The Mailer Review/Volume 13, 2019/Tremulation on the Ether: Versions of Instinctual Primacy in the Essays of D.H. Lawrence

The Bad Side of Books: Selected Essays by D. H. Lawrence.

Edited and with an introduction
by Geoff Dyer.
NY: New York Review of Books 2019
Paperback $19.95.

Written by
Peter Balbert

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URL: http://prmlr.us/mr13bal

“ By life, we mean something that gleams, that has the fourth-dimensional quality. ” — D. H. Lawrence, “Morality and the Novel”

“ Yet, he was a man more beautiful, perhaps, than we can guess, and it is worth the attempt to try to perceive the logic of his life. ” — Norman Mailer, The Prisoner of Sex

The talented writer, Geoff Dyer, has edited and introduced a well designed anthology of selected essays by D.H. Lawrence. He remains an excellent choice to assemble the volume, for among his previous books is Out of Sheer Rage, a hilarious and incisive travel-saga that follows his obsessional trek through several countries to ponder the life and art of D. H. Lawrence. It reads as both a scenic excursion and a neurotic record of sustained searching and sleuthing about his complex subject. Dyer’s selection of thirty-six essays of varying length and subject matter spans Lawrence’s career from 1912 to 1930, ranging from “Christs in the Tirol” to the “Introduction to the Grand Inquisitor,” published in the year of his death.

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