Archive for May, 2022

Thomas Hardy: Character is Fate in ‘The Mayor of Casterbridge’

Posted in Fiction, Observation, Reading with tags , , , , , , , , on May 31, 2022 by Jarrod Boyle

‘Character is fate, said Novalis, and Farfrae’s character was just the reverse of Henchard’s, who might not be inaptly described as Faust has been described – as a vehement gloomy being who had quitted the ways of vulgar men without light to guide him on a better way.’

Thomas Hardy,

The Mayor of Casterbridge,

P. 131

While reading The Mayor of Casterbridge this morning, I saw something that I did not like: myself.

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Stolen Focus: Recovering the Sense of Flow

Posted in Observation, Pretensions toward cultural theory with tags , , , , , on May 1, 2022 by Jarrod Boyle

I’ve been reading a bit about the effect of the smart phone on the attention span, and I must confess, I recognise a number of Johann Hari’s observations in my own behaviour.

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