Two Kinds of Magnificence

 The maltster's lack of teeth appeared not to sensibly diminish his powers as a mill: he had been without them for so many years that toothlessness was felt less to be a defect than hard gums an acquisition.

--Far from the Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy

Well, I get that. The lack of teeth--or such as mine once were--is not so much a matter of regret than relief. Oh sure, there is bother of having to apply Polident several times a day, if you care to eat several times a day, but this seems more than a fair exchange for having to brush several times a day, or floss (thankfully not even an option with dentures), or submit to the dentist's drill or suffer through a root canal procedure. 

And speaking of root canals, I have during the past couple of months suffered through the literary version of the procedure known a The Brothers Karamazov. 

I know this is blasphemy, folks, for which many would see me roasted in eternal fire kindled by the thousand pages of this interminable novel. But there you have it. It is a boring, ceaselessly talky, endlessly tedious monstrosity--not so much novel as philosophical treatise. 

Freud called it The most magnificent novel ever written. Sounds like a blurb on a book cover. Oh wait, it is the blurb on the book cover. Well, you can have it, Siggy. 

I'm glad, or rather relieved to have finished it, so that I too can now say Ah, magnificent, but all in all, I'd rather have hard gums. 

So, I have moved on now to Far from the Madding Crowd. I'm about a hundred pages in and fully in love with this novel, astounded by the artfulness on every page, the careful juxtaposition of the character of nature and the nature of character, the odd cadence of the language that demands strict attention and often sends one backward in order to fully digest what one has just read. I can't believe I am discovering this novel for the first time, but I am aware at the same time that maybe I would not have been able to genuinely discover it before now. It is a book whose time has come. That's how I think of it anyway.