Studies in Classic American Literature by DH Lawrence

Studies in Classic American Literature is a bizarre, absurd, and often completely incomprehensible set of opinions by DH Lawrence focused on a small set of 19th century (and slightly earlier) American writers…

In many ways this short book (first published in 1923) is kind of a prototype blog. Lawrence waxes lyrical throughout with incredibly unjustified assertions and far-from-established ideas about about socio-cultural, religious and political movements, all supposedly rooted in his commentaries on the lives and works of notable American writers. He seems to know next-to-nothing about the broader topics he explores, and little about the biographies of these writers beyond what can be found in their own texts (which he sometimes quotes from), yet the whole way through this book, Lawrence espouses vibes-based opinions as absolute, incontrovertible fact.

Did DH Lawrence have any particular insight on the 19th century relationships between white colonial settlers in the United States of America and the existing indigenous population[s]? No, he didn’t, however large swathes of this book are printed as if he did…

Did DH Lawrence know lots about religious practices, about intra-class differences, about the nuances of early capitalist America? No, he did not. All he knows about these topics is what he learned (or guessed at) from the books he’s writing about here, and ideas that he extrapolated himself without really seeming to have invested much time for thinking… Which feels a lot like

This means that while this book may be low on nuance, on research, on balance and on knowledge, what it is not low on is opinion… opinion rigorously and raucously expressed, in such a way as to be both incredibly entertaining and also quite exciting in many places.

I don’t know all of the writers well that Lawrence writes about, and though I’ve read and adored Moby Dick, I’ve read some Edgar Allan Poe and some Walt Whitman a(ll of whom get chapters here), I’ve never read any Nathaniel Hawthorne (probably should), Benjamin Franklin or whoever wrote The Last of the Mohicans, and there were a couple of writers who I hadn’t even heard of before cracking open this volume. Nothing Lawrence spewed about them made me think I was missing much…

As well as summarising plots and arguments of novels, stories and essays, and writing about how he feels the texts pertain to wider statements about the nuanced realities of early 20th century American society, Lawrence does offer some textual analysis, but mostly Studies in Classic American Literature is huge amounts of Lawrence writing about the things that he always writes about…

That means ideas of strange paganistic life forces, mild (and less mild) sexism, his repressed loneliness and discussion of a weird kind of phallocentric ideology the he seems to think is both deeply truthful, but doesn’t necessarily like, even though he’s basically made it up…

Lawrence is also obsessed here with the Holy Spirit, writing as if his idea of what the Holy Spirit is – which is in no way related to any ecclesiastical or otherwise recognisably Christian idea of what the Holy Spirit is considered to be – is definitively true, and produces claims that this reading of this idea is supported by – and referenced in – the books that he’s exploring. It’s a personal and esoteric bugbear, a belief system that no one else believes in.

It’s nonsense. But it’s entertaining Lawrentian nonsense… For example:

On p. 73 Lawrence goes so far as to state, unequivocally: “It is love that is the prime cause of tuberculosis.” He then expands this theory (running over onto p.74) with cod scientific explanation, all of which is (in case it needs to be said) bullshit: “The nerves that vibrate most intensely in spiritual unisons are the sympathetic ganglia of the breast, of the throat and of the hind brain. Drive this vibration over-intensely, and you weaken the sympathetic tissues of the chest – the lungs – or of the throat, or of the lower brain, and the tubercles are given a ripe field.”

Pro-violence on p. 75: “To know a living thing is to kill it. You have to kill a thing to know it satisfactorily.”

Some of his bizarre sexism on p. 99: “Woman is a strange and rather terrible phenomenon, to man. […] The woman herself may be nice as milk [… b]ut she is sending out waves of silent destruction[…] The very women who are most busy saving the bodies of men […] these women-doctors, these nurses, these educationalists, these public-spirited women, these female saviours: they are all, from the inside, sending out waves of destruction malevolence which eat out the inner life of a man, like a cancer.”

Odd comment here on p. 102 – there’s no more context in the text: “I always remember meeting the eyes of a gipsy woman, for one moment, in a crowd, in England. She knew, and I knew. What did we know! I was not able to make out. But we knew.”

There are lots of comments like this, on p. 109, where he states something then immediately disagrees with it: “A thing you sincerely believe in cannot be wrong […] a thing you truly believe in, cannot be wrong.”

When discussing the idea of sinning against the Holy Ghost, “your very You”, i.e. losing integrity, he says: “You might as well make a rip in your own bowels. You know if you rip your own bowels they will go rotten and you will go rotten.” (p. 110)

As above, a broad statement then immediate disagreement on p. 119: “You can’t idealize mother-earth. You can try. You can even succeed. But succeeding, you succumb. She will have no pure idealist sons. None.”

Little bit of fun on p. 124: “As long as man has a bottom, he must surely be whipped.”

Great anti-tech stuff on p. 134 – maybe we all yearn for a simpler time: “The more we intervene machinery between us and the naked forces the more we numb and atrophy our own senses. Every time we turn a tap to have water, every time we turn a handle to have fire or light, we deny ourselves and annul our being.”

On p. 139: “There is something curious about blue-eyed people. They are never quite human”

If this (on p. 180) was a genuine opinion, it can perhaps be used to argue that Lawrence’s entire career was a failure: “The essential function of art is moral. […] A morality which changes the blood, rather than the mind.”

Though this passage (near the end of the book, on p. 180) is very much Lawrence being Lawrence and a good excerpt to show the overall tone of this book: “Whitman was the first heroic seer to seize the soul by the scruff of the neck and plant her down among the postherds.
‘There!’ he said to the soul. ‘Stay there!’
Stay there. Stay in the flesh. Stay in the limbs and lips and in the belly. Stay in the breast and womb. Stay there, Oh, Soul, where you belong.
Stay in the dark limbs of negroes. Stay in the body of the prostitute. Stay in the sick flesh of the syphilitic. Stay in the marsh where the calamus grows. Stay there, Soul, where you belong.
The Open Road. The great home of the Soul is the open road.”

–///–

It’s wild. It’s strange. Assertions and contradictions and bullshit and nonsense.

Did I learn much about Classic American Literature? Not really. Did I learn lots about Lawrence? Again, not really. But did I have a good time doing so?

Yes. Yes I did.

Read the whole thing online via Project Gutenberg via this link