found Sons and Lovers funny. JeffreynMeyers’ objective, dispassionate approachnto Lawrence reflects thisnchange of atmosphere, and two thingsnin particular emerge from reading hisnwell-documented, fascinating book:nhow influential Lawrence has been,nand how dated his writing now looks.nThese are not irreconcilables. Lawrence,na working-class boy from a miningnvillage out of the mainstream ofnEnglish life, was really a 19th-centurynfigure, more preacher than artist, morenlike Ruskin, Kingsley, and Carlyle thannhis modernist contemporaries. A successfulnpreacher, too: his message cannbe read on bumperstickers from coastnto coast, the creed of the counterculture.nJeffrey Meyers documents itsnmain points: the preference for naturenover people, and for the primitive overnthe civilized; hatred of rational Europenand Christianity; a hankering for “thenother,” wherever one might find it; andeep belief in the regenerative powersnof sex and the simultaneous orgasm;nand an equally deep dislike of Americanand its belief in liberty and democracy.nOn the other hand, though thenmessage lives, the prose it is written innoften looks quaint. It has dated like thenpicture Lawrence enjoyed so much,nMaurice Greiffenhagen’s “An Idyll,”nand for the same reason: too muchnfantasy, too little reality. Many ofnMeyers’ quotations are prose of thenkind that Evelyn Waugh’s friend MarynLygon said “makes one hum,” especiallynwhen sex gets mixed up withnbiblical syntax. Yet even at his kitschiest,nLawrence has been influential.nSome characteristic scenes, e.g., sex-inthe-watern(admittedly a staple of pornographynlong before Lawrence) andnsex-on-the-beach, are now conventionsnof erotic fantasy.nJeffrey Meyers’ matter-of-fact approachntends to emphasize the separationnof Lawrence’s content from itsnform, and questions inevitably arise innthe reader’s mind. Take, for instance,nthe notorious suppression of The Rainbownon grounds of obscenity. AsnMeyers explains it, the sex in this novelnand in Women in Love is not all plainnsailing; there is some homosexualitynand sodomy. The irony of the legalncase, therefore — suspending for a momentnany objection one might have innprinciple to censorship — is that if thenpublisher had defended The Rainbow,nthe authorities could have won theirncase — and the more famous Chatterleyncase of I960 as well—but wereneither too naive or too timid to know it.nThis is because Lawrence, the prophetnof sexual candor, disguised the riskiestnscenes in the figurative, high-flownnlanguage of the decadent style, as if henwere spellbound by the shame andnmystery of his own imaginings: “Thensecret, shameful things are most terriblynbeautiful” or “How good it was tonbe really shameful!”nMeyers’ treatment of this element innLawrence throws an ironical light onnthe Chatterley trial, at which establishmentariannworthies testified to thenbook’s moral value. It also reveals anmore sinister side to the Lawrenthianngospel. When Lawrence advocatesnpractices that would give a surgeonngeneral nightmares, he is preachingnradical or absolute freedom throughnsex. The character of Ursula in Womennin Love is an example, “liberated intonperfection” by what Meyers calls,nusing Lawrence’s words, “her degrading,nbestial and shameful experiencesnwith Birkin.” Pursued in real life asnopposed to pornographic fantasy, thisnritualized perversion is exploitative andndangerous, not to mention oifensive;nno one who does moral and physicalnviolence to the deepest feelings ofnmodesty will emerge unscathed. YetnLawrence evidentiy believed these Byronicnacts of defiance to be necessary;nhe did not describe them in a spirit ofncheerful pagan permissiveness.nJeffrey Meyers’ revelation ofnLawrence’s antinomian streak —nthough he does not use the word —nleads one to think that Lawrence’snwriting was expressive, not prophetic,nand that it expressed his own immoderate,nself-centered personality. No onenas contradictory as Lawrence can be anreal prophet. If, for instance, one is anbeliever in “life,” as Lawrence claimednto be, then surely one must also believenin purposive evolution, and cannotnpossibly take an anti-intellectual or anti-rationalnposition. The turn from reasonnto the primitive, the animal, andninstinctual in the name of somethingncalled “life,” is all too likely to be andance of death in disguise.nYet without following or even sympathizingnwith Lawrence, one can perhapsnunderstand him. In Lawrence thenrepresentative figure and prophet onennnsees some consequences of bringingnpeople up in brutally ugly surroundings,nstarved of intellectual and aestheticnnourishment. Lawrence came fromna place where the only sources of realnpleasure and beauty were sex and nature,nboth of them continually threatenednand degraded by the machinenand the machine-minded. In thosencircumstances the spirit is either dumbnor it protests: Lawrence acquired hisnanger honestiy.nUnfortunately, as Meyers shows us,nfrom his unhappy mother he alsonlearnt social and sexual ambition;nworse, her contempt for life, backed upnby chapel Calvinism, wounded himnemotionally, and this must have beennthe source of his violence. An upbringingnlike that gives littie space for spiritualnor imaginative maneuvering: nonwonder Lawrence was a wanderer ornthat he sought initiation into forbiddennrealms.nFlawed as a writer and as a man,ndead at 44, Lawrence nevertheless imposednhis savage vision. Between hisnailing psyche and a society with muchnto be ashamed of, there proved to be annessential sympathy, so much so thatnone could say of him as of ChristophernWren, “If you want a monument, looknabout you.” In his Lawrenthian 60’s,neven his looks were fashionable.nLawrence lived a sad, always significantnlife, intensely pathetic at the end;nJefl-rey Meyers has told it well.nF.W. 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