The Aesthetic Lawrence

Leafing through a book on the nature of the English over the weekend, it struck one in passing just how un-English a writer D.H. Lawrence was. After all, his work is hardly known for understatement, irony or self-deprecation -- instead we have an almost poetic explicitness combined with the need to preach. Coincidentally -- and happily -- this morning, one came across James Wood's assessment of the author, in a piece that calls for reevaluating his achievement on aesthetic grounds: "It is Lawrence's misfortune that this highly doctrinal and metaphysical writer is more often discussed doctrinally and metaphysically than aesthetically." Time to locate and re-read that copy of The Rainbow.