The most geographical of all novelists: Thomas Hardy

Started (re)reading Thomas Hardy's Return of the Native last night - he was kind of considered college reading when I was in high school and then high-school reading when I was in college, so I didn't get to him until later in my life - and I'm reminded why he's considered (by me, anyway) as the most geographic of all novelists. Most novels esp with a giveaway title like this one would begin with the familiar opening trope - a stranger comes to town - with in this case the twist that he's not really a stranger, but no, Hardy won't do it that way - he begins with a long (and honestly almost impenetrable, though still kind of fascinating) chapter about the landscape - the moors, the heath, the heather - and how it's both expansive and confining, beautiful and frightening, because everything's pretty much the same hue and it's hard to gain any perspective. After a second chapter in which two stranger meet on the road and we think the plot is beginning to engage - TH steps back again and we get a long view of the landscape, the hills, the vales, the "barrow" (worth looking it up, as he'll use the word about a thousand times) on which people are beginning to gather for some kind of festival of celebration, most of the people carrying "faggots" (look that up, too) and talking about "furzes" - I know this sounds kind of ridiculously comic, and it is to a degree, but it's also the essence of what makes his novels so powerful and unusual, then and today - entree into a world that is foreign to most of us, certainly foreign to most literary fiction, and presented from the point of view of those within that world, so, although it at times can be difficult to access exactly what they (or Hardy) are thinking we see this world with absolutely no condescension, but we are right within the consciousness and way of life of the people of his imagined Wessex - we are, for the moment, transformed. Despite all the flaws and eccentricities of Hardy's style, that's a pretty great accomplishment and no doubt it's something we hope for (though rarely expect from) fiction.