YouSaid · the spoken record

Paula Byrne

lines on the record: 66
first: 2024-12-11
most recent: 2024-12-11
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“I think because she really understood celebrity, even before celebrity had been invented, she really understood how to market herself, how to fashion herself, how to reinvent herself, and how to support herself. And she was really, I think, a very, very interesting writer. She understood the importance of image really before many, many, many people did and used it to her advantage. So I think she is for many, many reasons so fascinating. And the poetry of the morning post, I mean, she was a prolific writer and poet. She didn't let her disability impede her. Just more than I think she just really, I was really frightened of her when I was writing about her.”
2024-12-11 · Conversations with Tyler · Paula Byrne on Thomas Hardy's Women, Jane Austen's Humor, and Evelyn Waugh's Warmth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Watching it today, it has the most fresh feel and voice. I would urge anybody who thinks they know Hardy to go back and read those early poems because they're really quite astonishing, but I do really like the minor works as well.”
2024-12-11 · Conversations with Tyler · Paula Byrne on Thomas Hardy's Women, Jane Austen's Humor, and Evelyn Waugh's Warmth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I really like the minor works, and I am going to confess, like everybody else, I'd only read before I undertook the biography. I read all the big ones. So obviously the first thing I did was set myself to read everything. And I did it in chronological order because I think that's really important. I always do that. I did that with Evelyn Moore. Just read everything because I think you can really see the growth. And I do think some of those minor novels are really, really fascinating and sort of not hardiesque, you know, two on a tower to say fascinating. It's so brilliant. The telegraph and all the sense of the new world and innovations. So I do, I really like the minor works. I find them interesting, but above all, I really love the poetry. And that I really, really fell in love with the early poetry written when he was sort of 25 because it's so modern. It was so shocking. When I read some of his early sonnets, I just thought this sounds like somebody is right.”
2024-12-11 · Conversations with Tyler · Paula Byrne on Thomas Hardy's Women, Jane Austen's Humor, and Evelyn Waugh's Warmth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think there's a divinity that rough hues our ends, shape them as you will, that sort of sense of, I'm thinking again of Tess here as well, of the idea that the gods are... Pev And they've got a plan, and they don't really care and that they're just going to move the pieces of chess on the board. And I think of King Leah as well on that and the Heath. So I think that sense of fatalism, that sense that almost is no free will. Like what could Tess do? There's nothing she could do because the gods have got a plan. And that sense of providence, that is really deeply Shakespearean. And Shakespeare's very dark period, I have to say.”
2024-12-11 · Conversations with Tyler · Paula Byrne on Thomas Hardy's Women, Jane Austen's Humor, and Evelyn Waugh's Warmth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is that, you know, once you get it, and you might have an affair. And then you've got what you want, and then suddenly all those small, horrible things that you haven't seen because it's all been so romantic. Like, oh, God, he doesn't brush his teeth before breakfast or those sort of tiny things and the illusion is broken. And then you'll just back in the same place. So I think for me, for Hardy, almost as soon as he married Florence, he was falling in love with somebody else. And that's just what he seems to do all throughout his life, that unattainable beauty because he's so susceptible to female beauty.”
2024-12-11 · Conversations with Tyler · Paula Byrne on Thomas Hardy's Women, Jane Austen's Humor, and Evelyn Waugh's Warmth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, I've never thought about it, but I think it's a really lovely point. And I think that it's a great plot technique as well. That's sort of shadowing in that mirroring. I think, I mean, he's a great, I love his plots. You know, I think it's really, it's just so hard to get a plot right. And he does that really, really well. So I think, again, but again, for me, for me writing the book, I was always conscious of this is a man that between those later novels wants to get out of his marriage. So he's always looking at the alternative relationship. Like, what would happen if this happens or what happens if that wife dies? So he's always got that refrain going through in those later novels, but not in the first ones when he's still so madly in love. But also with Hardy, he's always in love with the unattainable. Like that's the whole thing with him. That's why I think the well-beloved is so interesting because it's the pursuit of the well-beloved that you, once you get it, you don't want it. And I see that in Cobbles.”
2024-12-11 · Conversations with Tyler · Paula Byrne on Thomas Hardy's Women, Jane Austen's Humor, and Evelyn Waugh's Warmth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When somebody does die, you tend not to think of the bad things they've done. You tend just to remember the good things they've done. I've noticed this over and over again. People tend to just really linger on the positives. And there was so much remorse. And he just did remember that beautiful young Emma. So he did want to pay tribute to that. But you've just got to remember Tyler as well. He's a writer. Like he's going to use that for copy. And he knew those poems were good and it did unleash something so emotional in him. And he wanted to be a poet. He didn't want to be a novelist. And I think that's really important to remember. He did not want to be a novelist. He felt almost pushed into it. He wanted to be a poet. And I think then when he starts writing this amazing poetry, he knows this is good. And that's how he wanted to be remembered. And I think in that sense, he didn't really care that it hurt Florence.”
2024-12-11 · Conversations with Tyler · Paula Byrne on Thomas Hardy's Women, Jane Austen's Humor, and Evelyn Waugh's Warmth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't know. I mean, there was a cruel streak in him, I think. I think you have to be quite colded to do what he did to Florence because having sort of moaned and complained about Emma and pretty much moved Florence in, then to fall back in love with his wife is a little perverse. And of course it made Florence feel completely awful. And then she couldn't live with, it was like Theres Rakhan. She couldn't live with the dead ghost. But I do also think, this is when my sympathy swings for Hardy that.”
2024-12-11 · Conversations with Tyler · Paula Byrne on Thomas Hardy's Women, Jane Austen's Humor, and Evelyn Waugh's Warmth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The object of your desire for the second time around. But it's a question the second marriage question was so huge for Haji because he was so miserable. He was so miserable in his first marriage and he just couldn't see a way out. But he did also come from that background, that working class background where it's still really frowned upon to divorce or to leave your marriage. And it was so complicated with him because when she does die, he sort of fell back in love with her, which is so typical Hardy.”
2024-12-11 · Conversations with Tyler · Paula Byrne on Thomas Hardy's Women, Jane Austen's Humor, and Evelyn Waugh's Warmth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, that is a massive question. And, dude, I think so much of Hardy's life is poured into Jude. It was such a personal book for him. It would take a very, very long time to answer that question, but it was also around the time when he was writing Jude that his marriage had by then completely ended. There was no going back. And really interesting, it was the first book that Emma did not like didn't want anything to do with because there is this idea running through it is why can't you end a unsatisfactory marriage? Why can't you just live with somebody? Why can't you just divorce somebody? And this is a refrain. Like, what do you do if you can't afford divorce or it's still frowned upon? Well, you could sell you.”
2024-12-11 · Conversations with Tyler · Paula Byrne on Thomas Hardy's Women, Jane Austen's Humor, and Evelyn Waugh's Warmth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I can really see it. But I topped my son with me and he was like, this is a dump. This is horrible. There's no hardy here. So I think from the young guys, he was just like, this world has gone, this world has evaporated. It can never come back.”
2024-12-11 · Conversations with Tyler · Paula Byrne on Thomas Hardy's Women, Jane Austen's Humor, and Evelyn Waugh's Warmth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's a really good question Liverpool, I don't know, maybe Liverpool, you know, it's a port. And I think that's really important. The thing about a port, I'm in my hat now and I'm by the river and it really feels like Liverpool. I feel like I'm back in Liverpool. I think there's something about a port because it's always changing. People are coming and going, this musical influences. So you'd almost think that someone like Wessex, it would be easier to retain some of that. And yet I felt it looks very run down. I mean, I'm thinking really here with Dorchester, but obviously places like, you know, the seaside, Low Earth, the Cove and all these beautiful places are still incredibly gorgeous. And I think that's where you do really get a feel. And to some extent, Dorchester, you know, where the prison was and you look, I'm Winchester where Tess was hanged. I mean, there are places in England where I think you can get a feel for that. But I think if you live in the life of the imagination like I do.”
2024-12-11 · Conversations with Tyler · Paula Byrne on Thomas Hardy's Women, Jane Austen's Humor, and Evelyn Waugh's Warmth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's just a horrible place. So you don't really get much of the sense of the real rustic flavor, but the cottage is charming still”
2024-12-11 · Conversations with Tyler · Paula Byrne on Thomas Hardy's Women, Jane Austen's Humor, and Evelyn Waugh's Warmth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, I think it is quite homogenized. The house Max Gage, which is where I got the idea for writing the book, obviously retains that original sort of charm. It's very dark. And it's an ugly house. But it's still, I think the spirit is there. And I vividly remember two things. One was his study at the top of the house where he wrote Tess and just feeling just the power of that room. And then the other room that really inspired the book was Emma's Attic Room where she disappeared for sort of 15 years. So I think you get a little feel of that in the house and Max Gate. And certainly in the cottage, because that is so beautiful. I've made many pilgrimages to Harty's birthplace over the years. And that feels so unspoilt. But, I mean, Daughtester, for example, is grim. It's shot down.”
2024-12-11 · Conversations with Tyler · Paula Byrne on Thomas Hardy's Women, Jane Austen's Humor, and Evelyn Waugh's Warmth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Saw him? Yeah, I was just saying he was quite sort of causing about the sorts of novels that she wrote that don't have a beginning, middle, and an end. And she took it in good humor, but he was definitely sort of feeling that the world of the novel had changed beyond recognition, which it had, and that she was a pioneer of some of that. But he was still very sort of old-fashioned about a story must have that trajectory beginning, middle end. But I think they got on very well.”
2024-12-11 · Conversations with Tyler · Paula Byrne on Thomas Hardy's Women, Jane Austen's Humor, and Evelyn Waugh's Warmth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I loved what she said when she says his face looked like a round apple. Because I always think of him with apples, partly because they made cider at home when he was a young boy. And I think it's just such a brilliant description of that sort of little apple sort of slightly like an old withered apple, but still retaining some sort of juicy flesh. I think she did really like him. I think she liked him more than she expected to like him, which I think often happened with Hardy. People expected him to be really dour and pessimistic because obviously of the books. And then when they met him, they were quite charmed. He had a very soft and gentle voice. And it was quite bewitching. It was quite mesmerizing. And I think she was very moved, obviously, because of her father and her Leslie Stevens relationship with Hardy. So she was.”
2024-12-11 · Conversations with Tyler · Paula Byrne on Thomas Hardy's Women, Jane Austen's Humor, and Evelyn Waugh's Warmth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source