakin' rules and breakin' hos. His idea of a good time is a Casterbridge pussyquest during a furlough and while this lad has class, he's a right proper socialist, baby, when it comes to the ladiezzz. Meaning he likes the servant girls as well as the rich bitches. Meaning he has sex with runaway servant babe Fanny Robin (you expected a fanny joke there didn't yer?). Prolly the best scene of the novel is where Troy tries to seduce Bathsheba using his sword trick. He blindfolds her and wields his peen-blade marvelously all around poor Bathy but he promises that it never touched/penetrated her. Wooing...you're doing it right.

Bathy is totally into him even though Oak warns her that Troy seems to be a...how you say...WANKER. Oak suggests she marry Boldy instead, but rich bitches get what they want (even in Victorian times, reader) so the two hotties marry each other. Oak's crit of Troy ends up being spot on since he dunno a thing about farming and the like and attempts to ingratiate himself to the servants by getting them plastered. Unfortunately this happens right before a storm is about to brew so everyone is too drunk to remember to cover the corn harvest. See, in this book corn is like the same thing as money so it is even more shocking to find out that poor Boldy has been neglecting his crop ever since Bathsheba turned him down. Oak comes to the rescue, as per usual, and manages to limit the damage, but Bathy won't have a servant instruct her on her love affairs so she has little patience for Oak stating the obvious fact that Troy is a...how you say...douche. However she seems to allow Liddy to give her love advice, which must fall under the "girl talk exemption clause." Troy also has a taste for gambling and since he's married to Bath$heba "Cha-Ching" Everdene, he's always like "canna yer lend me five quid for the races—I mean investments—that I am looking into?" At the same time Troy is carrying on a sexy affair with Fanny, but Bathy never fully catches on (though Oak does).

This is a Hardy novel so TRAGEDY STRIKES. Fanny, exiled in shame in a Victorian workhouse, dies from unknown causes (broken heart? VD?). Troy and Bathsheba are absolutely shaken and they handle the funeral which (conveniently) allows Fanny's body to rest at the house before burial. Oak covers the casket because he does not want Bathsheba to know the truth about Troy's phallic escapades. But alas, in her grief Bathy opens the casket to find that poor Fanny was with child. Troy's evasiveness toward her about Fanny and the fact that he carries a lock of her hair in his watch allow Bathy to piece together that her douchebag husband is unfaithful. The marriage falls apart and Troy wanders about, only to go for a swim and (conveniently, for later purposes of the plot) leave all his shit on the shore. He is carried out by a strong current and a bystander reports that he has surely drowned.

News reaches Bathsheba that she is newly single and ready to mingle but she's in no mood for fun. Poor girl still blames herself for Troy's treachery. But the news excites someone in Weatherbury...dear old Boldy, still nursing his lust for Bathsheba. He's like "Hey girl, now that your husband is out of the picture, how about we elope lol" and she's like "um...I could only marry for love and I don't love you" and he's like "s'cool I'll just bother you about it all the time and remind you about how you fucking played with my emotions with that letter so much that I wished I were dead. You owe it to me bitch." While it is true that Bathsheba wants to marry for love she also believes that Troy is not dead since they never found his body. And wouldn't you know it, but her wifely instincts are right! Troy survived and was picked up by a ship and by some naked, cray cray method makes it to America where he becomes, and I quote, "Professor of Gymnastics, Sword Exercise, Fencing, and Pugilism." Then he remembers that he has a hott wife waiting back in Engerland so he returns and takes the perfect job for a disgraced-husband-seeking-to-win-back-his-wife-and-her-estate: he joins the bloody circus. His object is to get a sense of what Bathy is up to and how disgraced his reputation is with her and the town folk.

Everybody who's anybody (livestock included) show up at the Sheep Fair at Greenhill, where Troy plays the performing role of legendary highwayman Dick Turpin. In order to conceal himself he has to rely on disguising his face and limiting the speaking of his part and he seems to pull it off as Bathsheba does not notice...but the narsty baliff Pennyways does. This Pennyways was sacked by Bathsheba earlier on for stealing grain so he's desperate to curry her favour by informing her that her hubby is alive and well. But Troy has other plans; he follows Pennyways to the tea tent where Boldy and Bathy are having a quaff and after Pennyways gives her the note which says that her husband is alive, he furtively reaches from behind the curtain and snatches it from her before she has a chance to read it.

Meanwhile Boldy guilt-trips Bathy into considering the prospect of marrying him in six years, because at that point Troy would be considered dead and she could then legally remarry. They agree Bathsheba will give her answer at the upcoming Christmas Eve bash at Boldwood's crib. Troy consults with Pennyways' and with his help constructs a costumed disguise (of the type that work in novels and not in real life), intending to gatecrash and wifegrab with one swift stroke. But news of Pennyways' discovery of Troy spreads throughout Oak and the farmhands. They decide to tell Bathy the truth before she foolishly commits to Boldwood but (conveniently) they haven't the heart to break up the absolutely bonkers partay. Boldy's plan to strong-arm Bathy into being his betrothed works and she agrees that she will marry no one else until the time period elapses and she will be his. Boldwood, raging with a boner of joy, gets hammered and welcomes a new stranger into the house who just so happens to be Troy. He orders Bathy to leave with him and Boldy snaps and shoots the adulterer. Bathy feints. Troy dies. Boldy turns himself in (but is spared the noose).

TIME PASSES and the town folk start treating Bathsheba like she's got a case of the crabs. I'm talking glacier cold, and the worst of it is that Oak avoids our poor hottie as well. Bathsheba no doubt thinks that Oak has saved her ass like three times and has had enough and that is why he wants to leave England for Cali. But she's wrong, my friends, because if there is one true theme in this tale of cattle and cads, horse dung and horndogs, it is FRIENDSHIP. Oak and Bathsheba's relationship oscillates from Death Valley to the bloody Matterhorn but they never give up on each other and so it is only natural that this wonderful novel ends in their marriage.

Is this book too dated for modern readers? (It isn't...BYDHTTMWFI). Read it and decide for yourself.

Keep turning those pages, readers.

Glamorama

Glamorama. Ellis, Bret Easton. New York: Vintage, 1998.

This is my favorite book of all time. I'm often at a loss as to how to explain why I love it so much, since I generally don't care for American fiction. I think the reason why is that it offers an invigorating reading experience. You will get the full gamut of emotions from this novel. It is as likely to make you laugh as it is to make you cry as it is to make you wince as it is to make you hurl as it is to turn you on. If you can make it past the first third of the narrative then you will likely finish it, as at that point it takes a three hundred sixty degree turn. Not a full turn, since the protagonist Victor Ward's character never really changes even if the plot does.

Glamorama is an achievement because the world of vapid supermodels does not seem well fitted to literature. After all, in a profession where one look says everything who cares what anyone says? And indeed, this book is filled with trite and ridiculously banal dialogue. Victor Ward has the philosophical depth of a paper plate. It is only when his life and everyone in it are endangered that he even begins to act introspective, to comprehend the magnitude of fashion in bed with terrorism. As the book goes on there is less of the label conscious itemization that has been attacked by so many critics and retched at by so many readers. Vicariously we want to be Victor Ward because of who he sleeps with and who he hangs out with. We are superficially in love with what he is capable of, even if he himself stands for nothing. He is an imbecile, but some of us would willingly give up their intelligence in exchange for that body and what comes with it. As it is with Ellis, surface is what matters.

What many fail to pick up on is that this book is a satire. Ellis does not praise the fashion industry in Glamorama. Instead he viciously attacks it. None of his characters are happy because they are too busy being hip; they prefer pouts to grins. The smell of shit is a repeating trope in this book, jockeying for position with the Chanel infused molecules of the hippest of parties. The claim that models can become terrorists is reasonably sound given that their lives are all about access: what exclusive clubs they can get into and what material pleasures (drugs, sex) come with that. Perhaps it is simplistic to say that models are docile, unquestioning (but good looking) pieces of meat, oblivious to questions of morality or sexual decency. But you have to admire the courage of this author because he absolutely does not back down from making that claim. Ellis is the type of writer who is not afraid to scare and offend you. It is these types of writers who come to define an age, not the mildly shocking drivel of the "pick your genre" crowd. Where others feint a strike, Ellis delivers a knockout punch. Read it to understand what the 90s were about and prepare to be shocked and amazed.