MSTed: Return of the Native, by Thomas Hardy, Chapter 1

[Jess Nevins]

(yes, I do have too much spare time on my hands)
(btw, if anyone wants to help with Chapter 2, I'd welcome assistance)

Mike, Tom and Crow file into the theatre.

Mike: Guys, Dr. Forrester said he had something special for us
today, and for us to meet him here in the theatre. Either of you
know anything about this?
Tom: Not me.
Crow: I was busy alphabetizing my collection of _The Picardian_.
The viewscreen flickers to life, and Dr. Forrester's smug face appears.
Dr. Forrester: All comfy, boys? Good. I've got a little something
extra-special for you all today. I hope you like it. Well, I'm off
to attach Frank's spare head to the body of a koala bear - I want
to see if I can market Frank - ciao!
The viewscreen turns itself off.
Tom: Uh-oh.

The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy

Crow bursts into loud sobbing.
Tom: Mike, why does God hate us?
Mike, shaking his fist at the ceiling: Damn you, Forrester, have you
no shame?

book one

THE THREE WOMEN

Mike: I >knew< the _Golden Girls_ scenario sounded familiar.
Tom: It's just like Aaron Spelling to rip off the English for his
inspirations.

1 - A Face on Which Time Makes but Little Impression

Tom: Lena Horne?

A Saturday afternoon in November was approaching the time of twilight,
and the vast tract of unenclosed wild known as Egdon Heath embrowned
itself moment by moment.

Crow: Y'know, after hearing that Python skit, I just can't take this
opening seriously.

Overhead the hollow stretch of whitish cloud shutting out the sky

Mike: Hardy lived near Berlin, New Hampshire?
Tom: He said "whitish," Mike, not "nausea yellow."
Mike: Oh.

was as a tent which had the whole heath for its floor.

Tom: Now, _there_ is a simile for you.

The heaven being spread with

Crow (commercial voice-over voice): Real lard. Try some, won't
you?

this pallid screen and the earth with the darkest vegetation, their
meeting-line at the horizon was clearly marked.

Mike: Harold, have you been at the sky with your purple crayon
again?

In such contrast the heath wore

Tom: Nothing at all, the *slut*.

the appearance of an instalment of night which had taken up its place
before its astronomical hour was come:

Crow: And what roast beast, its gastronomical hour come round at
last, slouches towards the men's room to be set free?

darkness had to a great extent arrived hereon, while day stood distinct
in
the sky.

Mike: And water had fallen, but dryness was still everywhere.
WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU SAYING?
Tom: Easy, Mike, easy...we've got a long way to go yet.

Looking upwards,

Tom: Would that be Bellamy's prequel or sequel?

a furze-cutter

Crow: He who cut it shut it!
Mike: He who policed it released it!
Tom: Guys, what's a "furze"?
Crow: It's something Richard Butler & Tim Butler used to be
involved with.

would have been inclined to continue work;

Mike: But he was union, and it was coffee-break time.

looking down,

Tom: He remembered his wife, pointing and laughing, and swore
vengeance!
Crow: Are you channeling Pat Buchanan again, Tom?

he would have decided to finish his faggot and go home.

Mike and Tom look at Crow.
Crow: What? What?
Tom: If anyone was gonna say something here, Crow, it was gonna
be you.

The distant rims of the world

Mike: Didn't the doctor say that the world should be wearing its
bifocals when it read?

and of the firmament seemed to be a division in time no less than a
division
in matter.

Tom: I think Hardy wrote this while, uh, visiting the same muse
that Coleridge did.
Mike (stoner voice): Yeah, he waked and baked every
morning....wooo!

The face of the heath

Crow: Which can be seen today by looking at Katherine Hepburn.

by its mere complexion

Mike: Yeah, the heath had it really hard in school. All the other
regions called it "pizza turf" and gave it double-jock-locks all
the time.

added half an hour to evening;

Tom: Typical English - they even screw up Daylight Savings Time.

it could in like manner retard the dawn,

Crow: Has the dawn been using the non-dairy creamer with
silico-aluminate again?

sadden noon,

Mike: What, did _Vurt_ not sell?

anticipate the frowning of storms scarcely generated,

Tom: Was English Hardy's first langauge?

and intensify the opacity of a moonless midnight to a cause of shaking
and
dread.

Crow: Was Hardy's ghost-writer on this book Stan Laurel?

In fact, precisely at this transitional point

Mike: While at an AA meeting that the heath achieved a moment of
clarity.

of its nightly roll

Tom: Only one spliff a night, mon, I-and-I got to work in the
morning!

into darkness the great and particular glory of the Egdon waste began,

Crow: Right near the dumpsters.

and nobody could be said to understand the heath who had not

Mike: Read its doctoral dissertation.

been there at such a time. It could best be felt when it could not
clearly be
seen,

Tom: I have no idea what that sentence means. Does it actually
mean anything?

its complete effect and explanation lying in this and the
succeeding hours before the next dawn;

Crow: We got it, Shakespeare, how about moving on? Characters?
Story? Dialogue, even?

then, and only then,

Mike: Hardy must have been paid by the word.

did it tell its true tale. The spot was, indeed, a near relation of
night,

Tom: More like a second cousin once removed.

and when night showed itself

Crow: The whole world thought of Milton Berle.

an apparent tendency to gravitate together could be perceived in

Mike: The way they hovered around the water cooler, telling tales
out of school.

its shades and the scene. The sombre stretch of rounds
and hollows seemed to rise and meet the evening gloom
in pure sympathy,

Tom: Hey, Hardy, when you see a plot, how about grabbing it?

the heath exhaling darkness

Crow: Smokers' breath - what're you gonna do?

as rapidly as the heavens precipitated it. And so the obscurity

Mike: Known as Bob Denver's career.

in the air and the obscurity in the land closed together
in a black fraternization towards which each advanced halfway.

Tom (Alistair Cooke voice): Not since the days of Stanley Crouch
has pomposity and obscurantism sold so well.

The place became full of a watchful intentness now;

Crow: Just had to be first in line for U2 tickets, eh?

for when other things sank blooding to sleep the heath

Mike: Got really grossed out.

appeared slowly to awake and listen. Every night its Titanic form
seemed
to await something;

Tom (sniffs aloud): Say, is that a foreshadowing I smell?

but it had waited thus, unmoved, during so many centuries,

Crow: Since before Doris Day was a virgin.

through the crises of so many things, that it could only
be imagined to await one last crisis--the final overthrow.

Mike (singing): It's the final countdown--
Gypsy (from off-stage left): Mike, what did we agree about singing
Europe songs while the movie's running?
Mike (hunches over - busted!): Uh.....
Gypsy pokes her head into the theater.
Mike: But I was reffing the Laibach cover!
Gypsy: Well, that's okay, then.
Gypsy leaves.
Mike: Whew.

It was a spot which

Tom: Reminded me of the backside of a dysentery-ridden mule.

returned upon the memory of those who loved it

Crow: Like a particularly vengeful case of athlete's foot.

with an aspect of peculiar and kindly congruity.

Mike: Kinda like Robert Mitchum's face.

Smiling champaigns of flowers and fruit hardly do this,

Tom: Which is why you have to add vodka, gin, and rum to your
drink.

for they are permanently harmonious only

Crow: With the help of a synthesizer and a really good producer.

with an existence of better reputation as to its issues

Mike: Then it couldn't have been a Kennedy.
Crow: Huh?
Tom: See, the older definition of "issue" is child, and...oh, forget
it.

than the present. Twilight combined with the scenery of Egdon Heath to

Tom: Produce a scene reminiscent of a close-up on Robert
Redford's face.

evolve a thing majestic without severity,

Crow: Quentin Crisp?

impressive without showiness,

Mike: The Stranglers?

emphatic in its admonitions, grand in its simplicity.

Tom: Oh - Alvin Ailey!

The qualifications which frequently invest the facade of a prison with
far
more dignity than is found in the facade of a palace

Crow: Um....
Tom: Were English prisons actually better in Hardy's time than in
ours?

double its size lent to this heath a sublimity in which spots renowned
for beauty of the accepted kind are utterly wanting.

Mike: So it looks like the Spice Girls?

Fair prospects wed happily with fair times; but alas, if times be not
fair!

Tom: Then they'll marry just about anyone.
Crow: Oh, you mean like Elizabeth Taylor?

Men have oftener suffered from

Crow (Paul Harvey voice): Prostate cancer than women, because
men have two prostates and women only have one. Page.....two!

the mockery of a place too smiling for their reason

Mike: In other words, don't mess with Mother Nature, or she'll
pull your pants down and taunt you.

than from the oppression of surroundings oversadly tinged.

Tom: Oh, I don't know; if I had to spend more than a week in Bed-Stuy
I'd suffer pretty badly.

Haggard Egdon appealed to a subtler and scarcer instinct,

Crow: The instinct which tells men not to watch _Home
Improvement_.

to a more recently learnt emotion,

Mike: Embarassment.
Tom: Which we call "maize."

than that which responds to the sort of beauty called charming and fair.

Tom: But please, don't squeez the charming.

Indeed, it is a question if

Crow: Thomas Hardy had any talent whatsoever.

the exclusive reign of this orthodox beauty is not approaching its last
quarter.

Mike: Sure, Queen Elizabeth is old, but her "last quarter?" Nah.

The new Vale of Tempe may be a gaunt waste in Thule;

Mike scratches his head.
Tom: Maybe it's an anagram?

human souls may find themselves in closer and closer harmony

Crow: As long as they don't sing like Brad Roberts.
Mike: Or Kenny Loggins.
Tom: Or Carl Lewis.

with external things wearing a sombreness distasteful to our race when
it
was young.

Mike: But now that we're old, sombreness seems an appropriate
response.
Tom: Especially when faced with things like Beanie Babies.
Crow: And Mr. Blobby.
Tom: And Bruce Willis' film career.
Crow And--
Mike: Enough, you two - don't use up all your material so quickly.

The time seems near, if it has not actually arrived, when

Tom: High school students everywhere will flock to England to lynch
Thomas Hardy.

the chastened sublimity of a moor,

Crow: Othello, post-strangling Desdemona?

a sea, or a mountain will be

Mike: The only places in Rio de Janeiro where you won't get
mugged?

all of nature that is absolutely in keeping with the moods of the more
thinking among mankind.

Tom: So what he's saying here is that in the future, nature will
reflect the moods of RATMM?
Crow: I hope not...how is nature going to mirror the
Mammophiles - make huge fluffy breast-shaped clouds?

And ultimately, to the commonest tourist, spots like Iceland may become
what the vineyards and myrtle gardens of South Europe

Crow (Scandahoovian voice): Oh, Myrtle, it was so nice of them to
grow some of you in Europe, doncha know.

are to him now; and Heidelberg and Baden be passed

Mike: Because who wants to talk to Germans? I mean, _duh_.

unheeded as he hastens from the Alps to the sand dunes of Scheveningen.

Tom (Shatner voice): And the....deserts of....Splinthrup Four...will
be....seen no more!

The most thoroughgoing ascetic could feel that he

Crow: Really wanted a beer.

had a natural right to wander on Egdon--

Mike: I must have missed that section in the Bill of Rights.
Tom: I think it's next to the right to make a fool of yourself in bars.
Mike: That's a natural, God-given right?
Tom: You mean it isn't?

he was keeping within the line of legitimate indulgence when he laid
himself

Tom: Is that legal?
Crow: I think they have another name for it. And that it's illegal in
Georgia.

open to influences such as these. Colours and beauties

Crow (hoarse voice): Reds and yellows, c'mon, kid, first one's free!

so far subdued were, at least, the birthright of all.

Mike: Is he saying that our birthmarks are beautiful colors?

Only in summer days of highest feather did its mood touch the level of
gaiety.

Tom: I wonder what this will be like once it's translated into
English?

Intensity was more usually reached by way of the solemn than by way of
the brilliant, and such a sort of intensity was often arrived at during
winter
darkness, tempests, and mists. Then Egdon was aroused

Crow: You know what they say: once you go heath, you never go
back.

to reciprocity; for the storm was its lover, and the wind its friend.

Mike: And the rain its drinking buddy, and the sunshine its softball
partner.

Then it became the home of strange phantoms;

Tom: Like Seinfeld's apartment?

and it was found to be the hitherto unrecognized original

Crow: "Hitherto unrecognized original?"
Mike: He's saying that the Stones were only doing a cover, that
Slim Harpo did the original but that nobody remembers that.
Crow: Oh.

of those wild regions of obscurity which are vaguely felt

Mike: By grad students in English departments everywhere.

to be compassing us about in midnight dreams of flight and disaster,

Tom: I.e., the Jay Leno show.

and are never thought of after the dream till revived by scenes like
this.

Crow: It's like those dreams you have in high school, where you're
naked and stuff.

It was at present a place perfectly accordant with man's nature--neither
ghastly, hateful, nor ugly;

Tom (Bugs Bunny voice): He don't know man vewy well, do he?

neither commonplace, unmeaning, nor tame;

Mike: Not at all like Adam Sandler.

but, like man, slighted and enduring; and withal singularly colossal
and mysterious in its swarthy monotony.

Tom: That describes Henry Kissinger quite well, I think.

As with some persons who have long lived apart,

Crow: They liked the trial separation so much they decided to make
it permanent.

solitude seemed to look out of its countenance. It had a lonely face,
suggesting tragical possibilities.

Mike: It looked like Bill Clinton?
Tom: "Lonely," Mike, not "puffy and corrupt."

This obscure, obsolete, superseded country

Crow: This jeweled zirconia crown, this England.

figures in Domesday. Its condition is recorded therein as that of
heathy,
furzy,

Tom: There's that word again.
Mike: Well, furzy doats and marzy doats....

briary wilderness--"Bruaria."

Crow (frat boy voice): Wooo!
Tom (frat boy voice): The Brew Area! Woo!

Then follows the length and breadth in leagues; and, though some
uncertainty exists
as to the exact extent of this ancient lineal measure,

Mike: Heisenberg was a genealogist?

it appears from the figures that the area of Egdon down to the present
day
has but little diminished.

Tom: Egdon Heath - and the Sierra Club is there!

"Turbaria Bruaria"--

Crow: When Hardy uses two words they mean what he wants them
to mean.
Tom: Does that mean Hardy's going to have a great fall, too?
Mike: Let's hope so.

the right of cutting heath-turf--occurs in charters relating to the
district.
"Overgrown with heth and mosse," says Leland of

Mike: The Florida Marlins' outfield.

the same dark sweep of country.

Here at least were intelligible facts regarding

Tom: Whitewater.
Crow: Ha. Not likely.

landscape--far-reaching proofs productive of genuine
satisfaction. The untameable, Ishmaelitish thing that Egdon now was
it always had been. Civilization was its enemy;

Crow: I know - it's the NRA!

and ever since the beginning of vegetation its soil had worn the same
antique brown dress,

Mike: Yeah, some women take spinsterhood real hard.

the natural and invariable garment of the particular formation. In its
venerable one coat lay a certain vein of satire

Tom: Coats have veins?
Crow (Hannibal Lecter): He's making a coat with t--
Mike: Careful, Crow, we're still PG-13.

on human vanity in clothes. A person on a heath in raiment of modern
cut
and colours has more or less an anomalous look.

Crow (hillbilly voice): We don't cotton to none o'yer fancy-lookin'
coats out here, stranger! Rags was good enough for our ancestors out
here
on the heath, and by gum it's good enough for us!

We seem to want the oldest and simplest human clothing where

Mike: Pictures of Gillian Anderson are concerned.

the clothing of the earth is so primitive.

Tom: No, no, darling, not primitive - retro!

To recline on a stump of thorn

Crow: Sounds really painful.

in the central valley of Egdon, between afternoon and night, as now,

Mike: Is a complete waste of time. Get a job!

where the eye could reach nothing of the world outside the summits
and shoulders of heathland which filled the whole
circumference of its glance, and to know that everything
around and underneath had been from prehistoric times as
unaltered as the stars overhead, gave ballast to the mind
adrift on change, and harassed by the irrepressible New.

Tom: You forgot the "t."

The great inviolate place had an ancient permanence which
the sea cannot claim. Who can say of a particular sea that it is old?

Crow: Me. I can.

Distilled by the sun, kneaded by the moon,

Mike: Given yeast by the asteroids and put into the oven to bake
and rise by the comets.

it is renewed in a year, in a day, or in an hour.

Tom: Or D), all of the above.

The sea changed, the fields changed, the rivers, the villages, and the
people
changed, yet Egdon remained.

Crow: So it's like Congress?

Those surfaces were neither so steep as to

Mike: Be vertical at all. They were horizontal surfaces.

be destructible by weather, nor so flat as to

Tom: Remind men of Kate Moss.
Crow: Zing!

be the victims of floods and deposits.

Crow: Waxy yellow deposits.
Tom: Oh, yuch.
Crow: Sorry - I was reading the DSM-IV yesterday....

With the exception of an aged highway,

Mike: Rte. 66?
Tom: Somehow I don't think Chuck Berry was singing about Egdon Heath.

and a still more aged barrow presently to be referred to--

Tom: As the "still more aged barrow."
Crow: Well, you know what they say - neither a lender nor a
barrow-er be. Ha!
Tom (to Mike): Hit him.

themselves almost crystallized to natural products by

Crow: This is making me long for the brevity of a Tom Wolfe.

long continuance--even the trifling irregularities were not caused by
pickaxe, plough, or spade,

Mike: Because the irregularities caused by David Spade are _not_
trifling.

but remained as the very finger-touches of the last geological change.

Tom: Hardy writes like John Grisham.
Crow: Ouch! Poom!

The above-mentioned highway

Mike: Which William Least-Heat Moon called "blue" - what a nut!

traversed the lower levels of the heath, from one horizon to another.
In
many portions of its course it overlaid an old vicinal way,

Tom: I got my vicinal way overlaid last weekend.
Crow: Yeah - how much did you pay the woman?
Tom: Why, you, I oughta.....

which branched from the great Western road of the Romans,

Crow: Coastal Route 1?

the Via Iceniana, or Ikenild Street,

Mike (Tina Turner voice) Because our street don't never do
anything nice. We do things *nasty*.

hard by. On the evening under consideration it would have been noticed
that,
though the gloom had increased sufficiently to confuse the minor
features of the heath, the white surface of the road remained almost as
clear
as ever.

Tom: C'mon, guys, time to go - we've got Chapter sign.
Crow: Thank god.
Mike: Is it too soon to get a lobotomy?

What do you think, sirs?

jess

[Jeffrey Johnson]

jess wrote:

<snip>

>What do you think, sirs?
>
>jess

So, like, there was a heath? My goodness, is the whole BOOK like that?
I'm glad I never read it. jess, you are a grade-A masochist.

JSJ1TG, I may be too faint of heart to read Chapter 2...

This Space For Rent [jsjo...@ucdavis.edu]

[Sheryl Gere]

Jess, you have just brought back long-repressed memories of 11th
grade English.

You'll be getting the therapist's bills soon...

Sheryl, it was TORCHA!
--
"The"Sheryl(MSTie#12802)
B5 fan, Filker and bookaholic

[Jess Nevins]

Jeffrey Johnson wrote:
>
> jess wrote:
>
> <snip>

>
> >What do you think, sirs?
> >
> >jess
>

> So, like, there was a heath? My goodness, is the whole BOOK like that?
> I'm glad I never read it. jess, you are a grade-A masochist.

I prefer to think of it as payback.

But you may be right. Beloved, would you loosen this strap here a
little?

> JSJ1TG, I may be too faint of heart to read Chapter 2...

It doesn't get any better, trust me.

jess

[Jess Nevins]

Sheryl Gere wrote:
>
> Jess, you have just brought back long-repressed memories of 11th
> grade English.
>
> You'll be getting the therapist's bills soon...

Think of it as exorcising a demon by mocking him, Sheryl. I get
out all of this long-stored up venom.

And, yes, Mr. Wallace, I'm mocking a dead man. So what?

Besides, Sheryl, I've driven enough women into therapy, I really
wouldn't want to do that to you, too.

jess

[Sheryl Gere]

In article <33819A...@ix.netcom.com>,

Jess Nevins <jjne...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>Sheryl Gere wrote:
>>
>> Jess, you have just brought back long-repressed memories of 11th
>> grade English.
>>
>> You'll be getting the therapist's bills soon...
>
>Think of it as exorcising a demon by mocking him, Sheryl. I get
>out all of this long-stored up venom.

So we're talking some serious venting here, huh?

Makes sense to me...

Of course, at the time we had to read this book, my class's
idea of venting was to send our English teacher a personal
from the lead character of the book, asking her to meet
him on the heath that night.

But then, I didn't know of MSTing...

Sheryl, so now I know

[ja...@concentric.removeme.net]

Jeffrey Johnson <ez04...@mailbox.ucdavis.edu> wrote:
: jess wrote:

: <snip>

: >What do you think, sirs?
: >
: >jess

: So, like, there was a heath? My goodness, is the whole BOOK like that?

: I'm glad I never read it. jess, you are a grade-A masochist.

So where do you hide to have your Heath? Ow! don't hit.

Jeffrey Johnson
ja...@concentric.removeme.net
But please *don't* share what you would do for a Klondike bar

[Sheryl Gere]

In article <3382FA...@ix.netcom.com>,

Jess Nevins <jjne...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>Sheryl Gere wrote:
>>
>> In article <33819A...@ix.netcom.com>,
>> Jess Nevins <jjne...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:

>> >Think of it as exorcising a demon by mocking him, Sheryl. I get
>> >out all of this long-stored up venom.
>>
>> So we're talking some serious venting here, huh?
>>
>> Makes sense to me...
>>
>> Of course, at the time we had to read this book, my class's
>> idea of venting was to send our English teacher a personal
>> from the lead character of the book, asking her to meet
>> him on the heath that night.
>

>Geez. We weren't that creative during high school.

Hmmm....I guess that that =was= creative for high school.

We =were= the honors class, after all...

>But then, I was too busy getting beaten up by my cro-magnon
>classmates, so maybe they were creative. I was just bruised.

So you went to Bedrock High?

Sheryl, my sympathies...my bruises were all on my psyche