[Hardy-l] The grotesque in Hardy

[Charles.Anesi at wellsfargo.com]

So what is your definition, Jacky?  Sherwood Anderson's is something
like this, summarized by Robert Dunne:

"Although the narrator of the 'Book of the Grotesques' [Anderson]
self-consciously backs away from giving us a definition of the
grotesque, we can glean from his tentative rendering of the old man's
'elaborate theory' something akin to a diagnosis of a disease.  People
snatch up truths -- abstract concepts related to living in a social
context -- and become grotesques by trying to mold their lives rigidly
by them."
http://books.google.com/books?id=8lBHNojwPsIC&pg=PA45&lpg=PA45&dq=%22boo
k+of+the+grotesques%22+anderson+truths&source=web&ots=Fyfqn-QhJm&sig=TjF
9kC7Jx3f_dnBXDcwBzldh6Z4&hl=en#PPA45,M1

As I recall the old man says more succinctly that once a person grabs
something from a bag of truths and tries to live by it, the truth
becomes a falsehood and the person becomes a grotesque.  I have a copy
of Winesburg and can give Anderson's own words later.   


Chuck Anesi
charles.anesi at wellsfargo.com
office 480-575-3478
cell 612-940-3345
fax 480-575-3519
 
** These opinions are strictly my own and not necessarily those of Wells
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