Jeremy Piggin

Mayors of Casterbridge
Jeremy Piggin
(1984-1990)

 Jeremy Piggin 
(Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge, pt. 1) 

I asked Dr. Feight.* He said I could keep corresponding with Trudy Monae as long as I didn’t think I was truly getting letters from her. “I don’t,” I told him, how truthfully I’m not sure. But then, I am constitutionally unsure of the truth of anything not made of wood or metal.

Dear Trudy,

Are we done with The Return of the Native? I don’t have anything more to say about it, but that doesn’t mean that you don’t. At any rate, I’ve put it aside; and I’ve picked up my copy of The Mayor of Casterbridge. I guess I should have told you. But I’m not very far along, maybe 70 pages in. So far, Henchard’s massive ego and energy dominate the book: all the action is a result of him. In a sense, only he acts and everyone else reacts. No doubt he’ll be brought to heel—but by fate? Or by his own actions? I’m guessing the former.

     We are the bosses of our own stories, until, as we tell them, we realize we are more acted upon than acting. We are treading water under a burning sun; the salt stings our skin where fish have been nibbling; a man in a boat waves back when we call for help—he can’t hear us over his motor made in Toledo. Etc. We are more acted upon than acting, and our little act is mostly ignored. We think we are going to steal the scene; we do not.

So, Ted

 

Dear Ted,

Okay. (re Mayor of Casterbridge) But at some point, we’ll read Tess, right? That would have been my choice for next though I don’t know why, I don’t remember any of these very well, I find. I do remember the book begins with Henchard selling his wife. He may be the actor, but drink is acting on him.
     I was never much of a drinker though occasionally I tried to be, I would have liked to be—to let drink fuel passion then carry me away, an excuse for being uninhibited. Write me about “inhibitions.” The word must come from the Latin. You know Latin, you were going to be a Classics major. Find some examples in the classics then and in the church fathers and . . . Explain how we come about our inhibitions and why we want to set some of them aside, why we don’t like even the ones we cherish. Write me a book.

You have two days, Trudy

11.04.20

_______________
 * Here’s who he is. The Hardy stuff, in correspondence with Trudy Monae, begins here.
** “Just their saying it didn’t make it happen.” – Lucilius

“Mayors of Casterbridge” is a series of phone drawings by m ball.