Life With A Capital L

by D.H. Lawrence

A brilliantly varied new selection of D. H. Lawrence's essays, chosen and introduced by Geoff DyerFor D. H. Lawrence the novel was the pinnacle, 'the one bright book of life', yet his non-fiction shows him at his most freewheeling and playful. This is a selection of his essays, on subjects including art, morality, obscenity, songbirds, Italy, Thomas Hardy, the death of a porcupine in the Rocky Mountains and the narcissism of photographing ourselves. Arranged chronologically to illuminate the patterns of Lawrence's thought over time, and including many little-known pieces, they reveal a writer of enduring freshness and force. 'The greatest writer of this century, and in many things the greatest writer of all times' Philip Larkin

Genres: Essays, Nonfiction, Literature

512 pages, Paperback

Published January 31, 2019

About the author

David 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...

Reviews

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dyer and Lawrence are an odd pairing. Lawrence was often clumsy and prolix, especially when gripped by one of his never-ending theories. But his goal was to break the print barrier and feel his way inside others - a fox, a snake, a porcupine, men, women, miners, pit owners, drinkers, workers, idlers, lovers, and (especially) flowers. Lawrence at his best makes the real world seem drab by comparison.

Dyer, on the other hand, is a deeply secondary writer and ‘post-modern’ to his ball-hairs. He writes studies about other writers, fails, then passes off the result as something ingenious. His novels are often based on someone else’s work (including the pissing awful Jeff in Venice). He doesn’t aspire to write the ‘great bright book of life’ but a smarmy introduction to it.

Mercifully, here his energy goes into something else: the best of Lawrence’s shorter pieces, sometimes intact, sometimes snipped off larger works. The travel books occupy a satisfying portion of the text, and even part of a batch review is used cleverly. The book that seizes his attention is a slim book of vignettes by an unknown American named Ernest Hemingway. An essay about Nottingham and its coal miners is a truthful, beautiful piece, and should twit many a lazy stereotype about miners as unfeeling or artless.

My one gripe is that Dyer doesn’t quote more from Twilight in Italy, ‘The Lemon Gardens’ chapter in particular.

[Molsa Roja(s) · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a bastard Mr.Lawrence was, so often a dull, self-entitled macho. Yet there are moments, there are essays, in which he shines. From time to time he gets all disgusting, too Nietzschean, rambling and all. Yet those moments in which he talks about Life, that Life with a capital L, are both Beautiful and True. And I must admit I commune with him, with that misantropic point of view —that deep despise of what we have become, enslaved by things of our own making— and also with that deep, maddening and saddening love for the world, for life, that cherish for Life itself, for Earth, to grasp it, to live it truly, without any cliché. Yet when I become mute, absorbed by the beauty of reality, he makes the effort to put it in words. Many essays are quite boring, but some of them are very much worth the read. Can’t say more.

“Now we have to educate ourselves, not by laying down laws and inscribing tables of stone, but by listening. Not listening-in to noises from Chicago or Timbuktu. But listening in to the voices of the honourable beasts that call in the dark paths of the veins of our body, from the God in the heart. Listening inwards, inwards, not for words nor for inspiration, but to the lowing of the innermost beasts, the feelings, that roam in the forest of the blood, from the feet of God within the red, dark heart.”

[Cassidy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a great exploration of D.H.Lawrence's work and due to the lenght of it and also the circumstances in which it was read I did find it, well not exactly tedious but certainly of the same style. The sort of thing that tends to drone on about social differences in the 1920s and would be fascinating if it were a shorter series of essays, but in a book that is over 500 pages long you do tend to have them flow in with one another a little. Not that his thoughts aren't interesting, it's just that his style is rather the same. Still I was glad to know his thoughts on a myriad of subjects and certainly ones I did not expect him to be writing about with such freedom in the 1920s. Such things always interest me and for that I have to give him credit for.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

This selection offers a real variety of Lawrence's essays. For me Lawrence is often at his best when writing about nature. The only downside is that Lawrence can drift into extended detail over his ideas, often losing his original focus. Despite this he writes brilliantly with prose sparkling with life.

[Eric Randolph · Rating 4 out of 5]

Often he's just skipping along through life trying to be a nice guy, sometimes he descends into manic wild-haired ravings - it's not always sensible but he's grappling with more than most can even imagine.

[emma · Rating 3 out of 5]

i’m glad the essays were put in chronological order because you could totally see Lawrence’s development as a writer. The later essays were WAYYYYY better!! I was very disappointed by the Thomas Hardy essay tho :/

[Nicolás Maurokefalidis · Rating 5 out of 5]

My bible