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Studies in Classic American Literature
There is a half a sticker on the front cover a black mark on the bottom of the edge of the book
187 pages, Paperback
First published August 1, 1923
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About the author
D.H. Lawrence
2,084 books4,189 followersDavid Herbert Richards Lawrence was an English writer of the 20th century, whose prolific and diverse output included novels, short stories, poems, plays, essays, travel books, paintings, translations, literary criticism, and personal letters. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanizing effects of modernity and industrialisation. In them, Lawrence confronts issues relating to emotional health and vitality, spontaneity, human sexuality and instinct.
Lawrence's opinions earned him many enemies and he endured official persecution, censorship, and misrepresentation of his creative work throughout the second half of his life, much of which he spent in a voluntary exile he called his "savage pilgrimage." At the time of his death, his public reputation was that of a pornographer who had wasted his considerable talents. E. M. Forster, in an obituary notice, challenged this widely held view, describing him as "the greatest imaginative novelist of our generation." Later, the influential Cambridge critic F. R. Leavis championed both his artistic integrity and his moral seriousness, placing much of Lawrence's fiction within the canonical "great tradition" of the English novel. He is now generally valued as a visionary thinker and a significant representative of modernism in English literature.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D.H._Law...
Lawrence's opinions earned him many enemies and he endured official persecution, censorship, and misrepresentation of his creative work throughout the second half of his life, much of which he spent in a voluntary exile he called his "savage pilgrimage." At the time of his death, his public reputation was that of a pornographer who had wasted his considerable talents. E. M. Forster, in an obituary notice, challenged this widely held view, describing him as "the greatest imaginative novelist of our generation." Later, the influential Cambridge critic F. R. Leavis championed both his artistic integrity and his moral seriousness, placing much of Lawrence's fiction within the canonical "great tradition" of the English novel. He is now generally valued as a visionary thinker and a significant representative of modernism in English literature.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D.H._Law...
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September 11, 2023This book is in the dictionary under "quirky (adj.)." It's as much insight into D.H. Lawrence as it is into the American authors he critiques: Franklin, Poe, Hawthorne, Melville, and Whitman chief among them.
For the most part, D.H. is a fan of the Founding Fathers of American Lit. but not so much Americans themselves, whom he considers a violent lot (now where would THAT thought come from?). And the only author to truly get trashed is the Almanac Man, Ben Franklin. All that finger-wagging "be good" stuff is more than the Bad Boy of Brit Lit. can handle, apparently.
Women readers, unless they're major fans of Lawrence's, might bristle at his essay on The Scarlet Letter. Though he marvels over the novel and considers it Hawthorne's best, poor Hester Prynne becomes a punching bag of sorts, with parallels drawn to Eve and warnings of ways women can bring a man down (whether said woman intends to or not). There's also reference to hitting women, though I don't know enough of Lawrence to say if it's just words or some sinister echo from his own life. As far as bio goes, I know next to nothing about his life story.
Lawrence wrote some poetry, too, so some of it creeps into his quirky, subjective-as-hell criticism. Here from the chapter called "Herman Melville's 'Typee' and 'Omoo'":
"Never man instinctively hated human life, our human life, as we have it, more than Melville did. And never was a man so passionately filled with the sense of vastness and mystery of life which is non-human. He was mad to look over our horizons. Anywhere, anywhere out of our world. To get away. To get away, out!
To get away, out of our life. To cross a horizon into another life. No matter what life, so long as it is another life.
Away, away from humanity. To the sea. The naked salt, elemental sea. To go to sea, to escape humanity.
The human heart gets into a frenzy at last, in its desire to dehumanize itself.
So he finds himself in the middle of the Pacific. Truly over a horizon. In another world. In another epoch. Back, far back, in the days of palm trees and lizards and stone implements. The sunny Stone Age.
Samoa, Tahiti, Raratonga, Nukuheva: the very names are a sleep and a forgetting. The sleep-forgotten past magnificence of human history. 'Trailing clouds of glory.'
Melville hated the world: was born hating it. But he was looking for heaven. That is, choosingly. Choosingly, he was looking for paradise. Unchoosingly, he was mad with hatred of the world.
Well, the world is hateful. It is as hateful as Melville found it. He was not wrong in hating the world... But it's no good persisting in looking for paradise 'regained."
Notice all the repetition, quirky diction, rhyme (in one spot), and lovely phrases such as "the very names are a sleep and a forgetting." And you might think he's piling on Melville, but no. He speaks of these lesser books (Typee, Omoo) in high terms and, in the next chapter, calls Moby-Dick "...a great book, a very great book, the greatest book of the sea ever written."
It's as if he's psychoanalyzing authors and a nation as much as critiquing books. Who knows? Maybe he was a fan of Freud's.
For the most part, D.H. is a fan of the Founding Fathers of American Lit. but not so much Americans themselves, whom he considers a violent lot (now where would THAT thought come from?). And the only author to truly get trashed is the Almanac Man, Ben Franklin. All that finger-wagging "be good" stuff is more than the Bad Boy of Brit Lit. can handle, apparently.
Women readers, unless they're major fans of Lawrence's, might bristle at his essay on The Scarlet Letter. Though he marvels over the novel and considers it Hawthorne's best, poor Hester Prynne becomes a punching bag of sorts, with parallels drawn to Eve and warnings of ways women can bring a man down (whether said woman intends to or not). There's also reference to hitting women, though I don't know enough of Lawrence to say if it's just words or some sinister echo from his own life. As far as bio goes, I know next to nothing about his life story.
Lawrence wrote some poetry, too, so some of it creeps into his quirky, subjective-as-hell criticism. Here from the chapter called "Herman Melville's 'Typee' and 'Omoo'":
"Never man instinctively hated human life, our human life, as we have it, more than Melville did. And never was a man so passionately filled with the sense of vastness and mystery of life which is non-human. He was mad to look over our horizons. Anywhere, anywhere out of our world. To get away. To get away, out!
To get away, out of our life. To cross a horizon into another life. No matter what life, so long as it is another life.
Away, away from humanity. To the sea. The naked salt, elemental sea. To go to sea, to escape humanity.
The human heart gets into a frenzy at last, in its desire to dehumanize itself.
So he finds himself in the middle of the Pacific. Truly over a horizon. In another world. In another epoch. Back, far back, in the days of palm trees and lizards and stone implements. The sunny Stone Age.
Samoa, Tahiti, Raratonga, Nukuheva: the very names are a sleep and a forgetting. The sleep-forgotten past magnificence of human history. 'Trailing clouds of glory.'
Melville hated the world: was born hating it. But he was looking for heaven. That is, choosingly. Choosingly, he was looking for paradise. Unchoosingly, he was mad with hatred of the world.
Well, the world is hateful. It is as hateful as Melville found it. He was not wrong in hating the world... But it's no good persisting in looking for paradise 'regained."
Notice all the repetition, quirky diction, rhyme (in one spot), and lovely phrases such as "the very names are a sleep and a forgetting." And you might think he's piling on Melville, but no. He speaks of these lesser books (Typee, Omoo) in high terms and, in the next chapter, calls Moby-Dick "...a great book, a very great book, the greatest book of the sea ever written."
It's as if he's psychoanalyzing authors and a nation as much as critiquing books. Who knows? Maybe he was a fan of Freud's.
August 4, 2022
To judge this book is difficult. You have to ask yourself if Lawrence is being fair or unfair in his weird and wild strikes at some of the authors he covers: Benjamin Franklin, James Fenimore Cooper, Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, among others. I think he hits more than he misses. His mode is extremely unorthodox. It is more a philosophy of life than an academic study of texts. His biggest accusation for the authors he strikes at would be they are fakes. They are covering over the truths of the human heart with fake platitudes.
This quote from the Hawthorne chapter is justly famous:
That blue-eyed darling Nathaniel knew disagreeable things in his inner soul. He was careful to send them out in disguise. Always the same. The deliberate consciousness of Americans so fair and smooth-spoken, and the under-consciousness so devilish. Destroy! destroy! destroy! hums the under-consciousness. Love and produce! Love and produce! cackles the upper consciousness. And the world hears only the Love-and-produce cackle. Refuses to hear the hum of destruction underneath. Until such time as it will have to hear.
Lawrence hit the American reality with that one. The hum of destruction underneath. Still a perfect summing up all these 90+ years after his death. 4.25 stars.
This quote from the Hawthorne chapter is justly famous:
That blue-eyed darling Nathaniel knew disagreeable things in his inner soul. He was careful to send them out in disguise. Always the same. The deliberate consciousness of Americans so fair and smooth-spoken, and the under-consciousness so devilish. Destroy! destroy! destroy! hums the under-consciousness. Love and produce! Love and produce! cackles the upper consciousness. And the world hears only the Love-and-produce cackle. Refuses to hear the hum of destruction underneath. Until such time as it will have to hear.
Lawrence hit the American reality with that one. The hum of destruction underneath. Still a perfect summing up all these 90+ years after his death. 4.25 stars.
May 31, 2017
More about D.H. Lawrence than Classic American Literature. And more of an examination of his own personal spiritual precepts than the inner-workings of novels and stories by Poe, Hawthorne, Melville, etc. He dissects Whitman's "Leaves of Grass" not for its literary values, but for the ethical principles it embodies which can be practically applied to life.
That said, Lawrence was among the first major critics to take these works seriously and recognize their radical shift away from European literature. He perceptively identifies one of the key aspects of this early American fiction -- the dark story carefully hidden beneath the work's relatively conventional surface. And he celebrates their true extremity.
Too bad he didn't also tackle Twain's "Huckleberry Finn" and somehow missed Emily Dickinson, whose work is both a prime exemplar of his literary theory and complicates it to no end.
3.5 stars
That said, Lawrence was among the first major critics to take these works seriously and recognize their radical shift away from European literature. He perceptively identifies one of the key aspects of this early American fiction -- the dark story carefully hidden beneath the work's relatively conventional surface. And he celebrates their true extremity.
Too bad he didn't also tackle Twain's "Huckleberry Finn" and somehow missed Emily Dickinson, whose work is both a prime exemplar of his literary theory and complicates it to no end.
3.5 stars
April 23, 2019
Lawrence was always magnificent when he wrote fiction. However, he was more than magnificent when he wrote critical essays. In this collection, he theorises and summarises some of the best American Literature. A good and ideal critical book for anyone who wants to understand the classic American literature.
September 26, 2007
Reading Lawrence's critical views is like standing in the middle
of a cherished old building as a wrecking ball comes hurling
through. You sort of want to weep to see all those famous walls
being knocked away, but the noise is so consuming, and then
the clearing made is breath-taking, ravishing, life-affirming.
Just watch out for debris.
of a cherished old building as a wrecking ball comes hurling
through. You sort of want to weep to see all those famous walls
being knocked away, but the noise is so consuming, and then
the clearing made is breath-taking, ravishing, life-affirming.
Just watch out for debris.
March 27, 2015
Much of this book is more about Lawrence's views than about the authors and books he was discussing. I did not expect that, but am just as glad of it as if he had stuck to the Americans. Still, when he gets to it, he has good things to say about us.
In his chapter, Fenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking Novels, and referring to The Deerslayer, he writes:
In his chapter, Fenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking Novels, and referring to The Deerslayer, he writes:
It is a gem of a book. Or a bit of perfect paste. and myself, I like a bit of perfect paste in a perfect setting, so long as I am not fooled by pretence of reality. And the setting of Deerslayer could not be more exquisite. Lake Champlain again.As to Nathaniel Hawthorne, he concludes:
It is a marvellous allegory. It is to me one of the greatest allegories in all literature, The Scarlet Letter. Its marvellous under-meaning! And its perfect duplicity.Of Melville, and Moby-Dick; or, The Whale:
The absolute duplicity of that blue-eyed Wunderkind of Nathaniel. The American wonder-child, with his magical allegorical insight.
But he was a deep, great artist, even if he was rather a sententious man. He was a real American in that he always felt his audience in front of him. But when he ceases to be American, when he forgets all audience, and gives us his sheer apprehension of the world, then he is wonderful, his book commands a stillness in the soul, an awe.Lawrence made me see how much I miss when I read. I don't just skim the surface, but I don't look behind the obvious either. Perhaps the books I like least are those where the only good parts are not so obvious. I feel lucky to have stumbled across this, and it wasn't on my usual radar. Whether I see more (and understand more) of what I read remains to be seen. In any case, it can't hurt to know there is something behind the curtain should I choose to look.
October 30, 2009
A wonderfully strange book. Lawrence teeters on a fruitful bough hanging over the wall that divides brilliance from madness. I suppose one might call this a neopagan, and specifically Dionysian, critique of American bourgeois hopes and conventions. It veers occasionally into misogyny and racism -- while also attacking hidden forms of both in American culture -- and often descends into general abyss-gazing.
Taken as a whole, it argues for individuality and positive (spiritual) liberty, and against prosperity and negative liberty. Politically, it is unsettling because parts of it could be appropriated just as easily by ultramontanism, the New Left, anticolonialism, and fascism -- almost anyone opposed to liberalism, really -- but I'd say that Lawrence is actually antipolitical and antieconomic. He is urging an antipolitical and antieconomic understanding of national and personal identity.
Taken as a whole, it argues for individuality and positive (spiritual) liberty, and against prosperity and negative liberty. Politically, it is unsettling because parts of it could be appropriated just as easily by ultramontanism, the New Left, anticolonialism, and fascism -- almost anyone opposed to liberalism, really -- but I'd say that Lawrence is actually antipolitical and antieconomic. He is urging an antipolitical and antieconomic understanding of national and personal identity.
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June 22, 2011Source of the oft-quoted the essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer.
The essence of American literature, according to Lawrence, is the conflict between puritan ideals and violent impulse. The old clash. The best American writers are often the most torn. A giddy annihilating violence lurks beneath The Scarlet Letter. Cooper was frequently foolish, yet his books contain passages that genuinely move Lawrence. Poe, despite his many faults, his overwrought style, was "an adventurer into vaults and cellars and horrible underground passages of the human soul." Melville was a "tiresome" man but a great artist (Lawrence's two pieces on Melville are justifiably classic, and among the first serious reevaluations of Melville's books).
Franklin is a bore, according to D. H. Hard to disagree. Any man who could come up with a bit of wisdom as loathsome as "Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today" is a bore, and worse. But Lawrence wasn't opposed to work (consider the incredible amount he penned during his short life), and one of the best sections of the book relates to the modern aversion to work:
The cultured, highly-conscious person of today loathes any form of physical, 'menial' work: such as washing dishes or sweeping a floor or chopping wood. This menial work is an insult to the spirit. 'When I see men carrying heavy loads, doing brutal work, it always makes me want to cry,' said a beautiful, cultured woman to me.
'When you say that, it makes me want to beat you,' said I, in reply. 'When I see you with your beautiful head pondering heavy thoughts, I just want to hit you. It outrages me.'
Many people would not find the above funny. Many people probably deserve a good beating. Speaking of which, reacting to Richard Dana's horror at the sight of a man being flogged in Two Years Before the Mast:
In my opinion there are worse insults than floggings. I would rather be flogged than have most people ‘like’ me.
Many such comments are sure to have a few folk heading for the aisles. Gasping, appalled. Lawrence could be a really nasty, hateful chap. This is one of the primary sources of his appeal. Lawrence would view our current age with the proper horror. Not too many accumulated unseen electronic "friends" for sourpuss. Not one for the modern age, old D. H., not even back in 1923:
The more we intervene machinery between us and the naked forces the more we numb and atrophy our own senses. Every time we turn on a tap to have water, every time we turn a handle to have a fire or light, we deny ourselves and annul our being.
The last chapters, on Melville and Whitman, are the finest. These are also the chapters that are most likely bring the earnest guardians of sensitive ears to trot out the old cries of "racism" and "sexism." One can glean what Lawrence makes of such folk without terribly much effort.
But Melville stuck to his ideal. He wrote Pierre to show that the more you try to be good the more you make a mess of things: that following righteousness is just disastrous. The better you are, the worse things turn out with you. The better you try to be, the bigger mess you make. Your very striving after righteousness only causes your own slow degeneration.
Well, it is true. No men are so evil today as the idealists, and no women half so evil as your earnest woman, who feels herself a power for good. It is inevitable.
And the Whitman chapter, by Jove! Lawrence's typical odd duck way of doing things. Start by writing about your favorite poet by heaping scorn on him ("portentousness," "post-mortem effects," "false exuberance" and the like). The entire first part of the essay would lead you to believe that Lawrence positively loathes the "good grey poet." Then how it shades to admiration, to end in adoration. Among the terrific, nutty "studies" in the book, this is certainly the nuttiest and, finally, the most moving.
This is Whitman's message of American democracy.
The true democracy, where soul meets soul, in the open road. Democracy. American democracy where all journey down the open road, and where a soul is known at once in its going. Not by its clothes or appearance. Whitman did away with that. Not by its family name. Not even by its reputation. Whitman and Melville both discounted that. Not by a progression of piety, or by works of Charity. Not by works at all. Not by anything, but just itself. The soul passing unenhanced, passing on foot and being no more than itself. And recognized, and passed by or greeted according to the soul's dictate. If it be a great soul, it will be worshipped in the road.
The love of man and woman: a recognition of souls, and a communion of worship. The love of comrades: a recognition of souls, and a communion of worship. Democracy: a recognition of souls, all down the open road, and a great soul seen in its greatness, as it travels on foot among the rest, down the common way of the living. A glad recognition of souls, and a gladder worship of great and greater souls, because they are the only riches.
Love, and Merging, brought Whitman to the Edge of Death! Death! Death!
But the exultance of his message still remains. Purified of MERGING, purified of MYSELF, the exultant message of American Democracy, of souls in the Open Road, full of glad recognition, full of fierce readiness, full of the joy of worship, when one soul sees a greater soul
The only riches, the great souls.
It is among the very best writing by a writer about other writers. This, and Nabokov on Gogol and Henry Miller on Rimbaud - each of which says more about the writer than their subject. Lawrence's book is still able to elicit raised eyebrows and more, I'm sure. One doesn't have to agree with Lawrence all the time, but can still admire the way he refuses to pull his punches. A classic about classics.
The essence of American literature, according to Lawrence, is the conflict between puritan ideals and violent impulse. The old clash. The best American writers are often the most torn. A giddy annihilating violence lurks beneath The Scarlet Letter. Cooper was frequently foolish, yet his books contain passages that genuinely move Lawrence. Poe, despite his many faults, his overwrought style, was "an adventurer into vaults and cellars and horrible underground passages of the human soul." Melville was a "tiresome" man but a great artist (Lawrence's two pieces on Melville are justifiably classic, and among the first serious reevaluations of Melville's books).
Franklin is a bore, according to D. H. Hard to disagree. Any man who could come up with a bit of wisdom as loathsome as "Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today" is a bore, and worse. But Lawrence wasn't opposed to work (consider the incredible amount he penned during his short life), and one of the best sections of the book relates to the modern aversion to work:
The cultured, highly-conscious person of today loathes any form of physical, 'menial' work: such as washing dishes or sweeping a floor or chopping wood. This menial work is an insult to the spirit. 'When I see men carrying heavy loads, doing brutal work, it always makes me want to cry,' said a beautiful, cultured woman to me.
'When you say that, it makes me want to beat you,' said I, in reply. 'When I see you with your beautiful head pondering heavy thoughts, I just want to hit you. It outrages me.'
Many people would not find the above funny. Many people probably deserve a good beating. Speaking of which, reacting to Richard Dana's horror at the sight of a man being flogged in Two Years Before the Mast:
In my opinion there are worse insults than floggings. I would rather be flogged than have most people ‘like’ me.
Many such comments are sure to have a few folk heading for the aisles. Gasping, appalled. Lawrence could be a really nasty, hateful chap. This is one of the primary sources of his appeal. Lawrence would view our current age with the proper horror. Not too many accumulated unseen electronic "friends" for sourpuss. Not one for the modern age, old D. H., not even back in 1923:
The more we intervene machinery between us and the naked forces the more we numb and atrophy our own senses. Every time we turn on a tap to have water, every time we turn a handle to have a fire or light, we deny ourselves and annul our being.
The last chapters, on Melville and Whitman, are the finest. These are also the chapters that are most likely bring the earnest guardians of sensitive ears to trot out the old cries of "racism" and "sexism." One can glean what Lawrence makes of such folk without terribly much effort.
But Melville stuck to his ideal. He wrote Pierre to show that the more you try to be good the more you make a mess of things: that following righteousness is just disastrous. The better you are, the worse things turn out with you. The better you try to be, the bigger mess you make. Your very striving after righteousness only causes your own slow degeneration.
Well, it is true. No men are so evil today as the idealists, and no women half so evil as your earnest woman, who feels herself a power for good. It is inevitable.
And the Whitman chapter, by Jove! Lawrence's typical odd duck way of doing things. Start by writing about your favorite poet by heaping scorn on him ("portentousness," "post-mortem effects," "false exuberance" and the like). The entire first part of the essay would lead you to believe that Lawrence positively loathes the "good grey poet." Then how it shades to admiration, to end in adoration. Among the terrific, nutty "studies" in the book, this is certainly the nuttiest and, finally, the most moving.
This is Whitman's message of American democracy.
The true democracy, where soul meets soul, in the open road. Democracy. American democracy where all journey down the open road, and where a soul is known at once in its going. Not by its clothes or appearance. Whitman did away with that. Not by its family name. Not even by its reputation. Whitman and Melville both discounted that. Not by a progression of piety, or by works of Charity. Not by works at all. Not by anything, but just itself. The soul passing unenhanced, passing on foot and being no more than itself. And recognized, and passed by or greeted according to the soul's dictate. If it be a great soul, it will be worshipped in the road.
The love of man and woman: a recognition of souls, and a communion of worship. The love of comrades: a recognition of souls, and a communion of worship. Democracy: a recognition of souls, all down the open road, and a great soul seen in its greatness, as it travels on foot among the rest, down the common way of the living. A glad recognition of souls, and a gladder worship of great and greater souls, because they are the only riches.
Love, and Merging, brought Whitman to the Edge of Death! Death! Death!
But the exultance of his message still remains. Purified of MERGING, purified of MYSELF, the exultant message of American Democracy, of souls in the Open Road, full of glad recognition, full of fierce readiness, full of the joy of worship, when one soul sees a greater soul
The only riches, the great souls.
It is among the very best writing by a writer about other writers. This, and Nabokov on Gogol and Henry Miller on Rimbaud - each of which says more about the writer than their subject. Lawrence's book is still able to elicit raised eyebrows and more, I'm sure. One doesn't have to agree with Lawrence all the time, but can still admire the way he refuses to pull his punches. A classic about classics.
Read
September 21, 2021If critics ever decide to start writing about books like Lawrence does, we'll be stocking books of criticism up by the Chiclets and soap opera mags in grocery store check-out lines. (This is a compliment.)
August 23, 2024
The M-W Encyclopedia of Literature describes this as "brilliant, if idiosyncratic," and that is obviously correct, to which I would add: consistently surprising, piquant, and pugnacious; no observation is merely asserted that can instead be wrestled, turned inside-out, and self-interrogated into unforeseen shapes by Lawrence's restive brain. Not for nothing is conflict, and specifically that between what he calls mind- and blood-consciousness in America's citizen-authors, his main subject (he elsewhere calls it a war of Knowing vs. Being, and a hundred other things). His writing represents his own achieved accord between these states while leaving the living struggle in full view. Tough, durable work, and obviously essential, and I probably underrate it at "only" 4.5 stars. Read it, even if you don't read criticism, because Lawrence's wild style and irreverent humor anticipate so much of our blogging and "confessional" art-writing culture, he and Wilde being perhaps close kin in this one respect. Will try to write more later, time permitting, because there is no shortage of excerpt-able material worth sharing with the wider audience this book deserves (perhaps a silly comment given this author’s notoriety—nevertheless!).
August 27, 2023
Studies in Classic American Literature
By D.H.Lawrence (1885 – 1930)
D.H. Lawrence. Lawrence was a prolific English writer with a somewhat sulfuric reputation for pornographic and other scandalous issues.
This work, published in 1923 is an extended literature criticism. Beyond the reviewed books Lawrence exposes his wide range of opinions and philosophy.
Quote: “The proper function of a critic is to save the tale from the artist who created it”.
The chapters include Benjamin Franklin, Hector St. John de Crevecoeur, James Fenimore Cooper, Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Richard Henry Dana, Hermann Melville, and Walt Whitman.
Lawrence called all writers and poets liars. It is clear from this work that he is one of the greatest liars himself.
One after the other the authors reviewed, he covers with sarcasm, insults, and ridicule.
-Starting with Franklin (1706- 1735): “I do not like him. The perfectibility of man! The perfectibility of the Ford car! Which man? I am many men. Which are you going to perfect? I am not a mechanical contrivance.”
Lawrence dislikes Franklin's thirteen divine laws of the perfect American citizen: Temperance, Silence, Order, Resolution, Frugality, Industry, Sincerity, Justice, Moderation, Cleanliness, Tranquility, Chastity, and Humility.
“And henceforth be masterless!”
-Hector St. John Crèvecoeur, with his “Letters from an American Farmer” had immediate success with editions in America, England and later in France.
Lawrence mocked him for his stories of nature, hummingbirds, giant wasps, fighting snakes and of course native Indians, living by nature’s law.
He called him a swindler, and liar repeatedly over pages.
-Fenimore Cooper’s novels fall into two classes: his white novels, such as “Homeward Bound”, “The Spy”, The Pilot” and then the Leatherstocking series.
Lawrence makes use of the white novels to make a brilliant exposé about American Democracy.
Except before God he says, men are not naturally equal. Class, education, and money won’t make a man superior. But if he’s just born superior, in himself, why deny it?
The Leatherstocking novels are another issue.
Lawrence calls them novels of wish-fulfilment, lovely half-lies. Again, the author uses his review as another base for imposing his critical view of American democracy. It is rotten before being ripe.
He admits he loved reading Cooper’s romantic adventurous novels at a young age with great pleasure. But he cannot abstain from ridiculing Cooper for his childish and unrealistic description of Noble White and Red Brother relations in every subsequent new novel.
He admits to being jealous of Cooper's success as a writer.
-Edgar Allan Poe:
In the work of Poe, Lawrence falls out of line with his usual way of criticism. He follows Poe in the philosophy of love between men and women. Extreme over the edge until death puts an end to it. It’s part of Poe’s real life, expressed in his novel “Ligeia”.
‘Doom’ is the word Lawrence uses the most in this review. He calls Poe a scientist more than a writer. Poe's fate was to share his disintegration with his readers. He was an adventurer into vaults and cellars and horrible underground passages of the human soul. He sounded the horror and the warning of his own doom. Doomed he was. He died wanting more love, and love killed him. A ghastly disease, love. Poe telling us of his disease: trying to even make his disease fair and attractive. Even succeeding.
Lawrence: “Which is the inevitable falseness, duplicity of art, American art in particular”.
-Now to Nathaniel Hawthorne:
“The Scarlet Letter”: I read this book a few years ago and wrote a review as I saw it. (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...)
Lawrence’s review of this work is the exact opposite. His way of interpretation is an insult to the female of the human species. He turns the story upside down, accusing the woman expecting a baby of having sort of seduced and raped the young and ‘innocent’ clergy who was to be the father of the child. She never betrayed the name of the man and kept her secret to herself. She was sent to jail and then paraded a full day on a scaffold in the marketplace for her shame to be made public.
In none other of Lawrence's critics in this book have I seen him as the worst author of intentional lies.
-Dana Jr.: “Two Years before the Mast”.
A story of adventures at sea at a time of tall sailing ships and rough working traditions on board.
Lawrence’s critical view is limited to a condensation of the story. There is no American environment and no female conflict. The work seems to be to the author's liking, and I have nothing to add, except that I have ordered a copy of ‘Two Years before the Mast’ and will read it shortly.
-Herrman Melville: “Moby Dick” and “Typee & Omoo” are both works situated in the South Pacific.
For the review of these works, Lawrence does not provide so much of the stories themselves but his own perception of the Stone Age development of the population and the idea of the good savage as imagined by J.J. Rousseau.
“But it is a great book, a very great book, the greatest book of the sea ever written. It moves awe in the soul.”
“The terrible fatality. Fatality. Doom. Doom. We are doomed. And the Doom is in America. The doom of our white day.”
Melville knew. He knew his race was doomed. His white soul is doomed. His great white epoch doomed. Himself, doomed.”
Lawrence’s obsession is exposed again.
-Whitman:
Lawrence summarises his conclusion right from the beginning:
“The good grey poet, was he a ghost with all his physicality? The good grey poet. Post-mortem effects. Ghosts.”
“DEMOCRACY? THESE STATES! IDOLONS! LOVERS! ENDLESS LOVERS! ONE IDENTITY! I AM HE WHO ACHES WITH AMOROUS LOVE!”
“Do you believe me when I say post-mortem effects? Love and merging brought Whitman to the Edge of Death, Death, Death!”
“The exulting message of American Democracy is souls on the Open road. The only riches, the great souls.”
Lawrence’s obsession!
Why I recommend reading this book, it is a reminder of much Classic American literature to re-red or discover.
By D.H.Lawrence (1885 – 1930)
D.H. Lawrence. Lawrence was a prolific English writer with a somewhat sulfuric reputation for pornographic and other scandalous issues.
This work, published in 1923 is an extended literature criticism. Beyond the reviewed books Lawrence exposes his wide range of opinions and philosophy.
Quote: “The proper function of a critic is to save the tale from the artist who created it”.
The chapters include Benjamin Franklin, Hector St. John de Crevecoeur, James Fenimore Cooper, Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Richard Henry Dana, Hermann Melville, and Walt Whitman.
Lawrence called all writers and poets liars. It is clear from this work that he is one of the greatest liars himself.
One after the other the authors reviewed, he covers with sarcasm, insults, and ridicule.
-Starting with Franklin (1706- 1735): “I do not like him. The perfectibility of man! The perfectibility of the Ford car! Which man? I am many men. Which are you going to perfect? I am not a mechanical contrivance.”
Lawrence dislikes Franklin's thirteen divine laws of the perfect American citizen: Temperance, Silence, Order, Resolution, Frugality, Industry, Sincerity, Justice, Moderation, Cleanliness, Tranquility, Chastity, and Humility.
“And henceforth be masterless!”
-Hector St. John Crèvecoeur, with his “Letters from an American Farmer” had immediate success with editions in America, England and later in France.
Lawrence mocked him for his stories of nature, hummingbirds, giant wasps, fighting snakes and of course native Indians, living by nature’s law.
He called him a swindler, and liar repeatedly over pages.
-Fenimore Cooper’s novels fall into two classes: his white novels, such as “Homeward Bound”, “The Spy”, The Pilot” and then the Leatherstocking series.
Lawrence makes use of the white novels to make a brilliant exposé about American Democracy.
Except before God he says, men are not naturally equal. Class, education, and money won’t make a man superior. But if he’s just born superior, in himself, why deny it?
The Leatherstocking novels are another issue.
Lawrence calls them novels of wish-fulfilment, lovely half-lies. Again, the author uses his review as another base for imposing his critical view of American democracy. It is rotten before being ripe.
He admits he loved reading Cooper’s romantic adventurous novels at a young age with great pleasure. But he cannot abstain from ridiculing Cooper for his childish and unrealistic description of Noble White and Red Brother relations in every subsequent new novel.
He admits to being jealous of Cooper's success as a writer.
-Edgar Allan Poe:
In the work of Poe, Lawrence falls out of line with his usual way of criticism. He follows Poe in the philosophy of love between men and women. Extreme over the edge until death puts an end to it. It’s part of Poe’s real life, expressed in his novel “Ligeia”.
‘Doom’ is the word Lawrence uses the most in this review. He calls Poe a scientist more than a writer. Poe's fate was to share his disintegration with his readers. He was an adventurer into vaults and cellars and horrible underground passages of the human soul. He sounded the horror and the warning of his own doom. Doomed he was. He died wanting more love, and love killed him. A ghastly disease, love. Poe telling us of his disease: trying to even make his disease fair and attractive. Even succeeding.
Lawrence: “Which is the inevitable falseness, duplicity of art, American art in particular”.
-Now to Nathaniel Hawthorne:
“The Scarlet Letter”: I read this book a few years ago and wrote a review as I saw it. (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...)
Lawrence’s review of this work is the exact opposite. His way of interpretation is an insult to the female of the human species. He turns the story upside down, accusing the woman expecting a baby of having sort of seduced and raped the young and ‘innocent’ clergy who was to be the father of the child. She never betrayed the name of the man and kept her secret to herself. She was sent to jail and then paraded a full day on a scaffold in the marketplace for her shame to be made public.
In none other of Lawrence's critics in this book have I seen him as the worst author of intentional lies.
-Dana Jr.: “Two Years before the Mast”.
A story of adventures at sea at a time of tall sailing ships and rough working traditions on board.
Lawrence’s critical view is limited to a condensation of the story. There is no American environment and no female conflict. The work seems to be to the author's liking, and I have nothing to add, except that I have ordered a copy of ‘Two Years before the Mast’ and will read it shortly.
-Herrman Melville: “Moby Dick” and “Typee & Omoo” are both works situated in the South Pacific.
For the review of these works, Lawrence does not provide so much of the stories themselves but his own perception of the Stone Age development of the population and the idea of the good savage as imagined by J.J. Rousseau.
“But it is a great book, a very great book, the greatest book of the sea ever written. It moves awe in the soul.”
“The terrible fatality. Fatality. Doom. Doom. We are doomed. And the Doom is in America. The doom of our white day.”
Melville knew. He knew his race was doomed. His white soul is doomed. His great white epoch doomed. Himself, doomed.”
Lawrence’s obsession is exposed again.
-Whitman:
Lawrence summarises his conclusion right from the beginning:
“The good grey poet, was he a ghost with all his physicality? The good grey poet. Post-mortem effects. Ghosts.”
“DEMOCRACY? THESE STATES! IDOLONS! LOVERS! ENDLESS LOVERS! ONE IDENTITY! I AM HE WHO ACHES WITH AMOROUS LOVE!”
“Do you believe me when I say post-mortem effects? Love and merging brought Whitman to the Edge of Death, Death, Death!”
“The exulting message of American Democracy is souls on the Open road. The only riches, the great souls.”
Lawrence’s obsession!
Why I recommend reading this book, it is a reminder of much Classic American literature to re-red or discover.
June 28, 2023
Funny, intelligent, and perceptive. Occasionally profound. Occasionally wise. Sometimes insane. Often cocky and boastful. Or shallow and half-baked, even reprehensible. And yet always grand fun: swift, swaggering, and provocative.
July 6, 2015
D.H. Lawrence is much funnier than I thought! This "game changer" of literary criticism purports to, as Lawrence puts it, "save the tale from the artists who created it." I can see where Lawrence attempts this, sort of, but in essence these essays are much more like studies of the authors than the works themselves. For anyone approaching literary theory and criticism post-Roland Barthes (who so famously declared "the death of the author") this collection might be a bit unsettling. Lawrence addresses such figures as Benjamin Franklin, James Fenimore Cooper, E.A. Poe, Herman Melville and others directly, offering theories, opinions, and suggestions about the-artist-as-person rather than simply tackling their work as a lone entity. Those of us who have been taught to separate the author from the work, to critique the work and not the person, might take issue with some of what Lawrence does here, particularly as he is, for the most part, highly critical of almost all of these "pillars" of the American literary tradition (with the exception of perhaps Melville and Whitman, whom Lawrence seems to appreciate). Still, lovers of philosophy and history, especially literary history, will find much of interest in this collection. It's easy to read, it reveals much about Lawrence himself--more than what he reveals about any of his chosen subjects, in fact. The moments when Lawrence does engage with the texts, providing excerpts and his own introductions/reactions, are indeed quite interesting, but it is his conversation with the writers that makes up most of this piece and which provides the most intrigue.
October 21, 2019
Free download available at Project Gutenberg
I made the proofing of this book for Free Literature and it will be published by Project Gutenberg.
CONTENTS
Foreword
I. The Spirit op Place
II. Benjamin Franklin
III. Hector St. John ds Crèvecoeur
IV. Fenimore Cooper’s White Novels
V. Fenimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking Novels
VI. Edgar Allan Poe
VII. Nathaniel Hawthorne and "The Scarlet Letter"
VIII. Hawthorne’s "Blithedale Romance"
IX. Dana’s "Two Years Before the Mast"
X. Herman Melville’s "Typee" and "Omoo"
XI. Herman Melville’s "Moby Dick"
XII. Whitman
I made the proofing of this book for Free Literature and it will be published by Project Gutenberg.
CONTENTS
Foreword
I. The Spirit op Place
II. Benjamin Franklin
III. Hector St. John ds Crèvecoeur
IV. Fenimore Cooper’s White Novels
V. Fenimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking Novels
VI. Edgar Allan Poe
VII. Nathaniel Hawthorne and "The Scarlet Letter"
VIII. Hawthorne’s "Blithedale Romance"
IX. Dana’s "Two Years Before the Mast"
X. Herman Melville’s "Typee" and "Omoo"
XI. Herman Melville’s "Moby Dick"
XII. Whitman
May 22, 2011
In spots an entertaining read, but seriously marred by racism (and sexism), particularly in the chapter on Whitman. Mostly useful as a historical document.
May 1, 2018
Lawrence is fiercely iconoclastic, uprooting American platitudes and hypocrisies to plant his own visions of psycho-sexual blood struggles.
September 2, 2022
probably shouldn’t be used to teach ENGL 1001 but if you want a particularly acidic reading on why american writers are the way that they are then you can’t get much better than this (if you want something in the same vain that’s a little more academically rigorous then check out Bercovitch’s American Jeremiad). Lawrence probably has one of my favourite readings of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s works, and imo the only one with any real value.
September 15, 2022
Lawrence knows the literature, but the central thrust of the book rests on an idea of racial consciousness as an essential element of human beings, which undermines most of the points he makes. A lot of racist & misogynistic nonsense, not just sprinkled in but foundational to many of his arguments, leaves the book mostly interesting from a historical perspective; I feel bad for the good ideas and philosophical insights he occasionally comes across, as they deserve better proponents. What insights there are should be looked for elsewhere, unless you get a lot of joy sorting a handful of wheat from a valley full of chaff.
January 30, 2010
In a survey of American Romantic writers course I took as a freshman undergraduate, my professor used to speak with great fondness and amusement about this little book. He was quite learned and had a delightful ability to put a work of literature in its social and intellectual context. It was not an assigned book, though it should have been. When I eventually obtained a copy several years later, I was astonished by what I read.
In a style that is outrageously irreverent, insightful, and altogether provocative, Lawrence expounds on those qualities that make American Romantic writers unique. Here is a representative piece:
"Art-speech is the only truth. An artist is usually a damned liar, but his art, if it be art, will tell you the truth of his day. And that is all that matters. Away with eternal truth. Truth lives from day to day, and the marvellous Plato of yesterday is chiefly bosh today.
The old American artists were hopeless liars. But they were artists, in spite of themselves. Which is more than you can say of most living practitioners.
And you can please yourself, when you read the Scarlet Letter, whether you accept what that sugary, blue-eyed little darling of a Hawthorne has to say for himself, false as all his darlings are, or whether you read the impeccable truth of his art-speech."
Here's more:
"Let us look at the American artist first. How did he ever get to America, to start with? Why isn't he a European still, like his father before him?
Now listen to me, don't listen to him. He'll tell you the lie you expect. Which is partly your fault for expecting it.
He didn't come in search of freedom of worship. England had more freedom of worship in the year 1700 than America had. Won by Englishmen who wanted freedom, and so stopped at home and fought for it. And got it. Freedom of worship? Read the history of New England during the first century of its existence.
Freedom anyhow? The land of the free! This the land of the free! Why if I say anything that displeases them, the free mob will lynch me, and that's my freedom. Free? Why, I have never been in any country where the individual has such an abject fear of his fellow countrymen. Because, as I say, they are free to lynch the moment he shows he is not one of them."
Often it takes a person who comes from outside of a particular culture to make the most perceptive observations about it. This is what Tocqueville did in Democracy in America, and it is what Lawrence does here. I strongly recommend this book for anyone seeking to gain a larger understanding of what lies at the heart of classic American literature.
In a style that is outrageously irreverent, insightful, and altogether provocative, Lawrence expounds on those qualities that make American Romantic writers unique. Here is a representative piece:
"Art-speech is the only truth. An artist is usually a damned liar, but his art, if it be art, will tell you the truth of his day. And that is all that matters. Away with eternal truth. Truth lives from day to day, and the marvellous Plato of yesterday is chiefly bosh today.
The old American artists were hopeless liars. But they were artists, in spite of themselves. Which is more than you can say of most living practitioners.
And you can please yourself, when you read the Scarlet Letter, whether you accept what that sugary, blue-eyed little darling of a Hawthorne has to say for himself, false as all his darlings are, or whether you read the impeccable truth of his art-speech."
Here's more:
"Let us look at the American artist first. How did he ever get to America, to start with? Why isn't he a European still, like his father before him?
Now listen to me, don't listen to him. He'll tell you the lie you expect. Which is partly your fault for expecting it.
He didn't come in search of freedom of worship. England had more freedom of worship in the year 1700 than America had. Won by Englishmen who wanted freedom, and so stopped at home and fought for it. And got it. Freedom of worship? Read the history of New England during the first century of its existence.
Freedom anyhow? The land of the free! This the land of the free! Why if I say anything that displeases them, the free mob will lynch me, and that's my freedom. Free? Why, I have never been in any country where the individual has such an abject fear of his fellow countrymen. Because, as I say, they are free to lynch the moment he shows he is not one of them."
Often it takes a person who comes from outside of a particular culture to make the most perceptive observations about it. This is what Tocqueville did in Democracy in America, and it is what Lawrence does here. I strongly recommend this book for anyone seeking to gain a larger understanding of what lies at the heart of classic American literature.
March 26, 2022
Serpents they were. Look at the inner meaning of their art and see what demons they were.
You must look through the surface of American art, and see the inner diabolism of the symbolic meaning. Otherwise it is all mere childishness.
That blue-eyed darling Nathaniel [Hawthorne] knew disagreeable things in his inner soul. He was careful to send them out in disguise.
Always the same. The deliberate consciousness of Americans so fair and smooth-spoken, and the under-consciousness so devilish. Destroy! destroy! destroy! hums the under-consciousness. Love and produce! Love and produce! cackles the upper consciousness. And the world hears only the Love-and-produce cackle. Refuses to hear the hum of destruction underneath. Until such time as it will have to hear.
The American has got to destroy. It is his destiny. It is his destiny to destroy the whole corpus of the white psyche, the white consciousness. And he's got to do it secretly. As the growing of a dragon-fly inside a chrysalis or cocoon destroys the larva grub, secretly.
Though many a dragon-fly never gets out of the chrysalis case: dies inside. As America might.
You must look through the surface of American art, and see the inner diabolism of the symbolic meaning. Otherwise it is all mere childishness.
That blue-eyed darling Nathaniel [Hawthorne] knew disagreeable things in his inner soul. He was careful to send them out in disguise.
Always the same. The deliberate consciousness of Americans so fair and smooth-spoken, and the under-consciousness so devilish. Destroy! destroy! destroy! hums the under-consciousness. Love and produce! Love and produce! cackles the upper consciousness. And the world hears only the Love-and-produce cackle. Refuses to hear the hum of destruction underneath. Until such time as it will have to hear.
The American has got to destroy. It is his destiny. It is his destiny to destroy the whole corpus of the white psyche, the white consciousness. And he's got to do it secretly. As the growing of a dragon-fly inside a chrysalis or cocoon destroys the larva grub, secretly.
Though many a dragon-fly never gets out of the chrysalis case: dies inside. As America might.
September 17, 2015
Took me nearly a month to finish this tripe.
While Lawrence does have a few interesting things to say, much of this book is itinerant rambling. He tries to establish the thread of a theme throughout American literature that "knowing" a thing is equivalent to killing it, but after the first few chapters, he seems to frequently forget his Grand Unifying Theme only to bring it up sporadically thereafter.
I understand there is a critical edition that includes various drafts of the writings – I can't in good conscience call these "essays" – in this book, including four versions of the Whitman piece (the finished version and three drafts). God save anyone who is forced to read that edition.
While Lawrence does have a few interesting things to say, much of this book is itinerant rambling. He tries to establish the thread of a theme throughout American literature that "knowing" a thing is equivalent to killing it, but after the first few chapters, he seems to frequently forget his Grand Unifying Theme only to bring it up sporadically thereafter.
I understand there is a critical edition that includes various drafts of the writings – I can't in good conscience call these "essays" – in this book, including four versions of the Whitman piece (the finished version and three drafts). God save anyone who is forced to read that edition.
July 10, 2014
This book definitely deserves four stars, Lawrence nails the American psyche, his analysis is advant-garde, he's a genius blah blah blah I'm not adding anything that hasn't already been said.
HOWEVER, Five stars is ludicrous! Am I the only one who read the Hawthorne Chapter? That was the rantings of a misogynist lunatic. It almost discredits the whole work for me. Maybe I read it wrong, I don't know, but it left me with a foul impression of Lawrence.
HOWEVER, Five stars is ludicrous! Am I the only one who read the Hawthorne Chapter? That was the rantings of a misogynist lunatic. It almost discredits the whole work for me. Maybe I read it wrong, I don't know, but it left me with a foul impression of Lawrence.
November 3, 2019
This was garbage. I only finished it because it was so short and felt like giving up on it was a waste. Racist, sexist, garbage.
May 1, 2023
"A vast republic of escaped slaves and a minority of earnest, self-tortured people."
Lawrence repeats himself to exhaustion but excavates something new, from himself or from the continent, for each essay.
"When the factories fall down again" . . . Even if the tuberculosis hadn't claimed him in 1930 I doubt his conscience would have let him live much longer.
He begins his studies in open hostility to the founders of American literature (Beb Franklin and apparently a French quasi-immigrant named Crèvecœur). He sees this as a period of European dotage, the proper task of American letters in the 19th century being its annihilation.
The book regardless of its critical validity is a tour de force of interwar pseudo-pessimism, old-Brittanic peevishness, and ersatz freudianism. His essay on The Scarlet Letter contains an interesting psychological proposition that neither I nor Hawthorne saw in the book. The woman's proper work is to cast the man down from the height of his belief; once he has fallen, she takes to despising him and joins the Salvation Army to take her revenge against life; we must eschew woman for the time being and rediscover our belief, the substance of which does not matter greatly.
The artist is, of deep inward necessity, an insufferable creature.
Lawrence has a mythopoeic capacity here that was not evident in the one novel of his I've read. He starts by inventing a provisional racial-geographical machinery by which just about anything might be interpreted. Man is driven abroad by his ghosts; finds new ghosts; must try to kill them; must fail; must learn to ignore the discomfort incident to a wet climate. Somewhere there is a proper metamorphosis; good riddance to Old England and Mother Earth. The sea. It's good to be flogged every now and then . . .
Moby Dick is a fable, or a bare reality, of the collapse of the white psyche. Whitman wrings the old age dry and inaugurs the new; the epoch of soul and body once mind is kaput. Take him (Whitman) at his word and he's an ass.
The only of the works reviewed which this book left me with a positive desire to read are Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales. The rest (though he calls most of them "great books") he roundly condemns and subordinates what's good in them to his vision for a homosexual world order. It is greatly inspiring.
Yet his definite expectations for American literature are a unclear. He sees these classics as a false dawn, transitional and therefore contradictory. The necessary period of deception while the American serpent is growing a new skin. But what then? Sherwood Anderson, Frank Norris, Vachel Lindsay. Well! Maniacs, depressives, manic-depressives. Not good enough, or not American enough, says Lawrence and I am inclined to agree.
And what now? Hell if I know. And what subsequently??
Lawrence repeats himself to exhaustion but excavates something new, from himself or from the continent, for each essay.
"When the factories fall down again" . . . Even if the tuberculosis hadn't claimed him in 1930 I doubt his conscience would have let him live much longer.
He begins his studies in open hostility to the founders of American literature (Beb Franklin and apparently a French quasi-immigrant named Crèvecœur). He sees this as a period of European dotage, the proper task of American letters in the 19th century being its annihilation.
The book regardless of its critical validity is a tour de force of interwar pseudo-pessimism, old-Brittanic peevishness, and ersatz freudianism. His essay on The Scarlet Letter contains an interesting psychological proposition that neither I nor Hawthorne saw in the book. The woman's proper work is to cast the man down from the height of his belief; once he has fallen, she takes to despising him and joins the Salvation Army to take her revenge against life; we must eschew woman for the time being and rediscover our belief, the substance of which does not matter greatly.
The artist is, of deep inward necessity, an insufferable creature.
Lawrence has a mythopoeic capacity here that was not evident in the one novel of his I've read. He starts by inventing a provisional racial-geographical machinery by which just about anything might be interpreted. Man is driven abroad by his ghosts; finds new ghosts; must try to kill them; must fail; must learn to ignore the discomfort incident to a wet climate. Somewhere there is a proper metamorphosis; good riddance to Old England and Mother Earth. The sea. It's good to be flogged every now and then . . .
Moby Dick is a fable, or a bare reality, of the collapse of the white psyche. Whitman wrings the old age dry and inaugurs the new; the epoch of soul and body once mind is kaput. Take him (Whitman) at his word and he's an ass.
The only of the works reviewed which this book left me with a positive desire to read are Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales. The rest (though he calls most of them "great books") he roundly condemns and subordinates what's good in them to his vision for a homosexual world order. It is greatly inspiring.
Yet his definite expectations for American literature are a unclear. He sees these classics as a false dawn, transitional and therefore contradictory. The necessary period of deception while the American serpent is growing a new skin. But what then? Sherwood Anderson, Frank Norris, Vachel Lindsay. Well! Maniacs, depressives, manic-depressives. Not good enough, or not American enough, says Lawrence and I am inclined to agree.
And what now? Hell if I know. And what subsequently??
February 20, 2025
Interesting little book with an overarching meta narrative regarding American democratic identity, although there are peaks & valleys in the quality of Lawrence’s general approach. He fixates on the idea of “blood knowledge” in an interesting if not awkwardly phrased way, generally describing innate/unconscious impulse. It isn’t really utilized in the weird eugenicist sense it may sound like, but it also isn’t entirely disconnected from that undertone.
Anyway, there are some very compelling essays & analyses & some which weren’t especially interesting to me. The portion on Poe’s Ligeia is an outstandingly interesting dissection of love as a sort of energy between people which is generated, or siphoned, by the attempt to truly “know” someone. Other sections on Hawthorne’s Blithedale Romance & the opening entry on The Spirit of Place are nice, as are the Melville entries. Other essays faltered & Lawrence’s tone is hit or miss, but it’s a nice collection with an impressive, audacious scope.
Anyway, there are some very compelling essays & analyses & some which weren’t especially interesting to me. The portion on Poe’s Ligeia is an outstandingly interesting dissection of love as a sort of energy between people which is generated, or siphoned, by the attempt to truly “know” someone. Other sections on Hawthorne’s Blithedale Romance & the opening entry on The Spirit of Place are nice, as are the Melville entries. Other essays faltered & Lawrence’s tone is hit or miss, but it’s a nice collection with an impressive, audacious scope.
November 16, 2025
What Walter Pater tries to do for the Renaissance, D.H. Lawrence tries to do for 19th Century American Literature. Both fail, but splendidly, with voices that are, by most critical standards, beyond the pale.
There's a lot of horseshit in these essays -- confused metaphysical ruminations that draw haphazardly from Judeo-Christian and pagan symbologies, and borderline fascist assertions about the soul of America -- but every once in awhile, with a quick sentence or two, Lawrence strikes gold. These "studies" are worth reading for those gems, and most of all, for his unruly, blazingly impassioned critical voice.
There's a lot of horseshit in these essays -- confused metaphysical ruminations that draw haphazardly from Judeo-Christian and pagan symbologies, and borderline fascist assertions about the soul of America -- but every once in awhile, with a quick sentence or two, Lawrence strikes gold. These "studies" are worth reading for those gems, and most of all, for his unruly, blazingly impassioned critical voice.
October 24, 2020
Um livro impressionante. Demonstração vigorosa de que a crítica pode ser tão ou mais excitante do que o seu objeto - pense-se, por exemplo, em como Lawrence consegue escrever um texto ao mesmo tempo divertido e intelectualmente estimulante sobre a autobiografia de Benjamin Franklin. O primeiro dos dois ensaios sobre Lawrence e o último do livro, sobre Whitman, são especialmente inspirados, além do prefácio e do primeiro capítulo, sobre o "espírito do lugar" - título ao qual o festejado livro de José Miguel Wisnik sobre Drummond, salvo engano, presta uma homenagem.
February 8, 2025
An outsider, British, and radically individualistic take on American letters. Lawrence divinizes the authentic self, which he calls "The Holy Ghost that is you." He believes that until we learn to obey our true selves, we will not survive as a nation. The bad fruit that this kind of thinking bore in the 20th and 21st centuries is itself a refutation of his argument. At best, it is interesting to see how a revered secular radical engages with Melville, Hawthorne, Whitman, and Benjamin Franklin.
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September 5, 2024Lawrence’s raving praise of Poe is as good a representation of reverential madness as any of Poe’s devil worshipping protagonists. In another life, Lawrence is — rightly — known as a non fiction specialist first and foremost
January 6, 2026
thanks kindle unlimited!
gave this three stars because i thought it was going to be more academic and theory based.
a fun read. accessible to anyone. lawrence just wrote what he felt.
loved the capitalization of words.
gave this three stars because i thought it was going to be more academic and theory based.
a fun read. accessible to anyone. lawrence just wrote what he felt.
loved the capitalization of words.
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