D.H., D.H. ...

Sorry! Was yawning and stretching and hit the enter key again by mistake, eek...

Wake up god damn it, there's a Smiths battle to fight on the general discussion boards. I'm gaining water quick. Bail! Bail! Hey Beth, reading your uni course books already? You put me to shame. x

I have to state quite categorically that DH Lawrence is possibly my least favourite author of all time - overblown, pretentious and ugly. However others disagree and if you go to his original village just north of Nottingham (forgotten its name, sorry) you will find loads and loads of Lawrence stuff . His house is preserved, there is a library dedicated to him and it's all Lawrence at every turn. Eastwood - that's it - just come back to me. I had to do the opening of the house for Radio Trent in 1980 or thereabouts and it almost made me puke - all these people wandering about saying what a great writer he was. Ho Hum. Enjoy it though Beth - it puts him in perspective!

I've enjoyed DH Lawrence in the past and enjoyed reading his stuff at school. Been a long time since I read anything by him but I imagine I would still like it.

Well, for my degree Mr. Lawrence was bracketed with Virginia Woolf and Thomas Hardy and compared with those two he was almost light entertainment... For me, the trouble with Lawrence is that he's famous for "Lady Chatterley's Lover" which is a poor book which happens to contain rude words. His other books - particularly "The Rainbow" and "Women In Love" are sensual without being crude - at least by modern standards - and "Sons And Lovers" is a classic in the school syllabus.

Have to agree with others. DHL is overrated. I think what happens is that a critic takes on a writer and promotes them a lot, so people think theres something great going on; this happened with DHL, in that FR Leavis championed him in several books. I do think he's overblown and quite a boit pretentious, though there are some very good bits. The descriptions of family life in mining villages in Sons and Lovers. Plus 'The Third Lady Chatterley' is far better than the version which got printed first, in my opinion.

i had to study 'The Rainbow' and was dreading it as i found him SO hard going and over the top i guess. but the more i studied it the more i realized what amazing writing it was. theres some astounding passages in there about relationships, just incredible detail about the inside of peoples heads and the conflict of morals/desires. it iS heavily laden with symbolism which to us now seems overblown but if youre reading it in context of modernism/industrialisation you kind of realise that he said some v important things for the time he was writing in. its great for essay writing because of said symbolism - the only 1st i got at uni was essay on The Rainbow so i learned to love him a bit more! wouldn't have got through it if i hadn't been studying i think. some books are like that i guess.

If you haven't read his short stories, you should check them out. I like them better than his novels. And they're shorter, which is often a plus.