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A review by greg_talbot
Out of Sheer Rage: Wrestling With D.H. Lawrence by Geoff Dyer
4.0
I too have had difficulty wrestling with D.H Lawrence's work. Having only read the first 50 pages of Sons and Lovers..I was enamoured with Lawrence's writing. Sometimes there is an author's voice...that is so original (Cormac Mccarthy, Philip Roth, Virginia Wolf), that the possibilities of writing are altered after your encounter. Lawrence is like that...but there is a weird simplicity to his language. A strangeness of construction, but a simpleness.
Dyer's story is fascinating...some describe it as procrastination..but Dyer scratches the edge of the meaning of his own narrative. With it he takes on Lawrence's influences: Flaubert, Nietzche, Rilke...and examines a deeper sense of narrative to life. There is a malise Dyer confronts with his occupation, his quarters, his romantic partner...a sense of emptiness and needing to fly away from his comfort. He employs quotes from Lawrence's poems and letters, and creates an invisible line between the two men.
It's a fascinating read...Dyer abandons the project of Lawrence, confessing to taking bad notes, giving perfunctory lectures, and sort of wanting to do nothing. Even the vacations with sex, voyeuristic nude beaches, weed and sexual fantasy seem to build up his own irascibility. Wanting to do nothing..or fighting his own depression becomes the deeper target.
" A destiny is not something that awaits us, it is something we have to achieve in the midst of innumerable circumstantial impediments and detours"
Dyer's story is unconventional, but the vulnerability to his own insecurities about the meaning in his life in a way save him. And we start to see Dyer, Lawrence, even ourselves as more than just pinned characters in a story, but deeply complex, imaginative, morally ambiguous people with hearts, fates, and choices.
Dyer's story is fascinating...some describe it as procrastination..but Dyer scratches the edge of the meaning of his own narrative. With it he takes on Lawrence's influences: Flaubert, Nietzche, Rilke...and examines a deeper sense of narrative to life. There is a malise Dyer confronts with his occupation, his quarters, his romantic partner...a sense of emptiness and needing to fly away from his comfort. He employs quotes from Lawrence's poems and letters, and creates an invisible line between the two men.
It's a fascinating read...Dyer abandons the project of Lawrence, confessing to taking bad notes, giving perfunctory lectures, and sort of wanting to do nothing. Even the vacations with sex, voyeuristic nude beaches, weed and sexual fantasy seem to build up his own irascibility. Wanting to do nothing..or fighting his own depression becomes the deeper target.
" A destiny is not something that awaits us, it is something we have to achieve in the midst of innumerable circumstantial impediments and detours"
Dyer's story is unconventional, but the vulnerability to his own insecurities about the meaning in his life in a way save him. And we start to see Dyer, Lawrence, even ourselves as more than just pinned characters in a story, but deeply complex, imaginative, morally ambiguous people with hearts, fates, and choices.